Christmas Day

And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. - John 1.14

John offers an irreverent description of a deeply reverent moment. “The Word became flesh.” He selects his noun from a twin set of Greek synonyms - sarx and soma. Both mean “body,” but these twins are fraternal, not identical, and John opts for sarx, the second-born, red-headed one. Soma is a nicer word, more polite. The church is the soma of Christ (1 Cor 12.27), but Paul had a thorn in the sarx (2 Cor 12.7). Sarx is the thing that belches and passes gas and sweats and has foot odor. Heidi Klum has soma. Jack Black has sarx.

Economics geeks have a term that applies here: “meat space.” It distinguishes between the neat realm of market theories and the messy reality where actual consumers make erratic choices without respect for the pundits and their predictions. The Word entered meat space and dwelt among us. The bar graph precision of Ephesians 1 risks all in the jumbled marketplace of earth where tempters retail red-tag triumph in place of expensive salvation and belly-filled multitudes calculate loaf-and-fish futures, offering cheaper crowns than the one made of thorns.

Things get confusing in meat space. Theology, like theory, seems far-fetched. Redemption’s symphony, a score composed from eternity past in the flawless three-part harmony of the one triune God must now be banged out on the broken-stringed banjo of a fallen creation. When God the Son surrenders the Stradivarius that first sang the music of the spheres and accepts instead the kazoo of human flesh, a wrong note becomes a real possibility.

He took a risk, did God; wagered his glory with no reserve and hollered “Let it ride!” as he rolled the dice from Bethlehem to Calvary. He went for it on fourth-and-long with the final seconds trickling off the clock and no timeouts left. He strapped it on in meat space and played by the rules to let us all find out if God’s playbook translated to our struggles.

Advent ends! Christmas begins! Christ has come! But where has he come? To meat space, to sarx, to real combat, not a rigged contest. As we celebrate Christmas we do well to remember that while we are right to cheer, we are cheering the report of the starter’s pistol, not the sound of the final gun. That comes later, that comes at Easter, and the long trek of Lent lies in between. In the Apostles’ Creed, “Suffered under Pontius Pilate” jostles close against “Born of a virgin.”

In us as well as in the Bible, the Word enters meat space. A barter-system economy offers easy trades in return for faith. Ukulele ditties lure us into capers much easier to follow than the endless dance of salvation’s symphony. The God who bet it all on the Son’s incarnation now ups the ante with a ludicrous wager on the local church. Christmas kicks us into meat space. Kyrie eleison; Christe eleison; Kyrie eleison. Lord have mercy; Christ have mercy; Lord have mercy.

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