What Child Is This, the Son of Mary

When I was someplace between ages 3 and 5, my imaginary friends were Crocodile (the ticking one, from Peter Pan) and the Baby Jesus.

Years ago I mentioned this to my brother and mentor in the faith, Ray (now among the faithful departed). I told him Baby Jesus was my imaginary friend when I was very young. As was often his wont, he took a minute to think about this, and then said “Are you sure the Baby Jesus was imaginary?”

It did no good to pretend you didn’t get it when Ray asked one of those kinds of questions; it just came back to haunt you while you were trying to go to sleep for the next six weeks.

So I’ve thought a lot about this, over the years. Now I want to write about our Lord and – at his command – brother, Jesus.  Is He an imaginary friend or not?

Everyone Has An Image

Because many have some kind of mental image of Jesus that departs from reality, many have some acquaintance with an imaginary Jesus. It’s one reason why those hostile to faith calling Jesus our “imaginary friend” can be so annoying.

Many people in many lands in every age have had their particular and peculiar sets of images that are carried in common about Jesus – who He is, and what difference it makes in the grand scheme of things.

But the whole point of the Christmas season is that the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us so that we might know Him, and through Him, know His Father. Not through imagination, but from experience, both direct and as passed along from others.

“What Child is this?”

St. John’s answer to this question is that He is the Word made flesh.

Flesh. Solid, flesh and bone and blood, getting thirsty while walking along dusty roads. Eating and drinking with friends, talking with people, teaching and healing with his words and touch.

Real. Not anyone’s imagination. God Himself, taking on human form.

The history of the first 900 years of the Church revolves around the efforts of the whole Body of Christ to hammer out a basic understanding of what this means. This struggle produced documents from the Definition of Chalcedon to the Nicene Creed, the heart of which is part of most mainstream Christian traditions. At the very end of these efforts a single word in the Nicene Creed sealed the schism between the Western and Eastern Church. (The word is filioque, but that is another topic.)

Those efforts were made to understand the Mystery of the Trinity, and understand the real Jesus in that light.

The Historical Jesus

Other efforts have had a different thrust – from Thomas Jefferson’s version of the Gospels through Albert Schweitzer’s book on the “historical” Jesus, to recent members of the “Jesus Seminar” (whose method of determining what Jesus really did and did not say as recorded in the Gospels is to use their image of who Jesus was, and then vote on each verse in accordance to their estimation of whether or not He really said that phrase or told that story).

It is very tempting here to point out the differences in methodology of these sorts of approaches.  One is an example of the effort of the Church, operating against the current of the times and cultures to deal with the data – the accounts left to us by those who knew Jesus, or knew those who had known Him. A second is the act of people operating inside their times and their cultures to conform Jesus to their own sensibilities.

But that would be the road of comparative scholarship and history and polemic, and it lets me – and you – off the hook of the question that Jesus Himself asked of his disciples, and asks of us today, especially in this time when we are celebrating His birth.

“And you,” He asked, “Who do you say I am?”

I can only say what I believe.

I believe that He is the Word of God made flesh.

When John calls Him the Logos, the Word, he means more than a dictionary entry. That Greek word logos takes up two and a half columns of the Liddel & Scott Greek lexicon. It means word, but also reason, the comprehensible order of the Universe itself. All those “ologies,” from archaeology to zoology come from the word logos, as does the word logic itself.

In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth, speaking the Word. The finely structured universe sprang into being from the Mind of God, through the Word. The fact that the cosmos is comprehensible at all, that anything about it can be studied and understood reflects the underlying reason and order of the Logos, the Word of God.

It is remarkable that this picture of creation is so thoroughly consonant with the current cosmological consensus of a quantum hyper bubble exploding into being as pure energy – light, if you will – with all the physical constants and physical “laws,” as it were, arising from the initial conditions of hyperinflation.

When The Time Was Fulfilled, God Became Flesh

The Word, the very foundation of all creation, took on the material form of creation itself, to bring to us and the world the capacity to know our Creator, and through Him, to know and understand all things, to resolve all paradox.

I believe that He is the Light, who shone out into the darkness of human depravity and alienation and separation from God. The darkness could not overcome that light, then or now, though it has always done its utmost to do so.

At one time, for three days in Jerusalem, it looked to the disciples that the Light had indeed been extinguished. In every life, there are times when our faith falters. Our vision is clouded, and there seems to be no light on any horizon.

But I believe that He rose from the dead, that this Light could not be extinguished.  It pierced the hearts of the Apostles.  It transformed them from frightened, huddled refugees into the beacons that transformed all but one of the continents of the Earth. And it is continuing that transformation even today. For that light breaks into every generation, striking Paul and Francis and Theresa, Basil and Martin and Thomas, Billy and John Paul and Brother Huang, blinding them to the call of the World while fixing their eyes and their hearts and their minds on the Word.

Before Abraham Was, He Is

This tiny bundle of human flesh, wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in manger, surrounded by the earthy, life-laden smells of a stable, was God made man.

This Child grew from infancy, struggling to master the matter that He had become.  He learned to walk and talk, to see and feel and know His creation from the inside.

This Child experienced directly the pain of creation, from scraped knees to broken hearts and angry friends.

I believe that He found his creation good, as He pronounced in the beginning. That He loved the clear, cool air of desert mornings, and the sweet scent of flowers in the Spring. That He loved the exhilaration of minds kindled in the fire of learning and understanding, and the warmth of welcoming smiles, helping hands, and open hearts.

While He was with us in the flesh He opened his Heart and poured out the Love of God directly. And He opened His mind and left us the reflections of the Word.

He does this now, every minute of every day. And if we have the courage and the trust to open ourselves to Him, he responds with torrents of Grace, and peace and wisdom – a deluge of all the Gifts of the Spirit.

Jesus is the Way and the Truth and the Life. He has stored up for us life eternal, abundant life, the life that we were designed to lead.  This design came from the Word, the Word that when spoken brought all creation into being. And when the Word was made flesh, the Word brought the promise of redemption to that same creation.

The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us

I have tried to understand what I can of the mystery of incarnation, of how Jesus can be perfect Man and perfect God. And I have made no more progress than anyone else – and rather less than quite a few. But where understanding fails, Grace and Faith carries the load.

This much I know: Despite the deficiencies of my imagination, there is a real Jesus. He lived and walked among us.  And He was known in the flesh by a cloud of witnesses,.  They have left their witness to us that we, too, may know Him.

Jesus taught, and He healed, and He suffered and died. He rose from the dead, and He sits in Glory at the right hand of the Father.

He brought the Kingdom of Heaven within reach of everyone. And the Holy Spirit, the Comforter He promised us, has been at work within the company of Saints since the day of Pentecost.

What Child is this?

He is Jesus, the Word made flesh. His days as the Word incarnate are like the narrow neck of an hourglass. All time and events flowed to converge at His birth, and all history since has flowed outwards from His resurrection.  History has taken shape and direction from the Word by Whom all things were made.

Frankly, my imagination is just not good enough to encompass all this majesty and mystery and glory.

Oh, I try. But the truth is, I am limited in my understanding and experience by this flesh that I inhabit.  I am also limited by the limitations of my intellect and the narrowness of my heart. As St. Paul wrote, “At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror.”   I try to remind myself of this regularly, lest I make an idol of my imaginary Jesus, an idol that I might be tempted to use to supplant the real Jesus.

The best way to do this is to continue to read and re-read the scripture.

Hear the words of John again:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

He was in the beginning with God.

All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be.  What came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

A man named John was sent from God.  He came for testimony, to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.  He was not the light, but came to testify to the light.  The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

He was in the world, and the world came to be through him, but the world did not know him.  He came to what was his own, but his own people did not accept him.

But to those who did accept him he gave power to become children of God, to those who believe in his name, who were born not by natural generation nor by human choice nor by a man’s decision but of God.

And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth.

John testified to him and cried out, saying, “This was he of whom I said, ‘The one who is coming after me ranks ahead of me because he existed before me.’”

From his fullness we have all received, grace in place of grace, because while the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.  No one has ever seen God. The only Son, God, who is at the Father’s side, has revealed him [John 1:1-18].

What Child is this?

He is the Word, made flesh: the Way and the Truth and the Life, who dwelt among us to make the Father known.

He is Jesus.

Really for real.