telling the story ~ the Word became flesh
Composition version: yes.
lyrics
the Word became flesh
the Word became blood
the Word became flesh
the Word who was God:
took on our weakness
bridged our divisions
touched our uncleanness
offered forgiveness
the kingdom is among you
God's own fingertips
the kingdom is among you
the Word is on your lips
the Word became flesh
strength became weak
the Word became flesh
the Word became speech:
speech to our silence
light to our darkness
peace to our violence
heart to the heartless
the Word became flesh
the Word became blood
to baptize this flesh
with the Spirit of God
the Word becomes flesh
the Word becomes blood
God joins to man
so man joins to God
back from a precipice
calling this house of war
building a house of peace
building a house of prayer
speech to our silence....
the Word became flesh
the Word became blood
the Word became flesh
the Word who was God
the Word became flesh
for this flesh and blood
blood
I smell blood....
narrative
the baptizer
Sometime in the years now known in the West as the 20s A.D., a priest named John went out into the wilderness of Judea and began to preach and baptize. When we say "preach," we aren't so much referring to devotional messages, but to a public proclamation. Israel's God sent John as His messenger (prophet) to prepare His people for the Messiah.
Because the Messiah was a King, His task would be one of judgment. And because God's people were (as usual) struggling with "the flesh," God sent John as an advance force of preparation. John was to call the people to "repent," meaning to turn from their ways and become renewed in their commitment to God. As a promise of cleansing to His people, God had John baptize them, just as the law had baptismal rites that were part of the process of moving from uncleanness to cleanness. Baptism is a route into eligibilty for fellowship with God, and as it turns out, there was a special urgency for that eligibility.
the Messiah arrives
The wait was finally over, but that doesn't mean that it was completely expected. Because the Messiah did not look entirely like what most people figured He should look like.
The Messiah's anointing was almost surreptitious in a way. Under the law, priests were anointed after a ritual washing (a "baptism"). It is likely that kings underwent a baptism prior to their anointing, as well.
While Israel was being baptized "for repentance," Jesus of Nazareth came to John and was also baptized. But something else happened: when the baptism had occurred, God's Holy Spirit descended upon Him in the visible form of a dove. This was, quite literally, a directly divine anointing. Jesus was now the anointed one, chosen by God Himself.
But there is more to the biblical story, as the Gospels tell us both directly and indirectly. This Jesus is a man, and fully a man, yet He is also "the Word become flesh." He is God in person. And that is why John's baptism is so significant: if God Himself is present in person, it is especially important that people be eligible to meet with Him.
The Gospels, however, are not technical discussions about Jesus' divine nature. He was the Word, but startlingly, He was the Word become flesh. That language is very pointedly chosen, and brings us face to face with the paradox. The people of God were flesh, weakly human, and that was the problem. But when God sends His Word-Messiah to rescue them, His anointed one becomes flesh for Himself. He enters fully into the very weakness that had been such a problem for God's people for so long.
the Messiah acts
But it is not simply the divine-human union in Christ's Person that is so striking and unexpected, although who Christ is shapes what He does.
The Messiah ("Christ" in Greek) was to be a triumphant king. Most of God's people were therefore expecting that he would be a military leader like David and earlier kings who had provided great rescues for Israel. Given their own context, they thought of the Messiah as one who would bring them out from under the shadow of the Romans and into a time of unprecedented prosperity.
But we have already noted that there was a problem: how could God act in such vindication when His people were so unfaithful? The promise seemed to be between a rock and a hard place.
Into the ambiguity of such a situation, Jesus came. And no, He did not rise up against the Romans.
The truth is that Jesus' first calling was to be Israel's own representative, to be the faithful Israel that the people as a whole had failed to be. This is part of the reason why it is so important that the Word became flesh. The promised arrival of God in rescue could not simply be imposed from outside. For God to be true to His own Word of promise and warning, Israel needed to be His faithful covenant partner. When the Messiah became flesh, and then was anointed as Israel's representative, He took upon Himself the task of being God's Righteous One - the one truly faithful to the covenant relationship which had been so defiled and despoiled.
Back behind even that, Jesus had become another Adam. He was the "Son of Man." Just as God had promised to bring healing to the world's ills through Abraham, here the route toward that goal has arrived. A new representative head will be tested and prevail where Adam failed.
That is why Jesus emerges from His baptismal anointing at the Jordan and heads directly into the wilderness - to be tempted by Satan. Where Adam failed in the face of temptation in the Garden, Jesus faces down the same tempter again, but now in the wilderness into which Adam's children have been cast. As Satan tempted Adam and Eve with fruit, he tempts Jesus with bread. As Satan tempted Adam and Eve with lordship ("you will be like God, knowing good and evil"), he tempts Jesus with the promise of rule over the whole world, if only Jesus will serve him. And whereas Adam put God to the test by letting his wife eat, Satan calls upon Jesus to test God by throwing Himself down from a high place.
But in each case, the new Adam is not deterred. He is flesh, but He does not abandon the words of God as Adam did. He rests in the good path of His Father, even though He knows that being Israel's representative is going to be costly.
The price will be His life.
the enemy
The above helps illustrate why this Messiah did not rise up against the Romans. He had come to effect a more profound rescue. Romans comes and Romans go, but mankind's great enemy from the beginning has been "the Satan" - meaning, the adversary.
Thus the temptation in the wilderness was only the beginning of a costly warfare that this new Adam had to undergo. He had withstood the temptation, and thus overcome the Satan - but He had still done nothing to overcome the curse of death that had fallen upon the children of Adam. More on that in a moment.
The relationship to the Romans was not irrelevant to Jesus' program. The truth is that He saw that hatred of the Romans, a tendency to violence and revolution, was just the opposite that many of His contemporaries thought it was. This was the road to destruction, not to liberation. Besides, as the new Adam, Jesus' ultimate goal was to bring healing, not only to His kinsmen, but also to the world - the world of the Romans and their provincials, and the world beyond.
And so a great part of Jesus' program was taken up with reordering things. He called upon people to see with new eyes. Who was "in" and who was "out" no longer had to do with Israel versus everyone else; nor did it even have to do with who were the best defenders of the law of Moses. He had come to do nothing less than remake the world, and this new world was going to be redefined around Himself as the new Adam, and around His triumph.
But. . .
What would that triumph be?