The Verb of God

The Word became a human being and lived here with us (John 1:14, CEV).  It’s a beautiful truth for any time of year, but one that’s in the forefront as Christmas approaches. The Word existed in the beginning, John tells us, giving light and life to all. Then, so humans could become children of God, the Word entered our world.

Like most Christians, I’ve always found the passage to be a deeply meaningful meditation on Jesus. It sank deeper in me, though, when I first read it in the RVA version of my Spanish Bible. “En el principio era el Verbo . . . y aquel Verbo fue hecho carne,” I read. “In the beginning was the Verb . . . and that Verb was made flesh.”

Jesus was God’s Verb. I was so taken by the idea that I remember exactly where I was sitting when I read it. I was on a wooden pew in a church in Peru, on the right side and about halfway back, and when I read the passage I stopped hearing anything being said.

I’m not equipped to make a case for whether or not “Verb” is a good translation for “Logos,” the word used in the original language. Logos is evidently a complex term not easily translated into either English or Spanish. I just want to sit for a minute with the idea of Jesus as God’s Verb and let it trickle down and add new flavor to the Christmas story.

Verbs are action words. They’re more than being: they’re doing. You can’t have a sentence without one. Because he wanted to give us the right to become children of God, Jesus came. He took the noun of God’s love and made it a verb.

I think the idea has implications for how we experience Jesus and for how we reflect his character, too. It’s easy to get stuck in the “being” place. We’re new creatures. We’re reborn. We’re God’s children. That’s an immeasurable treasure, but maybe in some sense it’s not a full sentence. To follow the Verb of God means that being leads to doing.

As Christmas approaches, I hope we can not only reflect on the amazing truth that Jesus entered our dirtied, hurting world for us, but on how we can follow his example of loving excluded people with our hands, feet, and voice as well as our heart. Do you know someone with a chronic illness or disability, for example, who could use some “verbing” from you? Meeting practical needs is a way to follow Jesus into the world. It’s a way to return love to the one who loved us so much that he became flesh.

The Christmas Lamb

We know the Christmas story. At least we think we do. Unfortunately, a lot of what we think we know isn’t actually in the Bible. The Bible doesn’t tell us, for instance, that there were three wise men. It only says there were at least three gifts. It doesn’t tell us that Mary rode on a donkey. It never mentions an innkeeper. When we think about the actual physical location of Jesus’s birth, it’s easy to picture some sort of barn-like structure behind an inn because that’s the way it’s usually portrayed on Christmas cards and in pageants and movies, but maybe our mental image needs to be tweaked.

Over the years I’ve heard various speculations about the structure that sheltered Jesus during his entry into the world. I learned that the word often translated as “inn” (“There was no room for them in the inn”) can also be translated as lodging place or guest room. One theory is that Mary and Joseph were staying in the home of extended family members, but that because the house was full, they stayed on the lower level, where animals were housed at night.

I think that’s an interesting theory, but a few years ago I stumbled on another one that I found even more interesting. It was evidently first proposed by Alfred Edersheim in a book called The Life and Times of Jesus The Messiah. Edersheim says that it was settled Jewish thought that the messiah would be born in Bethlehem. I think most of us are familiar with that belief, based on Micah 5:2. What we may be less familiar with is the related belief, based on Micah 4:8, that the messiah would be revealed from a place called Migdal Eder, also known as the “tower of the flock.”  Edersheim proposes that Jesus was actually born in the tower. Others believe that he was born nearby, perhaps in a cave.

So what exactly was this tower of the flock?  It was an ancient structure originally built as a lookout tower to protect the city from enemies. The Old Testament has many references to similar towers. These watchtowers became known as towers of the flock because shepherds used them to spot predators. The shepherds could also bring the ewes inside the towers to give birth, or they could bring them to nearby caves prepared for the purpose.

image.jpg

The Migdal Eder theory really starts to get interesting when we learn that the shepherds and sheep that grazed near and used the tower in Bethlehem weren’t just any shepherds and sheep. Edersheim says this: "This Migdal Edar was not the watchtower for the ordinary flocks that pastured on the barren sheep ground beyond Bethlehem, but it lay close to the town, on the road to Jerusalem. A passage from the Mishnah (Shekelim 7:4) leads to the conclusion that the flocks which pastured there were destined for Temple sacrifices."

Sheep destined for sacrifice needed to be tended carefully, because only lambs without flaws were acceptable. Some writers have said that when lambs were born, they were wrapped, or swaddled, in order to protect them from injury. Other writers say they can’t find evidence that occurred. Whether or not lambs were commonly swaddled at birth, they were bound in strips of cloth before they were sacrificed. If Jesus was born in or near Migdal Eder, perhaps he was wrapped in the swaddling bands used for the lambs being prepared to be offered as payment for sin.

I don’t know whether Jesus was born in the tower of the flock, a nearby cave, something like a modern barn, the bottom floor of a private home, or somewhere else entirely. I do really like the Migdal Eder theory, though, for two main reasons.

The first is that it answers the question of how the shepherds knew where to find Jesus, since the angels evidently didn’t give any more information other than that he was in Bethlehem, in a manger, and swaddled. Actually, the original language may not have said “a manger” at all, but “the manger.” Some have pointed out that in the original text, the Greek word “ho” (Strong’s G3588) is used, which is the definite article and should have been translated as “the” instead of “a.”  Perhaps when they heard the baby was in the manger, the shepherds knew exactly where to go.

The second reason I like the theory is simply that it makes complete logical sense for Jesus to be born where the sacrificial lambs were born. 1 Corinthians 5:7 tells us that “Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.” 1 Peter 1:18-19 says that “God paid a ransom to save you . . . . And it was not paid with mere gold or silver, which lose their value. It was the precious blood of Christ, the sinless, spotless Lamb of God.” It wasn’t an accident that Jesus was crucified at Passover. It wasn’t without significance that during his last meal, Jesus took a cup of wine and said “This is my blood . . . poured out as a sacrifice.” (Mark 14:23)

Arranging for Jesus to be born in or near the tower of the flock seems to me like something God would do. Wherever he was born, he was born for us, to pay the debt we couldn’t pay. Thank you, God, for your amazing plan. Thank you for the precious Christmas lamb.

 

 

The Singer

In celebration of Christmas, I thought I’d do something a little different this week and simply share one of my favorite retellings of the story. This is from The Singer by Calvin Miller.

The Father and his Troubadour sat down upon the outer rim of space. "And here, My Singer," said Earthmaker, "is the crown of all my endless skies—the green, brown sphere of all my hopes." He reached and took the round new planet down and held it to his ear. "They're crying, Troubadour," he said. "They cry so hopelessly." He gave the little ball unto his Son, who also held it by His ear.

"Year after weary year they all keep crying. They seem born to weep then die. Our new man taught them crying in the fall. It is a peaceless globe. Some are sincere in desperate desire to see her freed of her absurdity, but war is here. Men die in conflict, bathed in blood and greed." Then with his nail he scraped the atmosphere and both of them beheld the planet bleed.
***

Earthmaker set earth spinning on its way
And said, "Give me your vast infinity
My son; I'll wrap it in a bit of clay.
Then enter Terra microscopically
To love the little souls who weep away
Their lives." "I will," I said, "set Terra free."

And then I fell asleep and all awareness fled. I felt my very being shrinking down.
My vastness ebbed away. In dwindling dread,
All size decayed. The universe around
Drew back. I woke upon a tiny bed
Of straw in one of Terra's smaller towns.

And now the great reduction has begun: Earthmaker and his Troubadour are one.
And here's the new redeeming melody—
The only song that can set Terra free.

The Shrine of older days must be laid by. Mankind must see Earthmaker left the sky,
And he is with us. They must concede that I am he.
They must believe the Song or die.

Rachel’s Children

I, like the rest of the country, am grieving the lives lost in Connecticut yesterday. Every life is precious, and it's important not to overlook the adults who were killed. The murder of so many children, however, is what makes the event especially shocking and painful. Something inside us wants to cry out, "They're just children. They're innocent and vulnerable. And it's almost Christmas." In many ways, Christmas as we observe it in our culture is especially for the young among us, and the fact that the children killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School were denied the celebration their parents were preparing for them deepens the grief.

As I pondered that thought yesterday, I was struck by how incongruous it was. We rightly try to make Christmas celebrations full of joy, peace, and time spent with family, but the original Christmas story contained its fair share of grief, pain, and confusion. In fact, the original story involved parents who grieved for children — innocent, vulnerable children senselessly murdered because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

That part of the Christmas story isn't usually portrayed in our pageants or songs, but it's there in the Bible. Matthew 2 relates the story of King Herod's fear that the "newborn king" the wise men came to find would usurp him. When the men returned to their homes without informing Herod of the child's location, he became murderously angry. Verses 16 - 18 say,

Herod was furious when he realized that the wise men had outwitted him. He sent soldiers to kill all the boys in and around Bethlehem who were two years old and under, based on the wise men’s report of the star’s first appearance. Herod’s brutal action fulfilled what God had spoken through the prophet Jeremiah: "'A cry was heard in Ramah — weeping and great mourning. Rachel weeps for her children, refusing to be comforted, for they are dead."

Jesus escaped to Egypt, but other parents lost their children to the whims of a madman. There was a time in my life when I found that especially disturbing. It didn't seem right that God would spare His own child, but leave others to be murdered.

As I worked through those thoughts, however, I came to realize that God ultimately didn't save His child, and that the horrible story actually illustrates some deep truths about the message of Christmas. Christmas is about God coming to live with us here in this mess of a world and about preparing a sacrifice that would be offered to free us from the pain and consequences of sin on the earth. It's about Emmanuel, which means "God with us." He is with us here, in a world that often seems to make no sense. He is with us in a world where innocent children are brutally murdered. Yet, he won't leave us here. He came to prepare the way for a joyful eternity.

Those of us with chronic illnesses have had to learn that Christmas can't always be celebrated the way we would like it to be. We've learned that Christmas means finding the joy that is often hidden in pain. Even before becoming seriously ill, I had Christmas experiences that opened my eyes to the challenges the original Christmas story participants endured. Four times my husband and I moved during the Christmas season. Once I was "great with child." More recently, my chemical sensitivities have led me to sleep, not in a manger, but not in a conventional bed under a conventional roof, either. The experiences remind me that Joseph, Mary, and Jesus didn't live pain-free lives. They had very human experiences in a very challenging world.

I grieve for the children who lost their lives in Connecticut. I grieve for the children who lost their lives in Bethlehem. I grieve for the pain of this fallen world.

But I rejoice in Emmanuel. I rejoice that God Himself is with us. I rejoice that this world isn't all there is and that one day all will be made right. May we cling to Christ tightly this year and remember those truths.