Flesh Becomes Word (ATW)
FLESH BECOMES WORD
Words are inadequate, we say. So they often are. But they are nonetheless precious. “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver.” In a time of crisis we learn how intensely we need both flesh and word. We cannot do well without either one. The bodily presence of people we love is greatly comforting, and their silent companionship blesses us. “I know I can’t say anything that will help, but I wanted to come,” someone says, and the word they would like to speak is spoken by their coming. Those who can’t come send, instead of their presence, word. A letter comes, often beginning, “I don’t know what to say,” but it is an expression, however inadequate, of the person himself and what he feels toward us.
Before Eve heard the voice of the serpent summoning her to the worst possibility of her being, before Adam heard the voice of God summoning him to his best, the Word was. The Word was at the beginning of things, the Word was with God, the Word was God. That Word became visible in the flesh when the man Christ came to earth. Man saw Him, talked with Him, learned from Him, and when His flesh was glorified and He returned once more to His Father, men declared what they had seen. “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life. . . we proclaim also to you” (I John 1:1, 3 RSV). That eternal Word had become flesh, and through those who knew Christ that flesh had become once more Word. Those who hear that Word today and believe it begin to live it, and again it becomes flesh.