The First Sunday after Christmas, 2004
December 26, 2004
Christ Church, Covington

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… And the Word became flesh and lived among us… full of grace and truth” (Jo. 1:1, 14).

In the Middle Ages, our Gospel reading was considered almost magical. People believed that particular portions of the Bible were more “powerful” than others, and they wanted to hear them read. This sensibility became so exaggerated that people wouldn’t leave the Church after the Eucharist without hearing this Gospel before going! “Et verbum caro factum est” (“The Word was made flesh”) was considered powerful mojo, good for what ailed you. There are some other relicts of this sense of the power of Scripture and Liturgy: “Presto” is just a version of the Latin “praesto”, regularly used in prayer, meaning “perform” or “be outstanding”; while “hocus pocus” is simply a mangling of the words of Christ at the Eucharist, “Hoc est enim corpus meum”. Clergy were regularly accosted on the street and asked to read this Gospel aloud. “Give us some of that ‘verbum caro factum est’, Sir Priest!”, we might imagine our spiritual forbears saying, seeking blessing and the presence of God.

But before we start feeling superior to these dim and humorous medieval figures, with their superstitious, magical sense, we might just ask ourselves what of value is here. These folks had a sense of the power of a text to bring God close, and to shape and change their own lives for good. Do we have this sense? Language preserves the remnants of this understanding. The short Anglo-Saxon word “spell”, after all, had a double usage in referring not only to a powerful, almost magical, formula, but also as another word referring to the telling of a story. We have the remnant of this double usage in the way in which we “spell” a word or passage, and how on the other hand we become “spellbound”. The connection between “spelling” and falling under a “spell” is not readily apparent to any of us, but surely we know the enchantment that comes with a tale well told. We may no longer “spell” a story, but we know the spell a story can cast. Stories have a power to shape and change us, a power that was clearly felt by our spiritual forbears, who were spellbound by the Scriptural story.

So when we hear the Scriptures, we are encountering a story, the story of God’s relationship with us. It isn’t really enough to hear it; instead, we have to enter into it and acknowledge its power. To give them credit, this is what our spiritual forbears were doing. Will this story shape and change us? Our Gospel today gives the Christmas story in a poetic, formulaic fashion that lends itself well to being a spell of sorts, of casting a spell over us and leading us into the world of relationship with God. God made all things through his Word, and then this Word actually became human, so that we might become one with God. This story invites us to be shaped and changed; this story has power to enchant us and to make us a part of it in ways we can scarcely imagine.

We can’t imagine it, but God can. God is telling a story, a story so powerful that the author has actually taken flesh within it. Now that’s quite a story. Then again, the story is not simply about the Word made flesh, but a story that includes us as well. “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God”. That’s us, who by hearing it have also become part of the story.

This is powerful magic. God is “casting a spell”, telling a story, and you are part of it. What is your place in this story? What role are you playing? What is your character in the story God is telling? A clue: look for the ways in which you are being challenged, and comforted, most profoundly in your life; that is where God is most powerfully present, and the place where you will find the role that God has prepared for you.

The Rev’d John Bauerschmidt is Rector of Christ Church, Covington.

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