LifeLog – 12.07.05 – God Becomes a Man
“When the time had fully come,” – humanity’s defining moment – “God sent his Son, born of a woman … .”
“Born of a woman.”
At first you’re inclined to gloss over the phrase as you would a statement of the obvious. Aren’t we all? Born of a woman that is. But if we’ll pause for a moment to think about it the dramatic implications will hit us.
“God sent his Son, born of a woman.” Which comes first, “sent his Son,” or “born of a woman?” Is there a problem? Possibly there isn’t. We say related things often. “Joe Davis hired Bill Dawson, Harry’s Son.” So, it could be argued, all St Paul is telling us is that, “God sent his Son, Mary’s child.” The problem with the argument is that Paul didn’t say, “born to Mary.” He knew Mary. Why didn’t he acknowledge her? Because the relationship of “his Son,” to "woman" is the most important point here. “(H)is Son,” precedes “born of a woman.” St. John begins his biography of Jesus with the statement, “In the beginning was the Word.” (Before we’ve read very far into John’s biography we learn that “the Word,” is Jesus.) Jesus was “in the beginning”? The answer follows. “The Word was with God and the Word was God.” God’s Son, Christians believe, existed before he was “born of a woman.” He is the Second Person of the Trinity.” He is, his followers also believe, the Creator. He is the Word God spoke in every phase of Creation. With this understanding the idea implicit in the statement “born of a woman,” becomes, to many, preposterous. A pre-existent person – as distinct from a pre-existent spirit – was, at “humanity’s defining moment,” “born of a woman.” C.S. Lewis vividly describes what took place. In his work, Mere Christianity, Book IV, Chapter 5, he writes, “The Second Person in God, the Son, became human himself: was born into the world as an actual man – a real man of a particular height, with hair of a particular color, speaking a particular language, weighing so many pounds. The Eternal Being, who knows everything and who created the whole universe, became not only a man but (before that) a baby, and before that a fetus inside a woman’s body.”
“How could this be?” we ask. That was Mary’s question to the angel messenger who was promising that she was to be the “woman” who would bear God’s Son. “How will this be since I am a virgin?” The angel messenger’s answer, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you,” recalled the imagery of Creation. The same “Spirit of God” who “brooded over the abyss,” bringing life out of nothing would bring life to her womb. Lewis is once again insightful. In another work, Miracles, Chapter 14, pg. 142, he is speaking of what he calls a “normal act of generation,” a “momentum” which is the ongoing flow of things in the reproduction of life. He writes, “If we believe that God created Nature that momentum comes from Him. The human father is merely an instrument, a carrier … in a long line of carriers – a line that stretches back far beyond his ancestors into pre-human and pre-organic deserts of time, back to the creation of matter itself. That line is in God’s hand. It is the instrument by which He normally creates a man. For He is the reality behind both Genius – the Male in ancient mythology – and Venus – ancient mythology’s fertility goddess – no woman ever conceived a child, no mare a foal without Him. But once, and for a special purpose He dispensed with that long line which is His instrument; once His life-giving finger touched a woman without passing through the ages of interlocked events. Once the great glove of Nature was taken off His hand. His naked hand touched her. … That time he was creating not simply a man but the Man who was to be Himself: was creating Man anew: was beginning, at this divine and human point the New Creation of all things.” The “Son,” who is the “Word,” who is “in the beginning,” the Creator of all things; entered a woman and, in union with an ovum, became the embryonic form of the “Son of the Most High.” “Zoe,” and “bios” – terms Lewis uses to distinguish the “spiritual, heavenly/timeless,” life from the “temporal, time/space” life – unite in embryonic form in Mary’s womb and the “Son” becomes a “man.”
On the night of his birth the angel messenger told shepherds, the child “is Christ the Lord.” “Christ,” – Messiah, the “anointed,” the consummate man. “The Lord,” – the name reverent Jews used for God – the Sovereign God. Man and God; infinitely distinct and separate beings. But, in this Child, united; one: blasphemous to the religionists of his and every age, but luminous to those who hope for God’s personal intervention in human events. In prophecy and during his life he was given many other names: “Emmanuel,” “Son of God,” “Son of Man,” “Prince of Peace,” “Man of sorrows,” “Wonderful Counselor,” “Mighty God,” “Servant.”. In every case traces of the Divine and human blended and defined his unique person. He was and is the Supreme Sovereign. He was and is the Son of Man; the consummate human. As he grew and assumed the mission for which he had come his sovereignty was apparent in the authority of his teaching. That same authority was demonstrated in his mastery of nature; commanding wind and waves, demons and disease; creating in a moment bread and wine which, year after year, he’d been creating, each in its season, since the beginning of time. His humanity played out in his suffering. Called the “man of sorrows,” he “learned obedience,” we are told, “through the things that he suffered.” (See Hebrews 5:8.) Mysteriously it is his suffering that makes “hope” certain. “Unless a seed falls into the ground and dies,” Jesus said, “it remains a single seed. But if it dies it produces many seeds.” In his dieing and rising again he forever unmasks death revealing the plan, made before time, to bring out of the apparent demise of our race in death, the resurrection and new life that only he, “life” itself could accomplish.
For our purposes now it is his humanity that is “center stage.” This God/Man was “born of a woman.” In that same letter to First Century Hebrew Christians the significance of his human mother is explained. “Since the children are made of flesh and blood, it’s logical that the Savior – their rescuer – took on flesh and blood in order to rescue them by his death. By embracing death, taking it into himself, he destroyed the Devil’s hold on death and freed all who cower through life, scared to death of death.
It’s obvious, of course, that he didn’t go to all this trouble for angels. It was for people like us, children of Abraham. That’s why he had to enter into every detail of human life. Then, when he came before God as high priest to get rid of the people’s sins, he would have already experienced it all himself—all the pain, all the testing—and would be able to help where help was needed.” (See Hebrews 2:14 – 18.)
Out of human beginnings – “all the pain, all the testing" – this Son brings many sons back to their God and to a relationship in which the two, once again, become united. The Divine descends all the way to humanity’s lowest point – where we are – and dies so that we humans may ascend to the Divine.
Sometimes the meaning of such things can be experienced in fanciful stories kids like to hear over and over again. One such story, The Velveteen Rabbit, provides a glimpse of what it costs to give oneself to another for the other’s sake.
“The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.
“What is REAL?” asked the rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery wall, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”
“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but really loves you, then you become Real.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are REAL you don’t mind being hurt.”
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are REAL most of your hair has been loved off and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are REAL you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
The time came when the Velveteen Rabbit was given to the boy for a night. He became the boy’s chosen companion. Everything happened just as the Skin Horse said it would. “The little Rabbit grew very old and shabby.” His whiskers were rubbed off. The “pink lining to his ears turned grey, and his brown spots faded. He even began to lose his shape, and he scarcely looked like a rabbit anymore.” Then the unimaginable happened. The boy became very ill. The Rabbit, infected by the germs was thrown on a trash heap to be burned. That night as he was lying among the discards he wondered, “Of what use was it to … lose one’s beauty … if it all ended like this? And a tear, a real tear, trickled down his little shabby velvet nose and fell to the ground.” With that tear a miracle began and before the night was over the Velveteen Rabbit became truly “REAL”!
Hundreds of years before Jesus birth a Jewish Prophet, Isaiah, wrote about the suffering Servant who would be Israel’s hope. The imagery is a vivid portrayal of what being “born of a woman,” becoming human, would mean to “Christ.”
“There was nothing beautiful or majestic about his appearance, nothing to attract us to him. He was despised and rejected—a man of sorrows, acquainted with bitterest grief. … He was oppressed and treated harshly, yet he never said a word. He was led as a lamb to the slaughter … as a sheep is silent before the shearers, he did not open his mouth. From prison and trial they led him away to his death. But who among the people realized that he was dying for their sins—that he was suffering their punishment? He had done no wrong, and he never deceived anyone. But he was buried like a criminal; he was put in a rich man’s grave.
But it was the LORD’S good plan to crush him and fill him with grief. Yet when his life is made an offering for sin, he will have a multitude of children, many heirs. He will enjoy a long life, and the LORD’S plan will prosper in his hands. When he sees all that is accomplished by his anguish, he will be satisfied. … because of what he has experienced, my righteous servant will make it possible for many to be counted righteous, for he will bear all their sins. I will give him the honors of one who is mighty and great, because he exposed himself to death.” (See Isaiah 53: 2 – 12.)
