Incarnation
Summer Sermon Series 3/7: Incarnation
Sermon Preached by Rev’d Ross Meikle
Sunday 10 August 2025
This is part of a sermon series working our way through the Nicene Creed, but it will not be about the Nicene Creed. I refer you to my colleague’s preceding sermons which cover the detail of the Council of Nicaea in detail. This sermon will be about the Incarnation of God in Jesus.
We will go into greater depth on a Zoom call tomorrow evening, and explore why the Incarnation matters to each of us and our faith. Details in the Notice Sheet.
Now… let’s get in the mood for talking about the Incarnation – the moment the Word became flesh.
Once in royal David’s city in the bleak midwinter it was a silent night, holy night, the stars are brightly shining, it is the night of our dear Saviour’s birth. There is a little donkey on a dusty road, the cattle are lowing, shepherds watch their flocks by night and three kings of Orient are bearing gifts. O come! All you faithful! Hark – the herald angels sing! Deck the halls with boughs of holly. In the little town of Bethlehem, see him lying in a bed of straw, a draughty stable with an open door and we all want some figgy pudding and a partridge in a pear tree. Fa-lalalala-lala-la-la.
The Quest for the Historical Jesus
In my early twenties, I was introduced to the quest for the historical Jesus – and it was primarily through new insights into the Christmas story that have been missed either by translation choices, unfounded assumptions, or an implied context that doesn’t occur to us.
A translation choice, for example: the Greek word often translated as ‘inn’ may be better translated as ‘upper room’.
An unfounded assumption would be that there are three wise men, when Scripture only ever identifies three gifts.
An implied context that doesn’t occur to us is that the stable is not a cold out-house, but the lower level of the open plan house where bringing in the animals at night supplies your heat source for the cold night.
Then I actually read and understood that the traditional Nativity is a mash-up of only two Gospels – bringing together shepherds, kings, angels and animals on one holy night! All this together dramatically affected my imagination of the birth of Jesus – and in turn, changes some of the theology.
Instead of a rowdy B&B not making room for Mary in labour, we have a house so full of people that the best place for Mary to have the space and privacy that she needs to give birth is in the stable. Therefore, Jesus does not become born in a cold and draughty stable but into a house full of life and the stuff of creation.
So the Quest for the Historical Jesus had been helpful for me in dispelling myths, discovering the world in which the Incarnate Word walked, and helping me to know Jesus better.
Anthropology and Genetics can teach us what Jesus likely looked like – his height, the colour of his skin.
Political History can teach us about the Roman occupation, and the oppression that Jesus, his family and his disciples will have grown up experiencing.
Biology and Horticulture teaches us about fig trees and why Jesus may well have cursed one in what may seem a particularly strange story.
This multi-disciplinary approach to Jesus can be both helpful and unhelpful.
Helpfully, we have been able to shed all kinds of myths and assumptions. Prominently, the image of Jesus as looking white and western. We can forget the meek and mild Jesus of Away in a Manger to discover the Jesus who spends time making a three-cord whip to drive corruption out of the temple.
Indeed, a lot of this learning helps a lot of non-Christians relate to Jesus as a person, a teacher, an activist for justice. It’s just his followers they have a problem with…!
But unhelpfully, we can end up making Jesus into our own image instead… Politically, both the Socialist and the Tory may claim that Jesus is on their side.
And regarding identity, someone who is autistic or asexual may find in Scripture that Jesus shares similar behavioural patterns or characteristics with them.
And whilst that may be affirming for us and teaches us something about our own experience of being human and being loved by God… we begin to go beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus and make it more about ourselves.
The Quest for Historical Jesus is most effective when it helps us to allow Jesus to be more authentic to our lives today and our relationship with him in the present.
The Quest for the Present Jesus.
The poet Auden writes in his epic poem version of the Nativity: ‘we remember and anticipate, but never are’ in a series of deep reflections from the Wise Men as they follow the Star.
And Theresa of Avila wrote in her own poem in the 16th century: ‘Christ has no body now on earth but yours’ as she impels and challenges Christians in their life with Christ.
And though each of us may be called to specific vocations and tasks with the body of Christ’s church or within the world, each of us has the same baptismal calling to bear the light of Christ in the world.
We gather together as the Church – indeed as the body of Christ – and at Holy Communion, by our prayers and the action of the Holy Spirit, we bring Christ again into our midst as bread and wine become to us the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The Incarnation of the Word is not limited to the lifespan of the Man Jesus, but identified both Before Christ and in every Anno Domini since – in our eucharistic worship, but also in the work of the Church by all that we do that is motivated by Love.
A warning though comes from John Chrysostom: If you cannot find Christ in the beggar at the church door, you will not find Him in the chalice.
The challenge of the Incarnation is to recognise Christ in one another, and especially in this Present Age when we are hyper-aware and hyper-connected to each other at a global level in ways never seen before in human culture.
New empires rise. Old discriminations are rekindled. Violence and genocide and horrors strike the world.
It can be difficult to know how to make Christ known.
What can we do?
It takes us both into ourselves and our relationship with God, and back into the Quest for the Historical Jesus to the boy who escaped a slaughter of infants, was a refugee in a foreign land, who still preached peace and served his social enemies even under oppression.
And so we can know Jesus experienced that, and we are reminded that terrors and horrors of human behaviour are nothing new.
Yet it is one thing to know Jesus.
And another to follow him.
And where do we follow him?
The Quest for the Future Jesus.
For some, the whole point of being a Christian is about getting into Heaven. Or at the least, not going to Hell.
To me, that’s a terribly reductive way of approaching Christian discipleship.
But we have hope in a story of salvation that the Incarnation promises.
In the Incarnation, God lives with us and alongside us.
We have become informed of the Deep Love that shapes the world and loves us that we shape it around us too. The hope of the Book of Revelation that God will dwell with us to wipe away our tears and make all things new… That is a hope made real by the Incarnation. God has dwelt with us already, cried with us and given us cause for joy, and in the Resurrection made all things new.
God has revealed to us the Nature of God – Love, Mercy, Justice, Salvation – which God cannot abandon.
So we live every day with the Christmas Joy of the Incarnation in which our Quests for Historic, Present and Future Jesus are found… alongside the Advent Prayer: Maranatha, come Lord Jesus. And may he come quickly.
I wonder if the Christmas carols do tell it best after all:
Long lay the world in sin and error, pining: “O come to us, abide with us, Our Lord Emmanuel.”
A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices for yonder breaks a new glorious morn.
Hark…
… the herald angels sing… and we hear the Christmas angels the great glad tidings tell: “Glory to the newborn King”.
Our God, heaven cannot hold him, nor earth sustain. He came down to Earth from Heaven, him who is God and Lord of all. In the dark streets shineth the everlasting light – Son of God, Love’s pure light. God of God… Light of light… Very God, begotten not created. He lived on earth, our Saviour, holy.
Veiled in flesh the Godhead – see! Son of the Father, now in flesh appearing… Mild, He lays His Glory by. He is pleased as man with man to dwell. What tender love: Thus to come from highest bliss down to such a world as this.
Truly He taught us to love one another. His law is love and His gospel is peace. Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother, And in His name all oppression shall cease.
Light and life to all, He brings
Risen, with healing in His wings.
But man, at war with man, hears not the love song.
O hush the noise, men of strife, for lo! the days are hastening on when shall come the Age of Gold when peace shall over all the earth its ancient splendours fling.
And our eyes at last shall see him, through his own redeeming love, for that Child, so dear and gentle, is our Lord in Heaven above.
O holy Child of Bethlehem
Descend to us, we pray.
Cast out our sin and enter in
Be born in us today.
Amen.