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Colossians 2:8-15
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See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him. (ESV)
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Plastic JesusDaniel the Prophet and the Three Young Men 17 December 2010
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Perhaps you've seen one of those plastic manger scenes that people put in their front yards during Advent. You know the kind, about half life-size, brightly colored, illuminated at night, and all with the lifelike joy of a cigar store Indian. The set includes sheep, a cow, the shepherds, three wise men, Mary and Joseph, all staring past the styrene Baby. These plastic figures are so light that a strong wind blows them down the street. This happened in our neighborhood in New Orleans some years ago, so that the householder had to bound down the street after the plastic baby Jesus scudding along before a strong wind. Unfortunately, the Christ of modern imagination is no more substantial than the styrene Jesus of the plastic manger scene. As soon as any tribulation comes or any crisis of the soul, the imaginary Jesus just blows away before the winds of trouble, scudding down the street in need of our rescue.
The Jesus born of Mary is not a hollow plastic saint, who comes to make a good scene, or fine appearances, but he takes our flesh and chooses to bear all its burdens for our sakes. His taking our true and substantial humanity frees our humanity from the corruption caused by sin. He needs not our rescue, but we His.
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Athanasius of Alexandria
"The Word did not simply will to become embodied, or will merely to appear. For if He willed merely to appear, He would have been able to effect His divine appearance by some other and higher means as well. But He takes a body of our kind, and not merely so, but from a spotless and stainless virgin, knowing not a man, a body clean and in very truth pure from intercourse of men. For being Himself mighty, and Maker of everything, He prepares the body in the Virgin as a temple unto Himself, and makes it His very own as an instrument, in it manifested, and in it dwelling.
"Thus taking from our bodies one of like nature, because all were under penalty of the corruption of death He gave it over to death in the stead of all, and offered it to the Father-doing this, moreover, of His loving-kindness, to the end that, first, all being held to have died in Him, the law involving the ruin of men might be undone (inasmuch as its power was fully spent in the Lord's body, and had no longer holding-ground against men, his peers), and that, second, whereas men had turned toward corruption, He might turn them again toward incorruption, and quicken them from death by the appropriation of His body and by the grace of the resurrection, banishing death from them like straw from the fire."
Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word of God, 8
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Prayer
O Lord, You bore our humanity, that You might rescue us from the corruption of sin and death and re-create us at Your second coming, so that raised by You, we might be like unto You. Amen.
For all those who are traveling for Christmas that their homecomings would be joyful
For all those who do not know God in the flesh, Jesus born of Mary and the freedom from the corruption of sin that He brings
For the military people who are deployed far from home, that the Lord would watch over them keeping them safe |
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Art: LEONARDO da Vinci Annunciation 1472-75
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 © Scott R. Murray, 2010
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