God In Skin
“And the word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth…” “So the word of God became a human being and lived among us…” “And so God expressed himself in skin.”
December 16, 1979
A couple of weeks ago, the 1977 movie “Oh, God!” was shown on television. Singer John Denver is cast as an assistant manager of a supermarket who is approached by God. “God” is, strangely enough, played by veteran comedian George Burns. (Now, George Burns isn't exactly my idea of God. Maybe Charlton Heston or Orson Wells…) At any rate, God/Burns is dressed in the no-so-celestial splendor of a fishing hat, flannel shirt, and tennis shoes. He explains to Denver that he has to appear in a manner people can understand.
It takes Burns a lot of persuading to convince the market manager that he has really met God. In one scene Burns makes a cloud form and rain inside Denver’s car to demonstrate his powers. Finally, the assistant supermarket manager agrees to share the message God has given to him for the world. The message is: “I’m not dead; I’m still alive. I care very much about the world. And I have given you everything you need in the world to make your life work. So, get on with it.”
This unusual plot makes for a funny but human nature – and God nature – revealing movie. Lost people think Dever is a nut. Sadly, he loses his job. Religious leaders are not impressed but threatened by this amateur’s horning in on their stuff. They are infuriated that the son of a carpenter – oops excuse me – they are infuriated that a grocery store employee without theological training can presume to have more knowledge of God than they. A high-powered evangelist, who is a sort of combination Billy Graham-Ernest Angeley, takes Denver to court for slander. People in the movie were not ready for God to work through a supermarket employee.
Evidently, people in the real world are offended by this idea also. When the movie first came out in 1977, a convention of Southern Baptists which was meeting at the time went on record as being against the movie.
Believe it or not, I find this movie and the response to it very appropriate to the Advent Season. Advent originates from the Latin word meaning “to come to.” In Advent we reflect on the ways God comes to the world to let us know that He is alive, that He cares, and that He has indeed given us all the resources of creation for full living. Most notably in this Advent-Christmas season, we celebrate, as well as try to make sense of, God making an entry into the world through a poor, peasant woman with a baby born in a barn and cradled in a feeding trough. That birth happened in one of the missions of Podunks in the world called Bethlehem. And as you recall, people were then shocked, offended, and angered by this son of a carpenter presuming to tell them anything about God.
Having said all this about “Oh, God!”, I would like to say three things about the way God gets through to us in the world. And it’s not just my musing about a movie; it is also, I believe, scripturally sound and rings true from the way we experience life.
1) GOD COMES TO THE WORLD IN SKIN. He seldom uses lightning bolts, angels, or other various and assorted items of heavenly hocus-pocus. John says that God expressed his love and power for the world in the flesh of Jesus Christ. “The Word became flesh…” the sophisticated theological term for this faith is incarnation. It comes from the Latin word “carns - carnis” meaning “flesh” or “skin.”
God expressed himself in Jesus. God came into the world in skin, goosebumpy, pimply, skin. The very idea is shocking. It enraged the people in the movie. Some real people in the world now bristle at the idea. In fact, the earliest Christian heresy recorded in church history deals with this very scandal of God really coming alive in a human being’s body. These people were called Docetisists and they lived in the second century A.D. They believed in God and wanted to live by some of the teachings of Jesus. But they just could not accept that Jesus was really human. They taught that Jesus just “seemed” – that’s what Docetist means in Greek – he just seemed to be human. How in the world, they wondered, could a holy God get himself tangled up in the weaknesses and problems of human skin and kin on earth. Maybe, they didn’t want God getting that close because they didn’t want to get that close to the problems and hurts of other humans. Thank God, the church said “No” to the Docetists. God did come into the world in the real live Jesus who was made of the same skin stuff as the rest of us.
You see, what is at stake here has to do with where we find God in life. The New Testament proclaims that God doesn’t come to the world in the theatrics of the spectacular like an old Cecile B. DeMille movie, but in the everydayness of the ordinary. That’s crucial because you and I spend 99% of our lives in the everydayness of the ordinary. That’s where we live and if God doesn’t show his face there to excite our numbness and comfort our pain, then we might as well kiss the Christian faith business goodbye as a hopeless fairy tale.
2) GOD COMES TO YOU AND ME THROUGH THE SKIN OF OTHERS. It was not just back then with Jesus that God got his love and power to earth through human skin. The point of John’s Gospel, indeed, the whole Gospel, is that God always has and still gets his love to us through people. In our scripture reading today is the phrase that this son of God Jesus has that all of can be children of God – his incarnations in the world. Later in the Gospel, John has Jesus say that his followers will do even greater works than he. In truth, the reason I believe that God came alive in the life and skin of Jesus is because I have experienced his love getting through to me through people in the here and now.
As I wrote this sermon, I remembered something Alyce, our little girl, said when she was about 5. It was when it had just become undeniably apparent that not only were the hairs on my head numbered but the days remaining for those hairs were also numbered. And I wasn’t feeling so hot or humorous about it. I stooped down to tie her shoe, and as I did she giggled: “Ooh, you don’t have much hair up there.” I looked up quickly, and she hurriedly added, “That’s okay, I still love you.” That may not sound like a big deal to you, but that everyday, ordinary experience made me feel a lot better. Somehow, some way the experience of another human being loving me even when my head, body, or actions are very imperfect mysteriously connects me with a God who loves me in spite of my imperfections.
I don’t know where you are hurting right now. Maybe, it’s bothering you that you are a little pudgier or older than you want to be. Perhaps, you’re meaner or crankier than you really want to be. You may really be feeling guilty about something or feeling some fear about something. If you are to get any relief, I doubt it will happen on a mountaintop. It will more than likely happen by letting someone listen to you, hug you, and love you. Through the skin of other humans you may just find that God is not far away but very close to you. I find that God gets his power to me even through the memories of people who have believed in me, loved me, or said something special to me. Remember, look not for angels in the theatrics of the spectacular, look for God’s love getting to you through people in the everydayness of the ordinary.
3) GOD SHOWS HIS FACE IN THE LIFE OF OTHERS THROUGH YOUR SKIN AND MY SKIN. Last week, I learned of a plan of several women in our congregation. They discovered a woman in a local nursing home who has absolutely no relatives or visitors to come see her. Instead of going to see her once and giving her a few presents, they decided to visit her every other day for the twelve days before Christmas. A little tree was carried for the first visit, and another gift or two will be carried each day they go. Now, I don’t mean to be soupy or sentimental, but that old lady may just come to feel that God still cares about her and has not forgotten her because she experiences being cared for and remembered by these flesh and blood human women. One thing is certain, she nor anyone else will believe that God loves them and remembers them unless they experience it sometime in someone.
Mysteries abound here. One way to get at what I am trying to communicate is to think of God as the power and love coursing through the universe giving rise to and sustaining life. The miracle of incarnation, the miracle of God coming in skin, is that this love and power bubbles up into you and me to give to others. Indeed, God’s great universal powering love mystery and miracles don’t stop here. The chances are that as those women become God’s care in skin for that old lady we mentioned, the women will find God coming closer to them through that old woman. You see, the helpee sometimes does as much or more for the helper.
This is what Jesus was getting at in his parable of the last judgment in Matthew 25. “When did we see you hungry, naked, thirsty, Jesus?...When did we see you a stranger, sick, or in prison?” And the answer is: “What you do or don't do for the least person is as good as doing it or not doing it for me.” God gets his love to the weak through the skin of the strong to be sure. But even more mysteriously, Jesus says, God gets his love to the strong through the skin of the weak.
Most of us admire Mother Teresa who cares for sick and dying children and adults in her hospital in Calcutta, India. Shortly after she received the Nobel Peace Prize this year she was interviewed. She was asked how she was able to be around and touch all the pain-filled, miserable people day in and day out. She answered that when she looks at them she sees Christ. As God works through her skin, she sees her Lord in the diseased skin of her people. “The least of these…me.”
You know, it’s nice to be nice. It’s nice to give to charity, to give some of your leftovers to the church. It’s nice to be nice. It relieves a little guilt; it gives you a good reputation in the social set. It’s nice, but it isn’t Christian. Christians strive to feed the hungry, give chances to the kicked around, and hugs to the hurting because as we try to get God’s life and love to those people, they get his life and love to us. We need them as much as they need us. We may save their bodies, but they save our souls. The givers always gets better than he gives. It’s a mystery. It’s incarnation. It’s God coming through and to us in skin.
God comes to the world not only through the Christ child but through the child of God that you and I are. John Devner has a line in the movie which helps here. In the court scene he says that it is not only important that we believe in God but that we take seriously that God believes in us. God works through humans. He always has. He uses us to bring hugs, food, and chances to the world.
So, that God uses carpenter’s sons and grocery store assistant managers does not offend me. It gives me hope that he may come to my house and use me…and you.