My Scattered Advent Thoughts

“Veiled in flesh, the Godhead see.” This one line from Hark! The Herald Angels Sing has me in a state of great excitement this Advent season.

“Veiled in flesh.”

I’ve been thinking a lot this year about the story of Christmas. Anyone who knows me well knows that I love stories. I love to read them, watch them, think about them, imagine myself writing them (and doing it well!), tell them, listen to them, etc. And this advent season, like never before, this love for stories is carrying over to include the Christmas story. I simply cannot seem to get enough of it! I’ve read it, as it appears in each of the gospels, several times and in several different translations. Right now I’m mostly camping out in the New Living Translation because it seems to be capturing the essence of the story the best for me.
The reason that this story has so thoroughly captivated my imagination this year is because of a line from the first chapter of John which says “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” Emmanuel does after all, as the prophet reminds us, mean “God is with us.” This fact is the real reason that Christmas has ever been celebrated. It is the reason that we have this season of expectation called Advent. It is all because we celebrate that this God that we worship is not a god of the ivory tower but is one that truly put on flesh and dwelt among us, even, or perhaps especially, in a world so filled with hate and suffering and injustice and evil. If this fact is not true then we have no gospel. Good news of great joy for all of the people, indeed.
And it is this time of year, the expectation of Advent and the culmination of the celebration of Christmas day that the Church has set aside each year to remember, and to reflect on, the story. Because, for whatever else we make this season about—mass consumption, gluttony, office holiday parties, a jolly man in red—the true essence of the season is still captured by the words of an old Christmas hymn:

Veiled in flesh, the Godhead see,
Hail the incarnate deity,
Pleased as human with humans to dwell,
Jesus, our Emmanuel (God with us).