John’s experience of Christ opened him to the reality of God that God is love. That love in turn generated in him a deeper and larger experience of Christ. John had a testimony of his intimate experience of Christ; ‘the Word which has existed since the beginning became one of us, and we have heard, we have seen with our own eyes, we have watched, and touched with our hands. Peter also says that they ate and drank with him after Jesus rose from the dead. It was not simply a feeling of people, disciples, or apostles that God lived in their midst in human flesh. The Word became one like us. If we truly believe that Jesus Christ had come in the flesh, we must meditate on what it means for him and us. He was a man of Nazareth, from where no good was expected. He was a carpenter’s son, he was called a drunkard and friend of sinners. He enjoyed friendship both with men and women, and was part of their celebrations. He felt the pain of poverty of a neglected poor family, he suffered the trauma of someone fleeing to save life, he felt hunger, his body got the smell of the leper after embracing him, he knew the taste of sweat, blood and tears. He understood the pain and humiliation of the woman bleeding, he felt the heaviness the paralytic suffered under the condemnation of the law and the general public. He could see the heaviness of the labeled ‘curse of God’ upon the childless and the widows.
He came in the flesh means that he also bore these sufferings, pain, and injustice that humans bear. See the importance he gave for healing, touch, body, bread… in his ministry, in his words. He came in the flesh means that it was not simply knowing in his mind, but he had these human realities in his flesh. If at all we truly believe that He came in the flesh, we would have overcome our hatred towards our human flesh and its limitations. We overlook that Christ lived and lives in this same human flesh that we tend to condemn. We know that ‘the sensuality, the lustful eyes, and the pride in possessions’ lie in our choices. Yet we place the blame on our body as an unwilled and unbearable burden. We have easy and empty spiritualities that enhance this attitude. Humanity is not crushed under sin as something out there, it is from the ill spirit created for others that we crush humanity. The very same people who despise human flesh commodify it, exploit, and project their attempt as transcending human limitations. These attempts, in fact, reinforce the sensuality, the lust of eyes and the pride in possessions. If we cannot see and experience God in the dust, in frail humanity, it is not the true spirit that is guiding us. Just as a field has the grace to produce its harvest, the good will of humans has the grace to produce the harvest of peace and joy. He came in the flesh to teach us to have compassion, mercy, kindness and love in the human flesh we have, to touch, to console, and to labour. It may be less noble and spiritual than thinking of greater things as eternality, infinity and perfection. But any such great enlightenment rejecting our human flesh is only a disoriented dream bypassing Christ. There is no kingdom of God for humankind in a super metaphysical spiritual world without the touch of the earth and the sacramentality of the human flesh.
It was in the setting of the arrest of John the Baptist that Jesus began his public ministry. But it was not death that filled his life. Life was in his flesh to cure all kinds of diseases and sickness among the people. Life in our human flesh must meet the helplessness of the poor, the neglected, people hated by holy reasons, those condemned, those who bear scars for standing for justice. Then we know that we are led by the true spirit, and we live by love, and that God is Love.
1Jn3:22-4:6 Mt 4:12-17, 23-25 Ref 1 Jn 1:1 Acts 10: 41
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