THE WORD MADE FLESH

REFLECTION

I was asked by a pastor friend if I could come up with a hymn based on the prologue to John’s Gospel to accompany a sermon series at his church. This is the result. It is inspired from the first fourteen verses, and should sound familiar to most Bible-readers. While the words were already there in the Gospel for me, it was still a hard hymn to compose. John delves into one of the deepest theological mine shafts of all: the incarnation. How is it that the eternal Logos of God could become a finite man? How can God take on humanity and not lose His deity? It’s a mystery and a marvel. It’s make me think of Augustine’s line: “I can see the depths, I just can’t see the bottom.” The wonder of it all makes some people reject it outright, as even the opening of John’s Gospel attests! But this is where faith must come in. While we can’t know it all, we can still know Him. We must not reject this eternally-begotten Son of God who came into our world and walked in our flesh. We must gladly receive Him! “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (1:12-13). The hymn is set to a splendid new tune that evokes the wonder and transcendence of the incarnation (note for example, the downward shape of the melody when singing about “sent down from Heav’n above” or “both Son of God and man,” or “among our sinful race”), entitled appropriately LOGOS SARX (Greek for “Word” and “flesh”)