Twenty Ninth Of Year C
October 2007
The reception class teacher was observing her classroom of children while they were drawing. She would occasionally walk around to see each child's work. As she got to one little girl who was working diligently, she asked what the drawing was.
The girl replied, 'I'm drawing God.'
The teacher paused and said, 'But no one knows what God looks like.'
Without missing a beat, or looking up from her drawing, the girl replied, 'they will in a minute.'
The theme today is about the Bible and the use we make of it. The Bible is the Word of God. We human beings use words to explain what we think, to explain what we want, to explain what we are. Words alone cannot fully explain these things and are often misunderstood by the listeners. In the Old Testament we have God the Creator speaking to us through His relationship with the Israelites and their relationship with Him. We read about this relationship in the first part of the Bible -the Old Testament. Since spoken or written words are so inadequate and so prone to misunderstanding, God decided that more was necessary. So God's 'Word became flesh and dwelt among us.'
God the Creator became a human being called Jesus of Nazareth so that there would be no confusion as to what God is like and what sort of a relationship God wants with us. Later the people who knew Jesus of Nazareth, and the people who knew the people who knew Jesus of Nazareth, wrote down what they understood about Jesus of Nazareth. That is what we read in the New Testament.
Like the little girl who was trying to draw a picture of God, each book in the New Testament is an effort to explain how God's Word became flesh, what the Word was like, and what the Word's relationship was with the people who knew Him.
One aspect of the Resurrection is that Jesus of Nazareth, the ‘Word Made Flesh' still lives among us. This allows me to 'flesh out' my understanding of God with a personal relationship with 'The Word made Flesh' who dwells in me. Reading the Bible is reading the 'Word of God.' Prayer is chatting with the 'Word made Flesh' who lives with me and in me.