A Metaphor to Live By
by Acacia Danielson | @acacialikethetree
Anno Domini MMXX has revealed that the American nation and the global experiment have been one long page of Missed Connections. Somehow, in our fervor to become more and more connected, we have become less and less so. With familiar and formal relationships fraying under our fingertips through the schism-makers of politics and pandemics, faith and philosophies, it is easy to despair of ever understanding another human being again. For those with faith in Christ, however, we have a linguistic and a relational precedent that just might save our lives (and, in fact, already has).
The Gospel of John opens with a startling image that holds me in perpetual astonishment: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (1:14). John’s incarnational metaphor reveals a God who has and gives the power to make impossible connections. It’s not just that God chose incarnation to redeem the world. It’s that he inspired John to use a metaphor, and this metaphor in particular, to describe it. This is an astonishing literary and redemptive act. It creates two kinds of bonds: the linguistic bond of a metaphor, and the physical bond between speaker and utterance. And it is these bonds that make communication with God and one another feasible, making impossible connections between wildly different people.
A metaphor, by its very function, is a great equator. It brings together two extremely different things and declares, “You are now one.” It is a match-maker of sorts, leaving in its wake all kinds of impossible marriages: the world = a stage, eyes = windows to the soul, the Church = a bride, etc. In doing so, many of the attributes we associate with one “marriage partner” become associated with the other “marriage partner.” The men and women in this “stage-of-a-world” become “players,” and so forth. A metaphor, then, takes two diverse contexts and binds them together into an entirely new one.
The beginning of John’s gospel erupts with the most remarkable of all metaphors, one which proclaims a fusion like no other, either in literature or reality: Jesus Christ = The Word Made Flesh. The person of Jesus Christ binds the context of God with the context of humanity, the context of perfection with the context of fallenness, the context of eternity with the context of mortality, the context of love with the context of rebellion. Because John’s gospel is not fiction but divine revelation, this linguistic act literally makes it possible for us to draw near the throne of God through Christ. We are bound to God and God to us, and through God to one another.
The physical bond of the Word Made Flesh is no less important. A word is never just a “thing” on a page; it is a living vessel of meaning, memory, and relationship. We have become so accustomed to “seeing” words that we forget their intrinsically physical nature. Not only does spoken language require the motion and coordination of the mouth, throat, and body, but the very need for words arises from physical impulses and experiences. The next time you stub your toe, watch a puppy video, or swerve to avoid an erratic driver, think of this. Words are given and received by the body as sound waves travel across space and time, from one heart to another. God knows full well the imperative bodily-ness of the Word. He spoke creation into being, translated the dust of the earth into human flesh, told his story through the mouths of Middle Eastern nomads, and entered into humanity as the supreme act of communication itself: A Word Made Flesh. Normally, utterances, once they leave the body through either the voice or the pen, become detached from the utterer and the life which gave birth to them. They seem to die, waiting on a page for someone to recognize and resurrect in them the life they once had, the life they were made for. In the case of Christ, this disconnect, this death never occurs. God’s creative Word never becomes a mere utterance, devoid of life. The Ultimate Utterance of God, his undeniable “I AM,”, is eternally bound to flesh and blood. It is impossible for God to “ghost” or “troll” someone on the internet, to drop an inflammatory remark and then just disappear. He is what he says he is. He is fully present in everything he says because he is his own Word.
