There’s a package under our Christmas tree which we still need to open. No, it’s not the latest Halo 4 video game. Nor is it the best cordless drill on the market. However, it is a mighty force, though it may not appear powerful. This parcel does not contain the best deal on dress boots from DSW, a diamond necklace from Jared’s, or Chanel perfume from Nordstrom. Its beauty is far beyond these things, though a first glance might indicate otherwise. It is not a book, in hardback or digital form. Nor is it a laptop able to connect you with the wonders of the world-wide web. Even so, this box is filled with the deepest wisdom known to humanity. It remains, nevertheless, hardly noticed amid the piles of crumpled wrapping paper.

              When we open this tiny bundle, we see that all it contains is a word: “Incarnation.” Just a word. What is so powerful about this word? How is it beautiful? Why so wise? It’s just a word.

              Incarnation. Literally, it means “in flesh,” as in “Word made flesh.” That is, “in human form,” just like you or me.

              Incarnation. Behind this word is a teaching which some have called the most central doctrine of our faith. To put it simply: the Incarnation is about Jesus, whom we believe was both fully God and fully a human being when he was born and placed in that manger so long ago.

              “Aha!,” you might say, “we’ve already unwrapped that gift. See, it’s sitting there up on the shelf, along with the other figures in our nativity set. We even have a tiny light above it that makes it shine in the dark, to remind us that this is the Son of God.”

              Of course, the manger set comes down at the same time the tree does, and is boxed away until next December. In similar fashion, the gift of the Incarnation lasts about as long, in many homes, as a battery operated toy.  All too soon it is forgotten. 

              And yet, it is a, if not the central teaching of the Christian faith. Powerful, beautiful, wise, and a paradox.... Paradox... A young child heard enough of a sermon one day to ask his father afterward, “What’s a ‘Pair of Ducks’?” “I’m not sure,” the Dad replied, “all I know is that the preacher talks about them whenever he’s flying higher than the rest of us.”

              Paradox... In his book, God Was in Christ, Scottish theologian D.M. Baillie called the Incarnation “the supreme paradox” (p. 106). He wrote, “the mystery of the Incarnation is the climax of all Christian paradoxes. They all point to it, and indeed they are all revealed by it” (p. 110). 

              Paradox. Webster’s dictionary defines a “Paradox” as “a statement that is seemingly contradictory or opposed to common sense and yet is perhaps true.” According to this definition, to say that Jesus was fully God and fully human is a paradox. When you think about it, it just doesn’t make much sense. Even so, we believe it is true.

              “God sent his only son,” that favorite scripture verse from John’s gospel begins. But words are inadequate when describing the Incarnation. Jesus Christ is not to God what my two sons are to me. Tyler and Mitchell look a bit like me, they carry a genetic code derived, in part, from my family tree, some of their behavior has been learned from my own, though they or I may not want to admit it at times. But my sons are their own persons, and as time has gone by they have grown separate from me. They are not replicas of Peter Haynes.

              To say that Jesus is God’s son is different from saying that Tyler and Mitchell are my sons. The meaning is much deeper. The apostle Paul once wrote “in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” (Colossians 1:19). That’s more than genetics or learned behavior. Somehow, someway, all that God was, is, and will be is contained in Christ Jesus. He is God. When we look at that manger, we are seeing God in human form. It doesn’t quite make sense, but it’s true. It’s a paradox.

              John’s gospel begins with a long, run‑on sentence that also doesn’t quite make sense, but it’s one of the most profound statements about Christ found in the Bible. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God...” “With” implies “side by side.” “Was” suggests “same as.” The two don’t seem to fit together, and yet, strangely, they do. God and this Word that became flesh and lived among us are both “side by side” and “the same.” It doesn’t quite make sense, but it’s true. It’s a paradox.

              That’s only part of the paradox of the Incarnation, however. Jesus was/is fully God. He was also fully a man, a human being. The book of Hebrews speaks of how God in Jesus “became like (us) in every respect” (2:17), knowing the “weakness” of our existence, experiencing “in every respect” the same “testing” that we do daily, without giving in to it (4:15, 2:18). The apostle Paul wrote that Christ Jesus, “though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in human likeness” (Philippians 2:6‑7). Jesus Christ was fully a human being. This also is a paradox, it doesn’t seem to make much sense, and yet it’s true.

              Put together these two inexplicable mysteries of the Incarnation, that this newborn baby was fully God, and that he also was fully human, and you’ve got the Supreme paradox of our Christian faith. This combined statement of faith is what sets us apart from every other religion on this earth. Every heresy within the church down through the ages has sought to emphasize one side of this paradox over the other. But they fit together ‑ beyond common sense and ordinary reason.

              Paradox. What is a “Pair of Ducks?” When we reach the end of our ability to understand, we look up and fly with the wings of faith over life’s strange and new terrain. To grow in faith is to accept its paradoxes, and trust that what does not make sense in the realm of God, can be true.

              Consider the paradox of Grace. This doctrine suggests that all the good within us, everything we manage to do right, flows from God, not from our own innate goodness or right‑ness. This Grace is amazing, we sing, in how it happens through our relationship with God in Christ. We admit that once we were blind to the best of what God calls us to be, lost in our inability to live up to God’s commandments. But God’s grace finds us, or we discover him (whichever), and God gives us the ability to live rightly.