Travelers' Christmas Eve

The Travelers' Christmas Eve service is basically a sneak preview of the real thing for all of us transients who will be out of town on the 24th. This year, we had a good balance of rollicking and sedate carols from the hymn book, and I was just grateful we did not sing all 37 verses of Silent Night.

Our senior pastor decided to link Good Friday and Christmas Eve in his sermon, and he pretty much pulled out all the stops in stressing how different Christianity is from the Platonic idea that the divine is pure spirit, perfection, etc. as compared with the dirty, stinking, rotting flesh of mere mortals. He pointed out that the incarnation is the Word made flesh - the Word made meat, if you will. He noted that the word "incarnation" itself contains the root "carne" or "carnis" or something like that, which is - yes - meat.

So our pastor stressed the meat theme at length. Then he said he and his more delinquent friends at seminary, when they were thinking about the incarnation, referred to Jesus as ... (drum roll) ... God con carne.