John 1:10-14
Not Going to Fit

He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth.

New Revised Standard Version

My wife likes to tease me about a pattern in our family when we travel. We all pack our luggage and all the other gear we want to take with us, then carry it out to the garage. At that point, I look at the stack of supplies, and the space available in our vehicle to carry it, and start to mutter about how this simply was not going to fit. The more I wrestle with bulky items and cramped storage space, the louder my fussing gets, until, somehow, it all does fit and I am forced to laugh at my pessimism.

When God sent Jesus to be born into the world as a human baby, we might speculate there were angels muttering among themselves about how the Word becoming flesh just wouldn't fit, too. All through the birth stories are surprises and contradictions, from the pregnancies of a virgin and her very old cousin, to a king born to peasants in a barn, to the angels announcing the miracle to "unclean" shepherds, to the ignorance of the Jewish priests exposed by the wisdom of the Magi. None of those situations seemed to fit, and on it would go through the life of Jesus. Even though the prophets foretold the Messiah in just the ways that Jesus lived, so many people couldn't believe that Jesus was God's Son, and those who did believe were poor, disconnected, and powerless, with no influence on the political or religious power centers of their day.

Of course, the inevitable happened to this leader of a throng of outcasts. The authorities grew tired of his inappropriate behavior and arranged to have him executed. There is no doubt Jesus was not the first to be conveniently eliminated as a bother to the ruling powers of Palestine--but he was the only one to come back to life!

Jesus did not fit with the conventional wisdom of the religious leaders. Jesus did not fit with the self-centered, power-hungry, sinful behavior of those who were privileged, or who sought to be privileged, in that society at that time. Jesus did not fit in any way with human nature that has set aside obedience to God for more convenient or practical ways. Our muttering angels would have been right in so many ways, but wrong in the most fundamental way of all. Jesus ultimately did fit in the world, and completed the world that God created through his redeeming sacrifice and resurrection!

Instead, it is our sinful nature that does not fit. John calls this sinful condition the "world," because sin is so pervasive and appears to have completely infiltrated and desecrated the creation that God made and called "good." But John also tells us the world is not as all-consuming as it appears to be. We do have a choice to walk in this world but not be a part of this world, just as Jesus did. And when we do, we will find that, in God's grace and power, we will fit in God's perfect plan after all.