My Hebrew teacher began by telling me that the Hebrews spoke in images. He illustrated this by quoting a passage we are familiar with at Christmas: The Word was made flesh, and lived among us. (John 1,13). He told us that this was a colloquial translation but that in Hebrew it actually said that he set up his tent with us. It did not make sense until he explained that the Hebrews were a nomadic race and like all nomads they wanted to rest for the night at some water hole in the desert.
If there were others already camped at the water hole, they were fearful that the strangers might attack them or kill them, while they slept, and rob them. So trust was required of both parties who put up their tents and slept in the same spot. Likewise Christ in John’s Gospel is showing trust in the human race by becoming a man like us.
One Christmas this phrase became very vivid for me. I was helping a friend who was recently appointed pastor in a new church in Florida. We were busy that Christmas with some seven thousand people attending the five masses of Christmas. Each Mass began with a small child carrying the baby from the crib into the church and handing it to the Priest who placed it before the altar. The little girl I saw that Christmas morning might have been five years old and she was very assured as she swung the doll by one hand on her way to the altar. I became apprehensive that she would it and maybe break it. I began to dread the moment at the end of mass when she would take the doll back to the crib, probably with the same insouciance. Yet by the end of mass I was completely at peace and was reconciled even to her breaking it. After all, it was only a doll. As she walked with perfect poise out of the Church, again swinging the baby doll by the arm, I recalled the words of the Gospel … he lived among us/he set up his tent among us. He had given himself to us once again in the Christmas Eucharist that morning. He had placed himself into our hands in the confidence that we would receive him with love, just as he had given himself with love. After all, the Father had given his Son into our hands even when he was a helpless baby, and that was much more trusting than my allowing the little girl to swing the doll.