Month: December 2021

This New Year Embrace Hope

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Did you happen to notice that the Gospel chosen for New Year’s Eve is the Prologue to the Gospel according to John (John 1:1-18)? I hadn’t. Is this on purpose, or is it just the next Christmas-related scripture in line? These first 18 verses were added to this Gospel later, and placed before the traditional beginning where John the Baptist comes on the scene. These verses set the stage for the drama of Jesus’ life by inserting his life into a timeless, cosmic context. 

Jesus is identified as the Word of God that speaks creation into existence. God speaks. It happens. And it is all very good. Before any unfolding, or evolving, or developing. there was God, there was God’s Word. Then God speaks, and that is the beginning of all else, of all that will come. 

This adds to, and contrasts with, the stories of creation in the Book of Genesis. In Genesis, there is some primordial chaos, over which the Spirit of God, the breath of God, hovers. God says, “Let there be…,” and it happens. God brings forth order, and progressively introduces the principal pieces that we human beings recognize as created reality.

John points out that the Word, that takes on flesh in Jesus, has been part of everything since before the beginning. It is God’s Word, the divine, effective Word. This Word is the source of life, and manifests itself as light – which was the first outcome of creation.

This Word becomes flesh, moves in with us, and offers us a choice – the light of belief, or the darkness of unbelief.We can pretend, against all scientific evidence, that creation always was, or just randomly came about (lucky for us!). Or we can accept that God’s desire from before the beginning was that we have all that we need to live well, and to be well.

On the cusp of a new year, we are offered this wonderful message: God wants, and has always (as in eternally) wanted to manifest the fullness of divine love for all of us, for all creation – to the point of entering into creation and becoming one of us. No darkness, real or imagined, has ever, or can ever, overcome the light offered to us. This truth is the source of our hope. Welcome the New Year! May it be abundantly good and richly blessed for all!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Born to You this Day…

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“Every normal human birth is a miracle!” Fr. Graves, my college biology professor, would repeatedly exclaim. Think of all the cells, systems, chemical processes interacting and developing according to a pattern embedded in each and every component to bring an infant, alive, whole, well and able to the moment of birth. Life, from onset, is pure gift. Every newborn child is an embodiment of promise, waiting to be nurtured and formed in order to reveal its unique mission and contribution to humanity, to us.

Christmas Eve. We know the story – perhaps too well. Advent has done its best to prepare us, recalling to our mind Isaiah, John the Baptist, Mary, Joseph. God has acted. God is acting. God will act. It is God’s promise and God’s absolute fidelity that give us hope. But, do we realize, really, the love behind the Incarnation? 

God makes a home among us, within an occupied people and nation, in the home of a tradesman and a young maiden. If you were God, is this the matrix you would have chosen?  Not wealth, palatial estate, privilege, entitlement, every possible advantage of education, advancement and career path to success? What was God thinking?

Even this child’s name, Yeshua, is permeated with promise: God saves! Not with armies, force of power, manipulation of history, but through a tiny baby who is loved into fullness of humanity by us, ordinary folks. By being with us (Emmanuel), as one of us, God offers us a path to healing and liberation – the way of love. In Jesus, God saves.

 

The Santa Claus is Coming to Town god

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This festive time of the year brings with it at least one popular, yet disturbing, distorted image we might have of God. A popular Christmas song begins with a warning: You better watch out! Don’t show any of your true feelings (pout, cry shout), because Santa Claus is coming to town. This fantastical elf is all-seeing and is noting down everything about you. And, you will pay the price for any misbehavior. You are being weighed in the balance. Don’t you dare get caught lacking whatever level of comportment this Santa set as the bar for you to achieve.

This Santa is not far from an image of God that is derived from an exaggerated and literal interpretation of the Old Testament: God the ultimate Judge, ready (eager?) to punish any transgression, or to reward compliance with the law (as determined by the experts of the law). This ancient and inadequate image of God is a great tool for controlling the behavior of others, especially children – or the childlike. It relies on fear: fear of punishment, pain, banishment (excommunication), to force submission and to manage the masses.

But are we meant to grovel in fear before God? I don’t think so. Yes, God is just, and has turned the responsibility for judgment over to Jesus. Jesus is our brother, one like us in all things, except sin. He understands what we live, because he has shared our life – to the full, to the end. He gave himself over to us completely in love. We rejected his offer. He was raised from death, and continues to offer us his love. Our response, especially in how we treat the littlest and the least among us, is the basis for any judgment. We are totally loved. Freed from any divine expectations, we can become all that God fashioned us to be. How do we deal with this? Are we even aware of this? 

Bottom line! God is not some morality judge, police officer, or accountant. God desires that we know, in the depth of our being, how precious and beloved we are. God invites, coaxes, our response of love for one another. Jesus is willing to cut us all kinds of slack. He left us with only one commandment: love one another as I have loved you. This is much more challenging than trying to obey a set of rules that we humans have projected onto God. Give it all you’ve got! But we do need to continually allow God to transform us through love – the greatest power in the universe.