God’s gifts to us at Christmas
It might seem similar time to wish everyone 'A Happy New year's day'. Only, contrary to our culture'south supposition that Christmas consists of the busyness of consumption and comes to both a climax and a total stop on Christmas Solar day, for Christians that is when Christmas starts, and we are still in the Christmas season—for another mean solar day at least. For many, Christmas is a magical time of lights and presents, food and family. But for others it is a very challenging time, when they are reminded more acutely than e'er how life is not as it might have been. For those recently bereaved, the empty chair at the Christmas dinner table is the hardest challenge of all. Information technology is the best of times; information technology is the worst of times.
The readings for this Sunday, Christmas 2 (John 1.10–18, Eph ane.iii–15), accept our focus away from our Christmases, and remind us of three gifts from God at Christmas.
Souvenir 1: Tabernacling
The reading from John starts with an extraordinary statement: 'He was in the globe.' The Give-and-take, who was with God and who was God, the one through whom the whole earth—the whole universe—came into being, emptied himself (Phil ii.7), and entered into the earth that originated in him. This is a mysterious and paradoxical inversion—what was in him, he has now entered. C Southward Lewis expresses this foreign contradiction in the words of Queen Lucy, in the final Narnia relate,The Final Battle:
In our earth there was in one case a stable which independent something bigger than the whole globe.
John goes on to express information technology in the climactic phrase 'The Word became flesh and dwelt amongst u.s..' The language he uses is of pitching tents (skenoo, from which we get our word 'scene', since tent cloth was used in theatres). The Word became flesh and pitched his tent amongst united states. Or, in the words of Eugene Petersen'sThe Message, he became flesh and blood and moved into our neighbourhood. For anyone familiar with the Exodus story, this will immediately recall God'southward journeying with his people through the desert on the way to the promised land. But it goes further. The writer Dorothy L Sayers put it like this:
The incarnation means that for whatever reason God chose to let us fall into a condition of being express, to endure, to be subject to sorrows and death—he has nonetheless had the honesty and the courage to take his own medicine… He himself has gone through the whole of human being feel—from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of hurting and humiliation, defeat, despair, and death… He was born in poverty and… suffered infinite pain—all for usa—and thought information technology well worth his while.
Perhaps the biggest challenge whatever of usa ever face is the challenge of being alone. When we face danger, or difficulty, or challenge and change, the question nosotros always come up back to is 'Will I face this alone?' But God'south pitching his tent with united states of america signals the stop of man loneliness. Zilch can at present separate us from the love of God, poured into our hearts by the Spirit of Jesus, who came to united states of america.
Of course, all this also makes remarkable claims near Jesus. This human private, with whom John has shared his life, with whom he has eaten and drunk, walked and sat, laughed and cried—this person is in fact 'who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father' (John i.xviii). Footnotes in our Bibles show how those copying John'south words struggled with the enormity of this merits—simply, John insists, it is truthful.
Souvenir Two: Transformation
When God pitches his tent amongst us, it is not just a passive presence, but one that makes all the difference. Here John seems to sum up Jesus' ministry as recorded in the other gospels. As he goes on his way, he comes across the sick, the lame, the blind, the lonely and the broken. Once he has gone on his fashion, people are left well, healed, seeing, restored and whole. As he passes by, it is impossible that nada should happen. Transformation follows on naturally from tabernacling.
Once again, C Southward Lewis helps us envisage this. In the movie version of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, as Aslan comes closely the snow quickly melts and the blossoming trees come up into bloom. One time he has arrived, what was a cold and barren landscape has turned into lush green.
I of the greatest miracles in nature is the process of metamorphosis that transforms a caterpillar into a butterfly. It is and so extraordinary that science nonetheless does not really understand how information technology works. The textile is the same—the cells of the caterpillar go the cells of the butterfly—only the way they are arranged is completely different. John uses similarly dramatic language of transformation. The result of God'southward tabernacling with us in Jesus is something akin to new nascence—although the 'stuff' of which nosotros are made is the same, information technology is as if nosotros begin a whole new life, born of God.
Paul says something like in the reading from Ephesians one. It is a very dense passage, hard to take in on first reading—simply precisely because of the dramatic and far-reaching modify that occurs when we come up to faith. We've been chosen, called to holiness, adopted, redeemed, forgiven, had grace lavished upon us, had mystery revealed to us, given wisdom and understanding, sealed with the Spirit—the list of 'all the blessings in the heavenly realm' goes on and on. It is as if Paul has rushed up to his Christmas tree and ripped open up all the enormous pile of presents at that place in one go! No wonder he talks, in similarly dramatic terms to John, of being 'a new creation' (2 Cor 5.17).
Aslope all this, our New year'due south resolutions await like rather feeble attempts to tinker with the details of our lives. What nosotros really demand is to live in this remarkable inheritance of truth about who nosotros now are in Christ.
Gift Three: Testimony
What happens when we experience the surprising presence, the tabernacling of God with the states? What happens when we start to feel the dramatic transformation that this brings? We are given a testimony to share. It is striking that, whenever John talks most the grace of God in his presence in Jesus, he talks nearly testimony. In case we have missed it starting time time around, he includes in this affiliate a 2-fold account of John the Baptist's testimony. And information technology is a theme which John returns to time and again. Jesus himself testifies; the Male parent testifies on his behalf; the woman past the well runs off to tell he neighbours all nigh Jesus; the man built-in blind testifies to those who would expel him…and so information technology goes on. John starts his letter of the alphabet with the same theme:
That which was from the beginning, which nosotros have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our easily have touched—this nosotros proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; nosotros have seen it and prove to it… (i John 1.one–two)
It is not hard to tell people about wonderful Christmas presents, if we are genuinely surprised and excited about them. It is not hard to gossip about gratuitous gifts or surprising generosity. Testimony is not a test or a technique, information technology is non similar toothpaste to be squeezed with effort from the cease of a reluctant tube. It is the overflow of grace nosotros have feel spilling over into the lives of those effectually us.
The challenge is that, as John tells u.s. from the start, testimony divides. The climax of John's account of testimony comes in Jesus' trial before Pilate; judgement must be made—sides must be taken. But this is true from the outset. 'He came to his own—and his own did not receive him.' In the immediate context, 'his own' here refers to his own, Jewish people. But if the low-cal of Jesus was the life 'of all people' (John one.4), so 'his ain' at present refers to all of humanity. All wer made in his image; all are loved by him to the extent that he sent his Son (John 3.16); all are sought out by him and offered grace upon grace.
Terminal weekend we were visiting friends in Poole, Dorset. We had been for a walk on the beach, and were walking back up the chine, the valley and stream that cut downwards through the cliffs. 1 family group had gone alee; the rest of u.s. were backside. But when they got to the auto, they realised 1 of the children, a 10-year-one-time, was missing. After 45 minutes of usa all frantically search upward and downward the valley, she was found condom and sound with a family who were concerned most her. Merely in that three-quarters of an hour, her parents faced were etched with the anxiety of searching for ane who was loved and lost, desperate that she should be found again. This is a small-scale glimpse into the searching love of God who 'came to his own.' Testimony is not but a gift to u.s.a., but a souvenir to all who come up to discover God'south love for themselves through the story of how nosotros ourselves were found.
(This is the outline of a sermon preached on Sunday 3rd January 2022 at St Barnabas, Lenton Abbey in Nottingham).
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