Christmas Day 2009 Year C
This reading from the very beginning of Saint John’s gospel is one of the best known Bible texts, and it is read at Christmas every year at some point. It is also one of the Bible’s most difficult and complex texts so you will be glad to know that we are not going to explore it in any depth today, although it could well be a good thing for us to do so at some time in the future.
Today is a time for celebration and feasting, for today we celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is a time for giving presents and receiving them, knowing that the greatest gift we can ever receive is the free gift of the Christ child. It is a far cry from the commercialisation of Christmas which is based on profit and gain. The gift of Jesus is completely free and graciously given.
Our Dominican brothers have again made a beautiful Crèche so that we can enter into the story of Christmas with greater ease. As we look we can see that all the characters are turned towards the baby Jesus; this most precious of all gifts. They gather round in wonder and awe at this amazing thing that has happened. After much expectant waiting Jesus is here at last.
We always gather around babies in wonder. They always come as precious gifts and they move us all in a very special way, but the birth of Jesus is even more wonderful than this. I myself was born on Christmas morning and for a few years I thought that Christmas was all about me until my mother gently took me on her knee and told me that, loved and important as I was, we were actually celebrating the birth of someone far greater than little me! I was very young, perhaps only 3 or 4 years old, but my mother’s words, for which I am eternally grateful, rang true in my heart.
I don’t remember the exact words she used, but she certainly didn’t use the prologue of John’s gospel which we have just heard! However, her words did teach me to look to Jesus for what is important.
What is important?
Jesus, the word, was with God and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God, and God created all things through him. Jesus is not created, Jesus is part of eternity. He was with God before the world began. Jesus then is like God. Jesus is “Emmanuel” God with us. So, firstly, Jesus is fully divine and John is saying that if we look to Jesus we can see what God is like.
Secondly Jesus is fully human. He is not just a person who has special spiritual gifts and not God who is parading in some sort of false human body. He is a real human being of flesh and blood and sinew, with feelings and hopes and disappointments, just like you and me. Jesus is fully human.
This tells us rather a lot about our God. He loves us so much that he becomes one of us. He comes to understand us, to share in our lives and to know in his heart and in his flesh our joys, frustrations and sorrows. He makes himself completely vulnerable.
Today we see God made vulnerable in the baby. All babies are vulnerable but Jesus was more vulnerable than many. He was born in the most distressing circumstances. Jesus, as we know, was born in a stable with the ox and the ass standing by. This has taken on a rather cosy, romantic tone over the hundreds of years, but in fact it was a dangerous, dirty and totally unhygienic place for a baby to be born. His bed was a feeding trough filled with hay. He was born into a Jewish family which had no rights and which was being pushed around by the Roman authorities. They had neither voice nor vote and they were treated like second class citizens. This is where God chose to come to us; amongst the powerless, and the marginalised. In his ministry we see him with the sick, the fragile, the tormented, the sinners and the outcasts. We see him walking around the countryside with no home, no security and he ends his life by dying on a cross.
This is what God is like. He comes into our lives as a real human being who understands us and meets us where we are. He comes in times of darkness, when we are struggling as youngsters to find our place in the world, he comes when relationships break down and we feel that the rug has been pulled from under our feet. He comes when we have lost a loved one and we can’t see how we can go on without them, or when, as we grow older, we lose the satisfaction and comfort of knowing our personal value. He comes when we are forced to flee our countries of birth, when we live under hostile rule and when we have no civil or religious rights.
Jesus comes and shows us how much he loves us and how much compassion he has for us.
In the darkness of his groaning creation he brings light to the world.
John, in his prologue says “What has come into being with him was life, and the life was the light of the people. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it”
Because Jesus is fully divine, the life he offers us is life with God. He invites us to be children of God. When we look to Jesus and believe in him, as Son of God and as saviour we are given life with a capital L. We enter into eternal life which has been won for us through the death and resurrection of Jesus. We enter into the very life of God.
In this Life there is no fear in the darkest moments of our lives because this Life that comes with Jesus, is the light of and for all people. Jesus is the light which guides us, which brings us out of darkness and into the glorious light of God. It is a light which banishes all distress and fear and which banishes all evil. It is a light which leads us in the paths of peace. It is the light which is Jesus; Jesus, the way, the truth and the life. In him we trust, in him we put our hope, in him we are saved from all forces of evil and brought into his eternal Kingdom of light.
As we gather around the crib to gaze with wonder at the newly born child, may God open our eyes and our hearts to see this little child as God with us, wholly divine. May God open our eyes and our hearts to know his love and compassion for us as we see the child of flesh and blood who is one with us. As we gather around the crib, let us know that through Jesus we share in the life of God. May we see the light, which is in this vulnerable child and which dispels all fear and darkness. Let us pray that we might follow the light and travel with Christ who is the light and so pass, with him, from complete vulnerability to the eternal life of the crucified, risen and glorified Lord.
I wish you a blessed Christmas and may his light fill your lives now and always,
Amen
25th December 2009 Christine Bloomfield
Anglican Churchn Strasbourg.
Isaiah 52.2-5a ; Psalm 98 ; Hebrews 1.1-4 ; John 1.1-14
