In Christmas, we are reminded of how God is in the world, how God is present through the Word. In the flesh and in the very fabric of the cosmos.
Finding Christ is already present
Christmas Day | John 1:1-14
The opening of John is a beautiful story of creation! As much as our Christmas Eve worship centers us on the very particular moment of Jesus’s birth, we come to Christmas morning to the shocking advent of Christ’s being with God in everything.
It’s like going from viewing the tiniest cell in a microscope to seeing the whole universe in one breath.
And John never disappoints us. The beauty returns constantly.
But I heard something new this time which really spoke to me. Hear this again:
“He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him.”
He was in the world.
Then the world was created through him.
And the world didn’t know that.
This is what we call a paradox. If he’s in the world, how can he create the world?
I don’t know! It’s mind-blowing!
Now take another step out. The greek here the translators use for “world” is closer to cosmos.
“He was in the cosmos, and the cosmos came into being through him; yet the cosmos did not know him.”
He’s in all of the created cosmos and he is the very vehicle for its creation.
Christ is in everything and Christ is the method of everything.
Dualing Minds
Our literal minds want to order this. Our figurative minds love it.
That’s the beauty of a paradox. They drive us crazy and make us laugh and want more. We struggle and part of us would be really unhappy if we ever solved it.
But this dualism is in our DNA.
The ancient Greeks were dualists. They saw everything in binary terms: good and evil, light and dark. Everything is ascribed intrinsic worth. Since the work of God is good, then the work of humanity must be bad.
So much of this thought has guided the western church from the very beginning.
But it wasn’t the only option. Nor was the supremacy representative of its quality of thought. Because its sense of dualism was confrontational. Everything is war. For their view to be right, “the other” must be wrong. The supremacy of Greek thought came not through a test of persuasion, but at the tip of the spear.
The other view that is also present in our Anglican DNA is Celtic spirituality. And the Celts were less dualistic and more complementary. It was governed more by God’s revelation through creation, rather than imposing their theology on creation.
So the Celts recognized God in dark and the light, both. God wasn’t absent from the darkness, nor was evil represented by darkness. God was present in both day and night.
All of the cosmos is God’s.
From the tears and wax that fall on this Bible to the mighty expanse of space — all of it is God’s.
So the Word is in the beginning and the vehicle of creation: the creator and the creation.
This is why Christmas isn’t just a sweet family moment.
It’s bigger and deeper and way more important than that.
And it’s why this change, of the Word coming into the cosmos /this way/, into a cosmos already filled by the Word, is so significant. It is God coming to us as one of us. And this is the greatest theological revolution in history.
The creator of the cosmos, who was always above and mightier and expansive than anyone came as a vulnerable baby.
We have gathered with other greedy and imperfect people to share in something that is much bigger than us, something much more important than us. The thing we hope and pray for: the very transformation of the world that comes in the incarnation. That’s what Christmas is.
God has come to heal the cosmos. To transform the cosmos. To redeem the cosmos.
All of the hopes of the people of this very planet rest on the shoulders of a baby lying in a manger.
But why?
Hope
Alexander Shaia says that the problem we have with hope is that it’s always focused on the future. As opposed to our faith and lives, which are in the now.
I think he’s only half-right.
When we talk about hope, yes we’re often talking about it as the unrealized future. But Christian hope is different than that. Christian hope is Luke’s birth story and John’s creation story. It’s celebrating now, trusting now, living and sharing and believing now knowing that God has plans for the future.
Christian hope is acknowledging that there is a future, acknowledging what is happening, knowing who this baby would become, knowing who this Christ is, who this Christ will be, who this Christ continues to show itself as. As the Christ-infused and Christ-shaped creation!
It’s Mary singing the Magnificat because she knows now what God will do. She trusts now because of who God is. She sings now because the story isn’t only the Advent of Christ but the Incarnate one, living and breathing and bursting into the world.
In the Incarnation, we receive this kind of hope, an ever-present hope, an ever-present longing and trusting and giving that sense of urgency for the now.
Now is the time!
It took me time to learn and discover how beautiful that hope is, how much our faith is like that anticipation, that present, spine-tingling excitement for what is happening in the moment, what it is we’re truly longing to see. How each part of the Christmas experience was another opportunity to love and share and be with these people.
I longed for that moment and began to live in that moment. And what struck me was how much I was in it until it was over. I was in it as long as “it” was present. Disappointment only struck when I was trying to figure out and evaluate and compare and determine what to do next and how much this thing was really worth to me.
It came when I was focused on the game of it all, the comparisons and the evaluations. When I’m deciding whether or not they’re happy enough or I’m happy enough or whether or not I had gotten enough stuff to devour. My hunger came after eating.
It came when I stopped being present!
This is the hope of the Incarnation.
The Incarnation is. And it promises it will be. It isn’t future-tense. Or past-tense. It isn’t what happened once 2000 years ago. And isn’t only sometime in the future. The Incarnation is and we live in all of these moments: the pins and needles and dread and excited and worried and concerned and happy and joyous and loving. All of it alive!
We aren’t trapped or stuck or waiting in a lockbox for some future saving. We are free now.
Nor do we abandon our hope for a crass realism of the pessimistic present. Because we are free now.
Christian hope is both now and then. Christian hope is the present. It is our trust. It is the hope that comes when we realize God is with us now. God is in the very fabric of the cosmos, loving and sharing and inviting us into all of this. Let us join those choirs of angels singing praises.
May we and all those we love know that hope, know that love, and find that peace in Christ. Amen.