In the light of Christmas Day, we can see a different side to Christmas. The part that we play in the big Jesus Event.
The Way of Love beyond our Christmases
Christmas Day | John 1:1-14
Long ago, the church, in its great wisdom, offered three Christmas services. But not like megachurches trying to get all the people in. There were three different services for Christmas and we were expected to attend them all.
In the first, on Christmas Eve, we would hear the lineage of Jesus: how he was descended from David, for sure. But Jesus’s lineage is enriched by feisty women and people who challenged the status quo. It is an image, not of power, but as an affront to earthly power.
Then, late on Christmas Eve night, we would hear of the birth and the shepherds flocking to the newborn king. That familiar story of hope, lowliness, and confounded expectations for the royal-born.
And then, Christmas morning, we would hear the introduction to John. The grand and beautiful articulation of all that is, all that will, and all that God will be doing through the person of Jesus.
It is a grand arc, and one that most of us could probably use in our lives now. One that perhaps we ought to put into our own future traditions.
In the Morning Light
I’m mindful of how different it is to come together on Christmas morning than the evening before. The festivity of the Christmas Eve service is often so grand, the emotional dams are full-to-bursting as we are in the midst of our Christmas traditions. Some spend days gathering with all of their family while others get started Christmas Eve night.
And then morning comes and we behold a different magic: in our homes, streets, and churches.
Do you feel it? Something different in the daylight, something different in the world.
Christmas Eve, we’re all about the birth, the baby, the child born to save the world. The next morning, I guess we just want to know how a baby is supposed to do that. How a baby born two thousand years ago is supposed to save us.
In the cold light of day, we get the warm light of John.
Starting in the beginning, he tells us that Jesus was there in the beginning. At the creation of the cosmos, light/dark, day/night, earth/water, and everything that is. He was there and he is in it all.
And he is part of it all.
Yes, there is good and bad. But the bad doesn’t consume him. It can’t.
And in the midst of everything, a man came out of the wilderness. A prophet who proclaimed that one would come after him.
One who was one with the light. Who could not be consumed by the darkness. Who would be a light for the world. To see its way. To know which way to go. Where to go. And how.
That prophet is John. And that man who would come after is Jesus.
The light of the world
“He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him.”
So much is packed into so tight a space. This one, who was here at the beginning, who knows every speck of the cosmos would come into a world ignorant of him.
He came as one who is not known.
They did not know him. So, is knowing him the point?
“He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.”
It sounds like yes and no.
It isn’t about who knew him when he arrived so much as after. Just like it isn’t knowing about Jesus (like belief that God exists), but knowing, accepting, receiving, and believing in Jesus as the one who comes to save us.
He offers the power of participation: the ticket to community. The means of joining in the common light that assuages the darkness which afflicts us all.
Personal Darkness
This, of course, is the challenge of faith. Not so much believing that God exists or that Jesus is the God-Man, but that we ourselves are not alone. That whether each of us believes matters less than whether we believe together.
For we are compelled by our world, tradition, even each other to think that personal belief is the calling card of faith. Or more precisely, that it is the essential component of religion. But it is how we encounter the personal darkness that afflicts us all that reveals the depth of our faith.
This is what the light of Christmas morning reveals.
We aren’t alone. We aren’t only the pain of spending Christmas alone or the struggle of going to three different Christmases with different sets of parents. The challenge of making not only gifts happen for the kids, but also the magic.
The way we gather to do Christmas can be lonely. But in the light of Christ, we see that we aren’t alone in it. We aren’t alone in any of it.
This is our faith and work. Together. As an us, a we. As children of God.
A Project of We
So as we go out into our world, back to our homes, or away from our screens, we are invited into a collaboration: a project of hope and community. A project of vulnerability and witness; generosity and gratitude; love and peace. A project of we.
We get to make faith with our friends and family. Make faith real with each other. In-person, of course, but also over the phone and the internet. With neighbors and loved ones. Even strangers on the street.
Wishing them love and joy. Praying for their well-being. Joining them in making things better and brighter.
Make believing real: a Christmas miracle. A project for you and me: A Project of We.