Christmas I
The Rev. Dena Cleaver-Bartholomew
“Where do I begin, to tell the story of how great a love can be?”
I remember hearing these lyrics when I was much younger, and though I doubt that the love of God is quite what the composer had in mind, the appropriateness of the wording is undeniable.
So, where does the story of God’s great love begin? At the beginning, of course. Not just any beginning, mind you, the beginning, the one we think of in Genesis. When John was inspired to write the famous Prologue to his version of the Gospel, he stretched about as far back as is possible in biblical terms. John reaches back, way back, to point toward a time before time, and uses the familiar, powerful words of Genesis to create some of the most dramatic and forceful poetry ever written.
Perhaps the most amazing aspect of John’s prologue lies in the clear and bold claims he makes in identifying for us just who Jesus is. For the weeks of Advent we have been preparing for the birth of this special baby, Jesus. From Luke we learn that “he will be called Son of God.” An angel tells Joseph that Jesus “will save his people from their sins.” The shepherds are told that he is “a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” Indeed, Jesus is all these things. Yet they are not all that Jesus is. Jesus is not simply a special baby from God. Jesus is God.
Before Jesus was, God was. That much is simple. God is, and was, and always will be. Jesus was born around 2,000 years ago. That kind of math doesn’t take a lot of reflection. There’s a lot of room between forever and 2,000. But if Jesus is God, where was he before he became Jesus? That is what John addresses. Before Jesus was Jesus, he was the Word.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word
was with God, and the Word was God.”
John’s words are simple, yet profound.
But what do they mean? Well, if
you pause to think about your self, and what it means to truly be your self,
you soon realize that if you want to share your self with anyone else you need
a way to do that. In order to reveal
ourselves we need revelation or communication.
Sometimes we communicate with words.
Yet we are not limited to words:
dance, music, art and athleticism are all creative and energetic forums
for self-expression. Likewise, when God
wants to reveal or express God’s self, one way God does this is through God’s
Word. Keep
in mind that before Jesus came among us, God tried to be present with us in
other ways. Some were more successful
than others. You may remember in the
story of the Exodus that “The LORD went
in front of them in a pillar of cloud by day, to lead them along the way, and
in a pillar of fire by night, to give them light.” When they arrived at
God’s
Presence also came among the people as God’s Wisdom. She—that’s right, She—was contrasted to folly
in the Hebrew Scriptures. Wisdom called
people to seek God through the Law. Yet
few responded to her call to divine Love.
According to the Book of Enoch “Wisdom
came to make her dwelling among the children of men and found no dwelling
place.”
With no
Thus, just as God’s presence came among people as a cloud for which the Israelites pitched a tent, and as Wisdom, we now have God pitching a new tent in the flesh of baby Jesus. Jesus is called Emmanuel, which means, “God is with us,” precisely because Jesus was the new dwelling place for God among people.
So why is this important to us? Because it changes everything! The story is no longer only about God, or even Jesus. It is about us too. The Christmas story is foundational to who we are as Christians: God loved us enough to become one of us.
God has pitched a tent in human flesh and his name is Jesus.
Frederick Buechner writes “The power of stories is that they are telling us that life adds up somehow, that life itself is like a story. And this grips us and fascinates us because of the feeling it gives us that if there is meaning in any life—in Hamlet’s, in Mary’s, in Christ’s—then there is meaning also in our lives.” The power of the Christmas story is that God is fully with us in Jesus and has come, through his life, and death, and resurrection, to be fully with us always.
As Christians we have been baptized into the death and resurrected life of Jesus Christ. We are now the Body of Christ, the place where God chooses to dwell. Together we have become the holy tent, for God is in each of us. The true gift of Christmas is the gift of the Incarnation: God is with us in Jesus. This great gift led to another amazing act of love, the Resurrection. God was not only willing to become human and dwell with us; God was even willing to walk through death to new life so that Jesus can live in us. Who but God could imagine a gift like this?
Amen