Nativity of the Lord: Day – Cycle C
Isaiah 52: 7-10; Hebrews 1: 1-6;
John 1: 1-18
The opening chapter of John's Gospel reads like poetry – full of wondrous images about the mystery and the glory of God. It's beautiful – but it is also difficult to comprehend. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” This is very deep stuff. John's Gospel is not like the other three. It contains concepts that are not easily understood. But that is how God is. The vastness, the greatness, the enormity that is God cannot be adequately described within the human experience. It is far beyond our limited understanding. God knows this.
God created the heavens and the earth. God created the flowers and the trees. God created it all and saw that it was good. But God desires more. God loves us so much, wants to be in a relationship with us so much, that he took on human form. “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us ...” But why was this necessary?
For thousands of years, no one had seen God, no one had touched God, and only a select few had heard his voice. God was a stranger to us. He was unknown. Many questioned his existence. For others, God was simply irrelevant. “He's up there somewhere, why should I care?” (Does this sound familiar?) The old testament is full of stories of the Jewish people losing faith. The sacred scriptures promised that a Savior would come. Someone would lead us out of the darkness and back into light. Someone would reveal God to us through himself.
The birth of the Christ child, the incarnation, allows each of us to know God in a way that we can understand. His love for us is so great, that he is willing to send his only Son, knowing that He will suffer and die for us. God is willing to take on human form, to experience the same things we do, to feel lonely or scared, to scrape his knee, to experience the loss of his friend, Lazarus. God wants to be one with us so that we can begin to fathom His love for us.
Most of us have had the privilege of seeing the joy in the eyes of a child on Christmas morning. As the adults watching, the love we have for that child is hard to describe. We can't imagine a greater love, than the love a mother has for her baby, yet, we know that God's love for us is even more vast.
Emmanuel, God with us, is a gift. This gift is not like other presents you may give or receive. I was at a Christmas party one time and a friend and I exchanged gifts. Later, when I opened my present, I found that my friend had spent a lot of money on me, while my gift was more of a token. I felt bad. I struggled with these feelings. Instead of feeling thankful, I felt inadequate. This gift from God of the Christ child is similar. We have done nothing to deserve it. We can offer nothing in return that matches its awesomeness.
We are so used to that way of thinking, that we assume God works the same way, so we try to figure out how we can make things even again, how we can give back to God at the same level. But God's is a gift with no expectations of a present in return. Quite honestly, we can't. We are not God. God's gift is pure love. That's hard for us humans to comprehend, that God's love is freely given, it is pure gift.
It is my hope that each of us can graciously accept this gift and allow God's love to enter our hearts. Let us rejoice and celebrate that God is with us!
Deacon Darryl J. Diemer
Christmas Day
December 25, 2011
