The climax of the Festival of Lessons and Carols is the reading from the Gospel of St. John, Chapter 1: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
At Christmas, God comes to us in a new and intimate way, in the flesh of an infant named Jesus. The Letter to the Hebews tells us:
"Long ago, God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son.”
Hebrews calls us to reflect on how God comes to us in a new and intimate way.
If we recall how the Word of God comes to the prophets, we may think of Moses and the burning bush. In Exodus, Chapter 3: … God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” 5 Then he said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”
We may also recall of the prophets, that each is reluctant to receive the Word and speak the Word of God. Isaiah says he is not worthy to speak the Word of God, so an angel takes a burning coal from the incense burner and touches it to Isaiah’s lips to purify him. Jonah tries to run away from God, takes a ship in the opposite direction, and is swallowed by a great fish.
So clearly, God comes to us in a new an intimate way as the Word of God is made flesh.
God now speaks to us through His son, a son born into this world like any of us, a baby who is entrusted to parents and to the world, an infant who cries and laughs like any other newborn.
Jesus enters the world like each one of us, dependent upon others for survival. He is vulnerable to hunger and thirst, to cold and stress, to virus and accident. If not for the protective love of his parents, Herod's armies would have found him after his birth and cut him down with the sword, "The Word became flesh and lived among us," says the Gospel of John. The divine Word became a child, newborn, fragile, and vulnerable, and as dependent as we all are upon the love of others for survival.
It goes against all our worldly logic to imagine God as dependent upon us, human beings. How could God depend on us? But how else do we explain this child given to the world? The gospels don't claim any special, extraordinary power for the infant Jesus: he gives no blessing from the creche, performs no miracles, does not speak words the world can understand. He is simply a baby like any other baby, who cries and is dependent upon others to be fed and cared for and held and loved -- dependent upon others for his very life.
John’s Gospel tells us: "We have beheld his glory..." The glory in the infant Jesus is that he is the Word, the message brought from God to humanity through his birth into our world. The glory in Jesus is God's love for the world He has created, a love so great that God Himself would experience life in the world through His son.
God asks us, like Joseph and Mary, to learn to hear and understand the cries of people in need: children, families, older people, people who are sick and poor and needy … and one other. We are called to respond in love.
I wish all of you a blessed Christmas.
by Rev. Jon Lavelle
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