Of "tilts" and faith

At first glance, John’s idea of Christmas, of the incarnation, is not going to inspire a whole lot for the world to sink itself into. There are no lights, no decorated trees, no animals, and no crèches, no presents and… well you get the idea. It is the one picture of Christmas that has never been painted. So what it is that John’s Gospel tries to communicate to us? Simply, it is that the very God, who made the heavens and the earth, has come among us in our flesh and we have seen his glory and known him. Many did not welcome him but some did. And to those who did welcome him, he gave them the gift of power to enable them to be the children of the living God. Christ, and through us as his followers, reveal the presence of God here in earth.

John shows us that the Word, whom we know as Jesus, participated in the making of the world; that Christ led the work to redeem the world from is sin, brokenness, and death, and Jesus gives good gifts to enable the ongoing work of the Church to enable the consecration of His Body. John’s Christmas is not about the manger and all that goes with it, it is about the fact that God has come among us in the person of his Son and that we have seen and known his glory – all of us. Yes, even you! In Christ, God has tabernacle among us and we have seen and known him. Christmas is more than just the glitz and glam of the one day that begins this feast. It is about God being among us. Otherwise this time of year becomes a season such as they knew in CS Lewis’ Narnia where, “It is always winter and never Christmas.”
So how do we move out now from Christmas? In some real sense, we don’t. We need to recognize that the Incarnation (Christmas) is always with us – all the way to the cross, the grave and beyond. It is why he came and made his dwelling with us. He came to bring us back to himself and to do that, he came and dwells among us. What we do need to do is to take the leap of faith that the Gospel is calling us to. The word believe as it is often used in John, is a verb; an action word. We so often readily acknowledge the basics of the faith: that God made the world and that Christ came into the world to work humanity’s redemption. This can be answered with the head without engaging the rest of us and our lives.

John’s Gospel calls us to something more, something deeper in terms of faith. Christian faith is not just a system of obedience to which we all must adhere. We have that in the law and we have not lived up to it. Faith, at the heart, is devotion to the person of Jesus and to the grace and truth that he brings. The Law became a thing of its own – detached from Moses and the relationship that was built in the desert. The Law was given that we might know who we are. Jesus came that we might know the Father and chooses to live by grace rather than by a kind of righteousness that leaves us alone. No such thing can happen to the grace love and peace that Jesus offers because they are his and he offers them to you and to me. Thus we are called to participate in his grace love and peace and by living in it and share it with those we find and those we know as neighbour. Thus Jesus in coming and caring has revealed to us who the Father is and has removed much of the mystery by opening the veil.

If Easter is the heart of who and what we are as a community, then surely Christmas must be our soul as Church. Take heart, God has made the world and is drawing his world back to himself in Christ through his Church. All of us have seen his glory. Now we need to make our response – the response of one life time. Let us go and pitch our tents next to his, so that we might follow him and his light into his kingdom of light and life.