Bask in the Light

1 Christmas 2007
(Isaiah 61:10-62:3; Ps 147; Gal 3: 23-25, 4: 4-7; John 1: 1-18)


Gather up the wrapping paper and recycle the tree! Grab the ol’ midriff and shake, check to see if that’s where the eggnog and cookies came in for a landing. Decide on the New Year’s plans, if you’re not just laying low and staying off the roads. Open the credit card invoice and wince if you dare to look at all! Yes, the culture’s Christmas is winding down. But we still have a gift to open. It’s still Christmastime. In silence and prayer, Scripture and song, we are still here, in the mystery, in the light, in the impossible joy of the old news that is always new. We are here in the light of the gift. The gift of Christmas is: we are changed. We have been changed. We shall be changed. Even the earth itself is new.

Many stories are told of how everything changed when the Word was made flesh. The Germans say that the winter forest broke into leaves and spring flowers. The Irish say the Druids prophesied that the King of the Stars was born, and Brigid herself journeyed through the night sky to assist at his birth. Shakespeare says that on that night no disease did kill, no sorcerer cast an evil spell and no demon dared walk abroad.

All those tales are trying to say how everything changed, and would never be the same again.

And so Isaiah says, who calls us to praise. Rejoice like a bride draped with jewels! Cry out like an eager bridegroom dressed in the robe of a lifetime! God won’t stop speaking, won’t stop shouting until every promise is fulfilled!

In a world of broken promises and short-term contracts, today we can relax into the promises of God. If we have eyes that are Christmas-bright, then we can see the light that shines forth from all creation and from our very skins.

Our skins are different too. We went to sleep in the night of our doubts and fears, the skins of slaves. We awoke in the skins of sons and daughters, the blood-kin of the King, family and heirs. All that is God’s, is ours. All that is glory, is ours. The cry of the Beloved to the Divine Heart is ours—“Abba! Daddy! Loving God who encircles us and sets us free!”

We’re set free to be a new creation.

That’s John’s song which we just heard: new creation. The first creation-song of Genesis sang of the beginning, of the heavens and the earth. This new song of John sings of the Beginning before the beginning, of the Wisdom which sang at God’s side as existence itself came to be. “The Word became flesh”, God became flesh so that we might become God. God’s own heart gave birth to the Beloved before time was. That Word takes human life for love and penetrates ever more deeply into the heart of God. Language fails us. But even our poor words kindle a longing within us, a God-driven desire to be ever more fully and completely who we are—the beloved of God, those who participate in God. “No one has ever seen God. It is God’s only Son, the Beloved of God, who has made him known.”

What does it all mean?

It means that we have received the glistening Gift of gifts. It means that nothing is ordinary. It means that nothing is everyday. It means that nothing is dull or dreary. It means that no defeat is final. It means that death does not have the last word. It means that we are meant for God because God longs for us and for God and within us by water and the Spirit is God. While the culture moves on we can bask in the incarnate Word and know that we are and can be all that we are promised and are called to be. Daughters and sons, new creation, transformed and freed.