Tag: incarnation

A Thought on Christmas Day

jesus christ figurine
Photo by Jeswin Thomas on Pexels.com

In the New International Version, John 1:18 reads:

No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.

If you click the link to the verse, you’ll see parallels in the KJV, NLT, and ESV. Michael F. Bird notes the interpretative difficulties this verse presents due to the presence of one Greek verb: exēgeomai. Bird writes:

The Greek word behind “made known”, “explained”, and “revealed” is the verb ἐξηγέομαι/exēgeomai which means “to set forth in great detail, expound” often with respect to “divine secrets” and “divine beings” (BDAG).

Aussie biblical scholar, Colin Kruse comments that, “The evangelist is saying, then, that the Word (Jesus), being God the one and only, at the Father’s side, the only one who has seen God, has ‘expounded’ him, made him known, through his person, words and works.”

Jesus, as God-in-the-flesh, is the exegesis or exposition of God.

God is made known through, in, and as Jesus.

Jesus is God with a human face.

Jesus is God with us and God for us.

Christmas is when we remember how God has exegeted himself in the person of Jesus, so that we never forget that God is love (1 John 4:8) and light (1 John 1:5) because we see the light and love of Jesus.

I know there are many people who have trouble imagining God, connecting to God, or thinking about what God is like. Look at Jesus. Even if you are a person of faith and you think you know everything about him, look at Jesus. On this day, behold the manger. In the days ahead, behold the fullness of his story. You won’t only find a God who becomes vulnerable as a child. You will find a God who becomes vulnerable on a cross. You will find a God who teaches, heals, comforts, and challenges. You will find a God who conquers death and bursts forth from the tomb: a resurrected and resurrecting God. You will find a God who cajoles and invites. You will find a tender God, a bold God. You will find a God of mercy and justice. You will find a God who meets you in the broad experiences of life and brings the fullness of deity, for Christ not only drew near to us and expounded for us the divine life, he lived before us a truly human life, the kind of life with God for which we are intended.

Merry Christmas. Remember, paradoxically, we are not only called and urged to seek God, and in the seeking discover finding. We are reminded this day that God has come in Christ and found us. Found you.

She Fed Our Bread

He who sustains the world lay in a manger, a wordless Child, yet the Word of God. Him whom the heavens do not contain the bosom of one woman bore. She ruled our King; she carried Him in whom we exist; she fed our Bread. O manifest weakness and marvelous humility in which all divinity lay hid! By His power He ruled the mother to whom His infancy was subject, and He nourished with truth her whose breasts suckled Him. May He who did not despise our lowly beginnings perfect His work in us, and may He who wished on account of us to become the Son of Man make us the sons of God.

– From St. Augustine’s Sermon 184, given on Christmas Day, quoted in a newsletter from The Center for Pastor Theologians

Easier to Take the Ocean

In his book The Jesus Prayer: A Cry for Mercy, a Path of Renewal, John Michael Talbot tells this story:

Bishop Augustine was preaching his series of homilies on the Trinity in the cathedral of Hippo. Between services he would walk to the seashore to meditate and rest his mind. He saw a boy on the shore digging a hole and then filling the hole with a bucket of seawater. He did this repeatedly. Finally Augustine walked over to the boy and asked, “Son, what are you doing?” The boy replied, “I am going to take that big ocean and put it in this little hole.” The wise and fatherly Augustine said kindly to the boy, “My son, the ocean is too big to place in that little hole.” The boy looked up at the bishop and said, “Easier for me to take that big ocean and put it in this little hole than for you to take the big Trinity and put it in your little mind, Bishop Augustine!” At that the boy disappeared. He was an angel sent by God to remind Augustine that sublime as his teaching might be, he could never fully understand or express the divine mysteries of the Trinity (or the incarnation, for that matter).

The words we utter about God should always be spoken with humility, for the reality is far greater than that which the human mind could ever comprehend or behold. And yet, on this night, Christian people proclaim that this God came in the form of a child, in the person of Jesus, and in and through him, delivered salvation to the world.