Child: The Christ Candle (Christmas Eve)
Readings
Ezekiel 37:26–28
Matthew 1:20–23
Revelation 21:1–4
Silent Reflection
Remarks
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. A prophet, a Gospel writer, and a revelator walk into a bar…
Preachers like to talk about the problem of sin as being what fundamentally separates us from God. Too true, though I suspect the way in which that separation works is sometimes different than what the preacher means. They tend to see separation as God retreating beyond some impassable boundary because He can’t “tolerate” being in the “presence” of “sin.” (Really, did we ever stop to consider exactly what we mean by each of those words?) It’s as though He were concerned with catching the flu. The truth is closer to the garden story and many of Jesus’s parables—the first one to make a move away is us. We hide. The separation is self-imposed. God tends to come looking. Remember, the first question He asks in all of Scripture is, “Where are you?”
Mechanics aside, I do agree that what’s at the root of our problem is separation from God. We’re cut off from life, and yet somehow we know in our bones we have to have it. That being the case, dependent as we are on something, anything, to sustain us, we’ve managed somehow to cling to death like a lifeline instead. Who among us hasn’t used death—petty revenge, manipulation of our spouse (or children!), violence, a snide word behind the back—as a way of trying to make ourselves Something?
Make no mistake: we have many wonderful things to our credit. We’ve saved ourselves from terrible diseases. We’ve played on the Moon and eaten snacks at the bottom of the ocean. We’ve painted Guernica. We’ve composed Messiah. We’ve free solo’d El Capitan. We’ve invented democracy out of the throes of authoritarianism (though democracy apparently has a long way yet to go). Still, I can’t help but notice that a lot, if not all, of our greatest achievements and creations have been the result of discoveries or moments of inspiration or otherwise could not have happened without forces beyond our control. If there is no God, it’s the goodness in the world that needs to be explained. The power to destroy is what seems literally uninspired and wholly within the means of our own devices. We seem to be naturals at it—no assistance needed.
It makes sense, then, that the prophet (Ezekiel), the Gospel writer (Matthew), and the revelator (John), seeing our fundamental problem as separation, would see the fundamental solution as with-ness. The promise is of things being brought back together: heaven on earth despite the hell that it is. God in us, sinners though we are. Anyone who thinks God can’t “tolerate” being in the “presence” of “sin” needs look no further than Isaiah in the throne room or Jesus with his typical table company.
Indeed, what seems to be the case is that this promise of with-ness—of the overlapping of heaven and earth and the overwhelming of death by life—is far from being a far-off-future hope in the second coming, but is already a present reality since the first coming. (Advent!) Our first introduction to the Christ (God with, God for, God as, God in us) is with the name Emmanuel. God is with us now, not as a universal principle or a sacred law, but as a person. Something about that means the end of sin and the beginning of salvation—the end of death and the beginning of life!
For us, we must somehow find a way to cling to him. This is simple and complicated. So simple that a child can grasp it, so complicated that a theologian studying it all her life can’t get her mind around it. Still, at least in the Christ, God really is with us, which means we have a fair shot if we only know how to connect. “Where else are we going to go?” the disciples asked when Jesus offered his body and blood to them—not because other ideas weren’t more palatable (they certainly were), but for the same reason spouses can hardly imagine life without one another.
There are worse places to start than as the magi did. God’s first question in the Hebrew Scriptures is, “Where are you?” Humanity’s first question (via the mouths of the magi) in the Christian Scriptures is, “Where is he who is born king of the Jews?” I think, in some sense, all of our asking and searching is maybe just riffing on this question. Our searching is for this King, whether we realize it or not. After all, it’s maybe not so hard to admit that what we’re looking for is life itself, for God’s sake. Sure enough, we are easily fooled into thinking we’ve found it in this shiny thing or that great idea, but the great surprise of Christianity is that it’s not a thing or an idea at all. It’s a new Neighbor—one we can know as we know the ones living next door to us. One who can and will, we hope and believe, wipe away our tears and ease our suffering and share our pain and make us giddy in the way that the presence of dear friends and religious platitudes can’t.
That he is with us, as one of us, for us—and now in us!—means that he can be found. We search for Him even as He searches for us. And even if our questions were misdirected at first, if what we’re really after is Truth and Life, I think we’ll embrace one another in the end. Like two lovers starting from opposite sides of a spiral maze, desperate to find one another, even if we’ve only shared letters and never seen the other’s face, it’s almost as if we can’t help but be brought back to Life.
Silent Reflection
Response
Where have you experienced God with you lately?
When have you felt God for you lately?
What does it mean to you or do for you to know that God is in you?