27 December 2018 - Word of life

Today's Readings

(Audio)

Beloved:
What was from the beginning,
what we have heard,
what we have seen with our eyes,
what we looked upon
and touched with our hands
concerns the Word of life —

Jesus is the Word of life. But that doesn't mean he is simply an idea because Jesus is the Word who became flesh. He is not only someone thought about, but a voice heard, a body seen and touched, as his friend and beloved disciple John testifies. The Father's Word contains everything he is and knows from all eternity. But at Christmas that Word takes on a new aspect, a relation altogether new even to the Triune God. Without ceasing in any way to be God he unites himself to a human existence. He is born of Mary. The invisible and the eternal becomes visible to us in time.

for the life was made visible;
we have seen it and testify to it
and proclaim to you the eternal life
that was with the Father and was made visible to us— 

Though God is immortal and invisible, eternally beyond human comprehension, he still desires to reveal who he is to humankind. He wants us to know his Word. And so he does the unthinkable. He doesn't simply put up billboards in the sky or broadcast a booming voice at regular intervals worldwide. Those options might have conveyed something. But the choice God makes is far more personal. Although it is easier to dispute than less personal options it reveals far more about the heart of God to we who receive it.

We are writing this so that our joy may be complete.

In Jesus Christ God allows himself to be thwarted by human sinfulness. He allows himself to be killed and laid in the tomb. He absorbs all the hatred human selfishness engenders in order, by doing so, to free us from that selfishness, and to win us over with his love. Our selfishness is spent in killing him. But in his mercy love remains to bring us back to him.

When Simon Peter arrived after him,
he went into the tomb and saw the burial cloths there,
and the cloth that had covered his head,
not with the burial cloths but rolled up in a separate place.
Then the other disciple also went in,
the one who had arrived at the tomb first,
and he saw and believed. 

God comes so close to us. He does not want to be impersonal as would be a mere written or even spoken word. John shows us that Jesus is a living word, a Word that we still reject when we sin, and a word that nevertheless has arms of mercy waiting to reveal his resurrection to us.

Light dawns for the just;
and gladness, for the upright of heart.
Be glad in the LORD, you just,
and give thanks to his holy name.