Christmas Demystified
Last night we celebrated a birthday.
We sang carols and then gathered for a very special Eucharist.
In one service on this day, we remember God's love for us through the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus.
Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. - John 4:7-8
John tells us this birth means more than the coming of a savior, a way to the truth and the light, a way of redemption and salvation for us sinners. It is pure love for all of mankind.
We are called to love one another by God, who is unlimited and unbounded love.
We can get caught up in the trappings of this day, saying we understand the significance of it, but tossing that aside with the spent wrapping paper as we open yet another present.
It is understandable in a way, since the mystery of Christmas is so incomprehensible for us, even those of us who claim to get it. We believe God would and could choose to become one of us, to live among us, to show us the way to truth, but the idea of God as an infant, cradles and suckled lies beyond human reasoning.
So, we say it, we sing it, we celebrate it, but we see love between a mother and child.
Maybe that is what we are supposed to see. The God we think we know as almighty, king, judge and creator comes to us in a most vulnerable way.
We hear stories of young mothers abandoning their newborns, dumping them out windows and putting them in trash bins and we shudder because these infants represent that same love than came to Mary.
If all we come to understand about this day is that every child is an expression of God's love, I think we would begin to understand what lies at the heart of our salvation, our return to grace.
God so loved the world that he not only gave himself in the form of a child, but that he gives himself to us every day in the form of love for each other.
We can truly come to know God by seeing each live as precious, each life as a child of God.
Can we do that?
That is the true mystery.
More to come...