Intimate and Cosmic

Christmas 1

Fr. Tim Nunez

May my spoken word be true to God’s written word and bring us all closer to the living word, Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen

We’ve been blessed the last few weeks to have a couple of pieces of art on display in our parish hall. Both are by our member Paul O’Neill. One is a working model of the mural he painted on our Thrift Shop’s eastern wall. The other is an arresting image of Mary holding baby Jesus. If you have not seen these paintings in the parish hall and the Thrift Shop mural, you should.

I described the Mary and Jesus painting as arresting because every time I walk into or through the parish hall, it arrests me. Often that’s as I walk in from our office wing. It’s just on the edge of my peripheral vision and makes me think someone is there. When I’m coming straight at it, it pops out and dominates the view. And I find that its beauty and depth change with the light. It’s quite different in very low light, but you have to be here pretty early or pretty late to see that.

Its iconic style captures the intimacy of Mary’s love for Jesus and reflects the intimacy of his love for her. That is at the heart of the Christmas story. It is at the heart of our pageant. It is at the heart of our Christmas hymns. It is at the heart of God’s desire to draw us into the most intimate of relationships with him through Jesus.

John’s gospel is very intimate, as we would expect from one who, with Peter and James, was in that tightest circle of leaders among the twelve disciples. Our best historic, textual and documentary studies indicate that the Apostle John wrote his gospel late in his life. Presumably he was familiar with Matthew, Mark and Luke’s gospels, which had been in circulation for two or three decades.

John provides his own witness, adding details and events without contradicting the others. He shares stories like the wedding at Cana, the raising of Lazarus, and much more of what Jesus said and did at the Last Supper. He repeats very little that the others shared; notably the feeding of the 5,000 and the Passion.

He also has had a lifetime of faithful reflection on his personal experience of following Jesus day by day for several years, knowing him well in person and also his ongoing relationship with him for decades after he watched Jesus ascend into heaven. He has profound insight on Jesus’s birth, life, ministry, signs, death, Resurrection, ascension and ongoing presence enabled him to articulate what Jesus means to people and the whole creation.

John’s witness is that his amazingly wise rabbi, mentor and friend - is also God. The intimacy of Christmas morning, the love of mother and child, is fused to the recognition of Jesus as the ultimate source and ultimate end of everything.

His gospel begins with the Word. The Greek word for word is logos, from which we get our word logic, which means reason, and thus our suffix “- ology” which means “study of,” like biology, theology and cosmology. Studying anything is probing into its causes and its effects.

The root cause and ultimate effect of everything is The Word. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” That ties us conceptually right back to the beginning of Genesis, which means beginning, so the beginning of all beginnings.

The Word is the principle that precedes all principles. It is the truth that precedes all truth, even the very nature of truth. It is relationship that precedes all relationships, not just among people but of everything from the mathematics of gravitational pull to time as relative change and distance. All relationship is built on this preexistent love.

It is through that pre-existing, before all existence, Word that God speaks the universe and all that is in it into being. “Not one thing came into being except through him.” Life itself reflects his life, which is the light of all people from the beginning. What does that mean?

It means that our fundamental capacity and urge to pursue life and growth, truth, good and love, was given to us in, by and through this Word. When I say “our” I mean all of humanity. That’s why we find elements of truth in every religion, philosophy, science, art, and nature. C.S. Lewis said, “All stories are true,” meaning they all have elements of truth in them. We can discover and evaluate those truths because the Word has placed that life and light within us.

Acknowledging all stories have some truth does not mean they have equal truth or all truth. Some may have relative or contextual truths. We can only judge the truth in them, and in ourselves, by the ultimate standard we have in the Word. His truth is the light that shines. The dark cannot ever overcome it because dark is merely the absence of light. Light eliminates darkness.

John wrote, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” That is one of, if not the most, important half-sentences ever written. Everything that John has described about the nature of God and his creative power establishing, organizing and undergirding the very framework of being, came into the world in the person of Jesus, who began as a defenseless baby, in the arms of a young vulnerable mother, under the watchful care of a step-father, in very modest circumstances. Suddenly that cosmic ideal is a living, breathing, human child.

This child will become the man John knew. The man who called John and his brother James away from fishing with their father. The man he would hear say the truest things he would ever hear and do amazing things beyond imagination. The man he would see die on the cross. The man he would see rise from the dead. The man who would breathe the Holy Spirit upon him. The man he would see ascend into heaven. The man he knew was with him every day since. His glory in the flesh was apparent to John.

The really wild part is that this Word who became flesh offers the reverse opportunity to us. The promise is, as John put it, “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, not born of blood or the will of the flesh, or of the will of man, but of God.”

Jesus went from being divine, with the Father beyond space and time, beyond the very fabric of reality itself, to a flesh and blood human being. He invites us to go from being flesh and blood human beings to join him beyond space and time, beyond the very fabric of reality itself. God to us; us to God.

That is most arresting. It’s arresting when you’re focused on where you are going and what you are doing, but you feel Jesus there, just past the corner of your eye. It’s arresting when you see him from any angle and in any level of relative light or darkness, depending on what is happening in your life. It’s arresting when you contemplate his astounding words and actions, and his astoundingly intimate presence when you slow down long enough to embrace it.

So slow down. Embrace it. Embrace him. As the painting arrests the eye, so the Word arrests the heart. Everything depends on him.

AMEN!