Feast of Christmas 2008

Thursday December 25, 2008

It’s enough to knock your socks off!

Every year in preparation for the Christmas, homilists, preachers, and people of faith throughout the world join in a search for new meaning in this ancient feast commemorating the birth of Jesus called the Christ.

“What think ye of Christ?” is the title in part of the eighth chapter in a book entitled, “Why Christianity Must Change or Die” authored by John Shelby Spong, retired bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark. You might want to read it some time but I warn you, it might knock your socks off! As with many his writings, this is not a book for the spiritually weak or theologically timid but for adventuresome believers.

But this is not the time or the place to test the validity of his thesis, namely, the necessary reform of the Church in faith and practice, but it IS the time and place to ask the question: “Who is Jesus for me and for you?”

The sometimes ‘irreverent’ bishop asks further: “Does that first-century life still have some relevance for those of us living today? In what sense, if any, can we call him savior? Is he an example that we might choose to emulate? Is [he] anything more than that? Are all the stories about Jesus extraordinary attempts by his followers composed just to fulfill biblical expectations? Or was there something in his life that was so real, so timeless, so revelatory and so transcendent that these images became not just appropriate but inescapable?”

Those who worshiped the ‘holy God’ insisted that they had met God in this man called Jesus.

Each of the four evangelists, three of whom write from a common source, present unique portraits of Jesus, portraits that were nevertheless consistent with the personality that was to become the Christ.

John announces Jesus as the light that shone in the darkness and calls him “love” personified. God is love and those who abide in love, see the light, walk in the light and abide in God. Jesus raised human love to a new level, reaching beyond human limits and crossing boundaries of all kinds. In effect, there are no limits to the unconditional love of God. In the face of all the stereotypical prejudices that separated Jews from Samaritans and gentiles, Jesus’ love is exclusively inclusive. He expanded the meaning of love to include everyone. It’s enough to knock your socks off!

Mark portrayed Jesus as a man for all seasons, a man for every heart and heritage. He reached out to the Syro-Phoenician woman, healing her daughter; he cured the servant of the Roman centurion and Mark concluded his crucifixion narrative with a gentile soldier standing before the cross who became the first to understand the meaning of Jesus’ death. “Truly this man was the Son of God!”

In Matthew’s gospel, the magi come from the east, drawn by the star to the light of this messianic figure and after Jesus death, his disciples are commissioned to go out to all the world — beyond the boundaries not only of territory but of bias and prejudice to bring the good news of God’s love to everyone.

According to Luke, Jesus was named as a descendant of Adam like every other human being. Therefore, he belonged to everyone, gentiles included. Luke climaxes his gospel with the story of Pentecost in which the Holy Spirit came upon representatives of all the nations of the world — “We are Parthians, Medes, Elomites, from Mesopotamia, even visitors from Rome — all hearing these disciples speaking in our own native tongue!” The community of God empowered by the Holy Spirit was to be exclusively inclusive.

Jesus entered a world of many cultural barriers — women and children were unworthy of recognition. “Let the children come to me and do not stop them,” he said. Mary Magdalene was the first to announce his resurrection to Peter and the other apostles. (It’s interesting that women are not allowed to do what Mary Magdalene did! It’s enough to knock the bishops’ socks off!) There were cultic barriers too, but Jesus told the Samaritan woman that the day would come when true worshipers would worship God not in the temple or on the mountain but in spirit and in truth, in other words, from the heart in whatever circumstances we find ourselves. And when you stop and think about that, it’s enough to knock your socks off!

Those who knew Jesus saw in him the human face of God, a new revelation — a new definition, as it were — the ground of our being, the source of life, and the source of love, the light that shone in the darkness, the light that still shines in the darkness.

The point of his life is not that God is utterly transcendent and unknowable but that God is the very core of our being. God is present as a mother and father are to their children. God is our capacity to live a more fully human life and to love despite our limitations and even our sinfulness.

Therefore, there can no longer be Jew or Greek; Arab or African; Catholic or Hindu. No longer can might make right, or can profit be the driving force for the economy, or can vengeance be the motivation for criminal justice, or can racial targeting be the modus operandi of highway patrol or any patrol, nor can the starvation of innocent men, women and children be used to topple savage rulers, or the hurling of epithets against others because of their sexual orientation be acceptable on any standard, or can the exploitation of women or sexual harassment of any kind be tolerated in public or in private. This is what our Church must stand for because this is what Jesus stood for. It’s enough to knock your socks off!

The bishop concludes his chapter with this testimony:

“Jesus is for me the way into the heart of God, the Ground of Being. Jesus is for me the truth by which my life can be lived with theological and human integrity. Jesus is for me the life who has made known to us all what the meaning of life is. So I call him ‘Lord,’ I call him ‘Christ,’ and I assert that this is where God is met for me.”

It’s enough to knock your socks off but it gives me hope as a preacher and teacher as we look forward to a greener world, re-patterning our thinking after this man who changed the course of human history.

This little meditation arrived among my Christmas letters from a dear friend who ministers at Hope House to those afflicted with AIDS:

“The Christmas story awaits rebirth through us.
We are called to…
provide “bread not bombs,”
shelter the homeless,
live lives with a heart for the “common good,”
be the peacemaker in our family and workplace,
live simply so that others might simply live,
find quality time and space to nourish our inner spirit,
stop and smell the flowers, see the tree, be in awe of a sunset or a moonrise,
be the reflection of God in our world, as Jesus was incarnate in ours.”

So who is Jesus for you and “what think ye of the Christ?”

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