Senior 35: Christmas Reflection
A Christmas reflection -
This year the entire APU Music Department is involved the Celebrate Christmas production at Lake Avenue Church. For the concert finale, all the choirs come together (over four-hundred strong) to sing, "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" with full orchestra, organ, and hand bells. It's quite spectacular and a thrill to sing. But as we prepared the piece in rehearsal, something troubled me. In the original hymn by Charles Wesley, there is a line that reads: "Veiled in flesh, the God-head see; Hail the incarnate Deity". In the version we used, this lyric had been changed to "Veiled in flesh, the Christ now see". It is a small change--just one line--in a non-climactic portion of the piece. No big deal, right? But, in fact, I believe it is a big deal, and I am grateful that Dr. Sutton, our director, chose to return to the original text.
One might ask, Don't Christians proclaim that Jesus is Christ? Isn't this different line perfectly consistent with Christian doctrine and theology? Why quibble over such a fine distinction? But it is in just such fine distinctions that a world of difference is revealed--separating the good news and true meaning of Christmas from simple, empty platitudes.
Consider the condition of first-century Palestine. The Jews were an occupied people, under the control of the Roman Empire. Some tried to eke out a living under these difficult conditions while others responded in violence and uprising. Many, no doubt, lived in fear and constant anxiety, hoping for and looking forward to a time of peace and safety. In many ways, the world of that time and place was not so different from ours today. The struggles and tensions of our time are much the same as theirs were. The prevailing fears and vices of human-kind have not changed in two thousand years. People continue to cry out for help, for a savior, for peace.
And there are many who would answer that call--revolutionaries and would-be-messiahs; self-improvement spokespeople and self-help venders and religionists and zealots of ever shade and variety. That was the situation then and it is still the situation today. And if Jesus is just another one of this sort of messiah--this sort of christ--then He can have nothing to say to the world that has not already been said a hundred times over the millennia and still been found wanting. This is just where that all-important difference, that seemingly-innocuous distinction that separates whole universes of meaning, becomes clear.
The good news of Christmas is not that yet another messiah has been born--even having been born of a virgin. Neither is it that another human being has come with a plan to fix the world's problems. The good news of Christmas is that God, Himself, creator and sustainer of the cosmos, who formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, who knits each person together in her mother's womb, who answers the call of the distressed, and meets the broken-hearted in their time of need--this God, has come to earth and taken up residence with us and among us.
He is Emmanuel--"God with Us."
He is "God from God, Light from Light, True God from true God".
He has revealed Himself to the world, unmediated by angels or prophets; He has come, Himself, in the person of Jesus Christ.
But He did not come with a great splash--trumpets blaring and chariot blazing in splendor and majesty. Instead, like an unimportant phrase, in a non-climactic part of a song, Jesus came in humility, as an infant, born in the darkness of a stable on the outskirts of Bethlehem, wrapped in swaddling clothes and cradled in an animal's feeding trough. And in that insignificant corner of the world, He began to work a change that would one day overtake the cosmos. In Christmas, a new power was loosed upon the world, unlike anything that humanity had ever experienced. With Jesus Christ came the hope and promise of rebirth into the new life of God. No longer would people try to piece together the broken parts of their lives; instead God would remake them from within. To any who would receive Him, Jesus--God--would come with open arms to embrace and lead and transform.
The cruelest irony of history is that so many failed to recognize and embrace the reality and presence of God-in-their-midst. And today, there are many who would take the God-head-veiled-in-flesh and turn Him into just another human christ. But to strip Jesus of His deity is to strip away His power and the hope of humanity.
Jesus dwells still in our midst, in the dark stables of Bethlehem and the lesser lines of Christmas carols, everywhere you look and most often in the places you least expect. You can ignore Him or dismiss Him or gloss over Him if you wish, or you can fall on your knees before Him and receive the newness of life that He offers.
May the reality of God's presence in this place, revealed in Jesus Christ through the work of the Holy Spirit, be, for you, new life and hope during this Christmas season and hereafter.
Merry Christmas,
This year the entire APU Music Department is involved the Celebrate Christmas production at Lake Avenue Church. For the concert finale, all the choirs come together (over four-hundred strong) to sing, "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" with full orchestra, organ, and hand bells. It's quite spectacular and a thrill to sing. But as we prepared the piece in rehearsal, something troubled me. In the original hymn by Charles Wesley, there is a line that reads: "Veiled in flesh, the God-head see; Hail the incarnate Deity". In the version we used, this lyric had been changed to "Veiled in flesh, the Christ now see". It is a small change--just one line--in a non-climactic portion of the piece. No big deal, right? But, in fact, I believe it is a big deal, and I am grateful that Dr. Sutton, our director, chose to return to the original text.
One might ask, Don't Christians proclaim that Jesus is Christ? Isn't this different line perfectly consistent with Christian doctrine and theology? Why quibble over such a fine distinction? But it is in just such fine distinctions that a world of difference is revealed--separating the good news and true meaning of Christmas from simple, empty platitudes.
Consider the condition of first-century Palestine. The Jews were an occupied people, under the control of the Roman Empire. Some tried to eke out a living under these difficult conditions while others responded in violence and uprising. Many, no doubt, lived in fear and constant anxiety, hoping for and looking forward to a time of peace and safety. In many ways, the world of that time and place was not so different from ours today. The struggles and tensions of our time are much the same as theirs were. The prevailing fears and vices of human-kind have not changed in two thousand years. People continue to cry out for help, for a savior, for peace.
And there are many who would answer that call--revolutionaries and would-be-messiahs; self-improvement spokespeople and self-help venders and religionists and zealots of ever shade and variety. That was the situation then and it is still the situation today. And if Jesus is just another one of this sort of messiah--this sort of christ--then He can have nothing to say to the world that has not already been said a hundred times over the millennia and still been found wanting. This is just where that all-important difference, that seemingly-innocuous distinction that separates whole universes of meaning, becomes clear.
The good news of Christmas is not that yet another messiah has been born--even having been born of a virgin. Neither is it that another human being has come with a plan to fix the world's problems. The good news of Christmas is that God, Himself, creator and sustainer of the cosmos, who formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, who knits each person together in her mother's womb, who answers the call of the distressed, and meets the broken-hearted in their time of need--this God, has come to earth and taken up residence with us and among us.
He is Emmanuel--"God with Us."
He is "God from God, Light from Light, True God from true God".
He has revealed Himself to the world, unmediated by angels or prophets; He has come, Himself, in the person of Jesus Christ.
But He did not come with a great splash--trumpets blaring and chariot blazing in splendor and majesty. Instead, like an unimportant phrase, in a non-climactic part of a song, Jesus came in humility, as an infant, born in the darkness of a stable on the outskirts of Bethlehem, wrapped in swaddling clothes and cradled in an animal's feeding trough. And in that insignificant corner of the world, He began to work a change that would one day overtake the cosmos. In Christmas, a new power was loosed upon the world, unlike anything that humanity had ever experienced. With Jesus Christ came the hope and promise of rebirth into the new life of God. No longer would people try to piece together the broken parts of their lives; instead God would remake them from within. To any who would receive Him, Jesus--God--would come with open arms to embrace and lead and transform.
The cruelest irony of history is that so many failed to recognize and embrace the reality and presence of God-in-their-midst. And today, there are many who would take the God-head-veiled-in-flesh and turn Him into just another human christ. But to strip Jesus of His deity is to strip away His power and the hope of humanity.
Jesus dwells still in our midst, in the dark stables of Bethlehem and the lesser lines of Christmas carols, everywhere you look and most often in the places you least expect. You can ignore Him or dismiss Him or gloss over Him if you wish, or you can fall on your knees before Him and receive the newness of life that He offers.
May the reality of God's presence in this place, revealed in Jesus Christ through the work of the Holy Spirit, be, for you, new life and hope during this Christmas season and hereafter.
Merry Christmas,
posted by Metaphysician_delta | 12:52 PM
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