Immersed in some
pressing responsibilities, I have been away from blogging for the last
month. Now, as those tasks
subside, time has passed, and with it the season. Epiphany is nearly over, and shortly we will enter the
fast-time of Lent. First, however,
some thoughts about what we have been shown in the Light of the Epiphany
season. HHM
Epiphany draws to a close in a
spectacular revelation on a mountaintop.
Christ is come! His glory
shines forth: it is the essential, startling proclamation. Always in the present tense. Always now. Yesterday now, today now, tomorrow now. The very nature of the world is
changed, because the Creator is entered into the life of the creation. That which was from the beginning
enters the scene, and the scene is forever changed: what was old is made new;
what is, and what will be, is imbued with Eternity. Things are outwardly the same, but in the depths everything
is changed.
C.S. Lewis called the movement of God
into history “The Grand Miracle.”
God, the Father, the Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth; That which is
beyond our ability to imagine, creates a door into our world and, using the very
biological processes of the world, enters to take up residence. Of necessity we speak in pictures and
metaphors; the poets capture it better, more exactly, than the scientists. The whats and hows elude our prideful
analysis, and yet the outcome, the life of Jesus, enables us to see with
crystal clarity the nature of the God Who made us. As John A.T. Robinson put it, in Jesus we see the human face
of God.
Stunning as the Grand Miracle is in
itself, even more stunning is the utter simplicity of the words in which the
Creed explains God's purpose: “For us and for our salvation.” Which is the greater wonder, that God
should become incarnate within the creation, or that the incarnation should be
for the rescue of one of the creatures? Is it more miraculous that the Creator of the universe should
create a way to enter the universe, or that this same Creator has a specific
interest in your destiny and mine?
The word “salvation” has as its root the
Greek word Soteria, meaning,
“rescue.” It is the word the
Greeks would use to describe the action of liberating a prisoner of war. We would use it to describe throwing a
life preserver to a drowning person.
Soteria, and its English
equivalent, “Salvation,” connote that the persons being rescued cannot get out
of danger unaided. Therefore, for
us to require salvation, we must be in a dangerous situation from which we
cannot extricate ourselves. What
situation is that?
It is the condition of the world. We are all aware of individuals who
commit personal acts of inhumanity to others. Any 20th or 21st century man or woman
who does not understand that something is profoundly wrong with the human race
has been asleep. We see instances
of it all around us. The
newspapers and broadcast media feed on such incidents. We hear about them from family, friends
and coworkers. In varying degrees
and frequency we even participate in such acts: from gossip about neighbors to
the slander of public figures; from the personal grudge to the crime of murder;
from the social snub of those individuals we arrogantly consider our inferiors,
to the oppression of whole ethnic groups; from paying back personal slights to
national declarations of war. To
one degree or another all of us participate. None of us is blameless.
The Biblical view of human nature is that
these acts of inhumanity have been going on since the very dawn of
history. In the very beginning our
earliest forebears sought to be like gods, and the result was that they became
less than human. Made to walk in
fellowship with God, they chose instead to compete with God, and they did it at
one another’s expense.
Over the centuries human behavior became
so twisted that we did not even acknowledge the wrongness of some acts, and
became adept at rationalizing even the actions we knew to be wrong. Endowed with intelligence, and with the
capacity to love, we can see clearly that the way we too often follow leads to
spiritual death. Try as we might,
we found ourselves in the predicament St. Paul described so well: knowing the
good, yet doing the wrong. And we,
with Paul, threw up our hands, crying out for someone to show us how: “So I
find it to be true that when I want to do right, evil lies close at
hand...Wretched man that I am! Who
will deliver me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:21,24)
It is into such a world, to such people
as us, that Christians believe God organized a rescue mission. Seeing a planet in turmoil, and a human
race fallen, and drowning, in a sea of repeating acts of inhumanity, God chose
to step into the scene, and become the bridge to dry land.
How was this rescue to be effected? Early in each Gospel we meet the
striking figure of John the Baptist.
Rough and even uncouth, clothed in animal skins, eating locusts and wild
honey, breathing fire against the sins of the day, John is a sort of advance
man, who prepares the crowds for Jesus.
He proclaims that he is not the bearer of salvation, merely the
Herald. He tells them to get ready
to receive the One who will forgive their sins.
Christ's mission, which John announces,
is a radical mission. The forgiveness
that he announces is something many persons distrust. Most of us have the suspicion, at some level that we are
going to have to buy our forgiveness.
After all, that’s the way the world operates.
Many persons fear God, not in the sense
of being over-awed by the power and enormity of Divinity, but fearing that
something in their character, or life, is so bad that they can never be
accepted by God. There’s even some
evidence in Scripture that John had some of these fears. After he was imprisoned, John became
worried that Jesus wasn’t doing all the things he thought he ought to be
doing. Finally he sent word by one
of his students, asking Jesus if he really was the Messiah, and if he was, why
he didn't have more to show for it.
John had trouble understanding the ways
by which Jesus brought salvation, and if Jesus was Israel’s Messiah, why wasn’t
he moving against the wicked and the oppressors? And what we, to this day, have trouble understanding: how
Christ’s coming breaks down the walls separating men and women from God, or
moves the world closer to the new world for which we long. In the coming of Jesus we meet the only
person in history who has the right to judge anyone. And he comes offering not condemnation, but forgiveness to
everyone who will acknowledge that they need it, and will accept his guidance
in forgiving those from whom they are estranged.
There is sound psychology behind
this. Jesus understood that we are
not fit to love one another until we have learned to love ourselves, and we
will not learn to love ourselves until we accept ourselves as we are. He also understood that the key to
accepting ourselves is in knowing that God accepts us, for that to happen we
must know ourselves forgiven of all the sins, which stand between God and
ourselves. God chose to impart
this knowledge by becoming one of us, and so the Grand Miracle occurred, and
Jesus was born. The Eternal Word,
that was from before the beginning, became flesh, and we beheld his glory,
glory as of the only-begotten Son.
Jesus came in that way for us, and for our salvation, and ultimately for
the healing of our broken world.
Howard MacMullen
© February, 2013
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