Do you remember when you first got glasses? Or perhaps more recently when you first got bifocals? (It is hard to believe that I have been wearing them seven years.) It was a move that I had been dreading for years. Even though I see a lot better than I used to, there’s something about admitting to needing a stronger lens to be able to read that bugged me. Everyone warned me about the first few days of wearing the new glasses. Be careful going down or up stairs. Be careful opening doors. But the best advice was: Give yourself some time. Eventually your brain will adapt to this new way of seeing and eventually you’ll never think about the division in your lenses. You’ll see things in a new way.
My mind adapted after two months: it no longer stumbled at translating, as it were, at what I was seeing, or having to think about whether I should look out of the top or bottom lens (though these days, the altar book sometimes is a challenge which makes me wonder about trifocals!).
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You’ll see things in a new way, the sage one said.
That’s what Christmas morning is all about, isn’t it?
Last night, with its darkness and the retelling of the intimate story so well known that we can practically recite it, gives way to the vast mystery that John’s prologue offers us, with the words we see inscribed on the frieze in front of us. For a short moment in time, we linger in that in-between place, that liminal place our faith invites us often to occupy.
It would be easier, really to stay at the side of that crib in a stable. But our faith seems not to let us stay too long in any one place. Just as Jesus was constantly on the move through his three short years of ministry, so God tugs at our hearts to keep us moving, to keep us alive.
All the while, God asks us to look at life, our faith and God in a new way. Most of all, God invites us to abide in the mystery of the incarnation and not be afraid of it.
We aren’t comfortable, really, about dwelling in mystery. How can we explain that flesh and God have joined hands? How can we explain that fear and hope coexist? We want answers, facts, straight-forward clear ideas.
But to seek that type of answer is to miss the glory of the incarnation. It’s to see it in the wrong way.
Ephrem the Syrian of the fourth century wrote of Christ in God: ‘It is right that human beings should acknowledge your divinity. It is right for the heavenly beings to worship your humanity. The heavenly beings were amazed to see how small you became, and earthly ones to see how exalted.’
Or as the Persian poet, Hafiz, said: ‘God looked where in the world he might display his face. He pitched his tent in human fields, no other place.’
How do we explain this paradox of God with us? We don’t, really. That is the beauty of mystery. There are some things in our life that surpass understanding. (Interestingly, not even the theological dictionaries try to explain ‘mystery.’ They let it stand as one component of our faith that doesn’t need words.)
Mystery… it is that holy place, that in-between space where the encounter transcends the effable, the speakable. The grace of mystery is that it makes possible what is unspeakable: that is, it incarnates the holy. Mysterium, sacramentum. Mystery is the encounter that transcends all of the limits of encounter, like love. Mystery is encounter. It is the truth, the reality of encounter. The Word was made flesh. What can we say? God become human, that human could become divine. What can we say?
Nothing. For when we truly encounter mystery, there are no words. Only silent awe. Only heartfelt thanks. Only silent tears that come from the depths of our heart.
Even as we struggle with these unfathomable thoughts, isn’t there also a part of us that doesn’t want the mystery to be completely explained? Certainly for me there is. I want to be lifted to that place before all time when God chose to love us, to create us and dwell in our midst. I want to touch that mystery every time we gather to break bread and share the cup. And I trust that when I do touch mystery, everything is all right.
What I know best of all, in the midst of all this mystery talk, is that God loves us.
As you celebrate the wonder of God’s gift of Christ, linger for a moment in the wonder of mystery. Let those wordless and unspeakable aspects of God’s love touch you as do the morning rays of sun that so often bathe us. And remember that unspeakable mystery that God has loved us from before the beginning and always will.
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