If you attend the late service on Christmas Eve, the morning eucharist on Christmas day and this morning’s service, you will have heard the prologue to the Gospel of John three times by now. It is an awesome piece of writing — not just for the language with its gentle repetition but mostly because the thoughts contained therein are too marvelous for us to grasp.
Isn’t it amazing that in beginning, God created humankind and then breathed the breath of life, God’s presence, God’s shekina, into our souls and bodies? You and I share that essence of life, that which the Hebrew scriptures call nephesh, a word that cannot really be translated other than ‘essence of life.’ You and I share God’s presence in our very being, and you and I also share that animating breath of life that God has given us. You and I share that spark of life, the soul, which is the light that keeps us alive. It is amazing, isn’t it, that God, too, in Christ, shared the same?
Then there’s the wonderful language in the passage where it talks about the Word becoming flesh and ‘liv[ing] among us.’ The word translated as ‘lived’ means ‘tented,’ and it is the same word used in the Hebrew scriptures to describe God’s presence among the people: God is in the tent of the tabernacle; by the same token, Wisdom sets up her tent in our midst.
Eugene Peterson in his interpretation of the prologue to John puts this same phrase into a wonderful image: ‘The Word (otherwise called in his translation, ‘Word, the Incarnate One, as the Life-Light’) became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.’ What a fabulous way of expressing God’s proximity to us — God has moved into the neighbourhood — God is around every corner I turn, in every home I see and in every person. When I think of God dwelling with us in this way, I can’t help but remember the narrow alleys of the neighbourhood around Sma Trinidad near San Salvador or Soyapango where my friend Maura lives, with the 10000 people that lived crammed into that small neighbourhood. And there are the people who live right behind or around the corner from this church.
Mary Pratt in her poem, ‘Benedicite Around the Block’ (1) describes our neighbourhood well… a nun in a parking lot reading the daily office, a man in a brown suit and cowboy hat, a woman smoking a cigarette, a lawyer with a face like Atticus Finch (à la Gregory Peck), a woman tripping on high heels, a small boy with a duffle bag, the empty storefronts, leftover bits of trash, ‘rotting houses with rotting porches, wood fire escapes, littered with bottles in boxes and cans in bags, a broken shopping cart twisted in the cracked sidewalk.’
This is our ’hood. The people here are my brothers and sisters. They are your brothers and sisters. God is here in the neighbourhood, now, with us, in Jesus, in the Incarnation showing God’s love even when we cannot see it clearly.
Why does God move into our neighbourhood and midst? Patricia Wilson-Kastner captures not only the sense of divine Love that lies in the Incarnation but also some of the themes of the gospel of John when she writes:
‘Jesus became flesh so as to show forth the love of God among us, a love which is not merely an expression of good will, but the power of an energy which is the heart, core, and cohesive force of the universe…. Christ is the human expression of God to us, and thus we must try to understand what God meant in Christ…. Christ is… the one who shows all persons how to live. As a human he shows us what human self-possession and self-giving are. Thereby Christ shows us the link between divine and human, the cosmos and its conscious inhabitants.’ (2)
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One of my favourite sights on Christmas Eve comes as the congregation lights its candles for the singing of Silent Night and the reading from the last gospel. There is something incredibly poignant and moving to see each one of your faces illuminated by a sole flickering flame, then multiplied by each candle. The congregation, as a whole, was still, listening to the proclamation of Christ coming into the world as the Light that enlightens the world. I saw you waiting for the light and, in your hands, as you held the light and with that little candle and its silly paper bobêche, that doesn’t do any good, you were holding hope.
As I looked at your illumined faces, I thought of the countless other people throughout the world and throughout time who have held a candle in their hands, hoping… hoping because something had happened or was going to happen to another part of humankind, God’s incarnation pitched amongst us.
Christmas Eve I saw faces lit by candles in the days after 9-11 as impromptu shrines sprang up, particularly around New York City. I saw faces lit by candles on a very cold March night in 2003 as 1000 of us stood on the steps to the state capitol building three days before the assault on Baghdad. I saw faces lit by candles in the days following the tsunami five years ago, people in Banda Aceh. I have seen photos of people holding candles, as a sign of silent protest outside of prisons when they know someone will be executed. I have seen candle upon candle in all the churches through which I passed on my 1570 kilometres of the Way of Saint James of Compostela. And on and on it goes, the universal human expression of sadness, community, seeking and mostly hope, united in our common humanity.
Why else would there be a website where you can light a virtual candle that will ‘burn’ for 48 hours?
When I checked their homepage in the writing of this sermon, it read: 12729 candles from 242 countries are shining.
The page then goes on to say:
In many different traditions lighting candles is a sacred action. It expresses more than words can express. It has to do with gratefulness. From time immemorial, people have lit candles in sacred places. Why should cyberspace not be sacred?
You may want to begin or end your day by the sacred ritual of lighting a candle on this website. Or you may want to light a birthday candle for a friend. One single guideline is all you need: Slow down and do it with full attention. From here on, you will be guided step by step. [gratefulness.org]
Yes, lighting a candle is a universal expression of seeking light and hope, of leaving a visible sign of an uttered prayer. It is why we have candles in the chapel by the icons of the Blessed Virgin Mary and John Henry Hopkins. You can always go there and light one. Those of us who pass by later may not know the content of your prayer nor who lit the candle but we will know that someone said a prayer and left behind a visual remembrance. And we will stop to look at that light, that prayer.
The symbol of light goes beyond simply hope or remembrance. It represents for us, in the eloquent words of John’s gospel, the Light that has come into the world, the Word, in other words, Jesus, God incarnate. God, Light, Jesus, with us. That is what we remember today.
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God is with us, Emmanuel, and God will always be with us. We know where the story of the incarnation leads — it leads from the crib to the cross to the tomb and to the resurrection. While the resurrection may seem a long way off from Christmas, it is so deeply intertwined with Christmas as to be very close and present. It is the very hope upon which our faith stands.
Whether it is God pitching God’s tent amongst us, or dwelling in the neighbourhood, God in Christ is with us, loving us and showing us how to love one another. And God in Christ knows our struggles inside-out from birth to death. How comforting!
God continues to dwell among us in our neighbours, our companions on the way. Realise we are all different, but we are all of God and we are all icons of God’s light. Christ our brother dwells in us. Indeed, we have seen God’s glory, full of grace and truth. For that, let us give thanks.
END NOTES
(1) In Women’s Uncommon Prayers, eds. Elizabeth Geitz, Marjorie Burke, Ann Smith (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 2000), 32-33.
(2) Patricia Wilson-Kastner, Faith, Feminism and the Christ (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983), Chapter 5, ‘Who Is This Christ?,’ 89-117.
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