My Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ

In scripture the verb "create" is used exclusively to describe the work of God. God creates, we cannot. We can only share in the wonder of God's creation, not as spectators, but as participants in it through birth.

The Indian writer and poet, Rabindranath Tagore, once said that the birth of each new child is a testimony that God has not yet despaired of the human race. Creation continues still. But it goes further still, for every birth is rooted in the mystery and purposes of incarnation. Thus Eugene Petersen can say, "Every time a baby is born the gospel is preached," echoing words spoken many centuries earlier by Saint Bonaventure, "Each child is a Divine word, for it tells of God."

The central mystery of our Christian faith that sets us apart from all other faiths and gives shape and meaning to all of life is the mystery of incarnation - the Word made flesh. We have become so familiar with the concept that it no longer has the power to surprise and shock us, and we forget that it was "foolishness" and "a stumbling block" to those who first heard the message. Perhaps the words of our Christmas carols - "Silent night . . . all is calm, all is bright" and "O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie" - are not so much painting a picture of divine bliss and peace at the coming of the Christ-child as commenting on the lull before the storm. From the reaction of Herod onwards, the incarnation is met with the angry reaction of a violent world that prefers darkness to light.

Jesus himself said, "From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force" (Matt 11:12) and, however we take the word "biazetai" (to use force, suffer violence), it speaks either of the kingdom of heaven breaking into the world with great power or of it being met with great violence.

Incarnation is anything but the celebration of a "Silent Night" where everything is the way it is meant to be. It is, rather, the story of the One who "came to his own, but his own would not receive him;" the story of the One who enters into the underside of history in order to invert it. It is a story that will, inevitably, evoke strong reaction and violent opposition; especially when we do not want the status quo challenged or changed. As Fulton Sheen once said:-

"We want to be saved, but not from our sins;
We want to be saved, but not at too great a price;
We want to be saved, but in our way, not his."

But that same story is also the surprising good news that the Word that spoke creation into being enters creation in human flesh - "the visible image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation" (Col 1:15) - to engage with us in a concrete, tangible and ongoing way. It is the story of the Divine kenosis entering into our lives and our world and filling our emptiness. God, in Christ, continues to speak creation into being.

Last month I quoted the words of Syria, Ephraim of Edessa, who in a beautiful poem captures something of the gentle power of an incarnation that breaks into our world and speaks a new world into being. It bears repeating:-

Your mother's womb has reversed all roles;
The Creator of all entered in his richness, but came forth poor;
The Exalted One entered her, but came forth meek;
The Magnificent One entered her, and came forth in a lowly hue;
The Mighty One entered, and put on insecurity;
The Provider for all entered, and experienced hunger
He who gives drink to all entered, and experienced thirst;
Naked and stripped He came forth from her, the One who clothes all.

Incarnation is echoed in every birth - in you and me. "Created in the image of God and re-created in Christ we are God's good news to the world, a Divine word telling of God." The German poet Cillesius in the 15^th century wrote:

"Though Christ be born a thousand times anew,
Despair O man, unless he be born in you."
Or to put it in a more modern idiom:
it seemed too much to ask
of one small virgin
that she should take shame
to serve the will of God.

. . . . and it seems much too much
to ask of you and me,
to be part of the
different thing -
God's shocking, unorthodox
unheard of thing,
To further heaven's hopes
And summon glory"
(Luci Shaw)

As you prepare for the Incarnation, may your life be a Divine word telling of God,

+ Brian

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