John 1:1-14
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.
And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.
These past four weeks of Advent called us into a time of preparation for beginning.
Christmas is our annual remembering of the beginning that the writer of John’s Gospel points to in such an exquisite and poetic way. The conjoining of Divine life and human flesh. Birth. The Word became flesh and lived among us.
The birth of a child, as we might have experienced at some point in our lives, the anticipated moment of beginning, can be so full of hope, of possibility and expectation. Preparing for birth is invaluable, there are practical things to consider and get ready, emotional things too. Preparation is the best we can do to avoid being caught entirely off-guard by a massive shift in life that we really have no idea about, we really have no idea what will come next. It’s a huge step into the unknown.
The birth, the beginning, is a moment in time, and there’s a lot of life to be lived afterwards. Every child will need parenting of some kind, and that’s rarely straightforward, and to muddy it up even more, life is just really complicated, it’s unpredictable and uncontrollable; there’s no guarantee of how anything will pan out. On top of all that, every birth, every beginning is also an ending. With the arrival of any new life comes the end of the life that preceded it.
Countless generations have crossed the threshold of this beginning, despite the risks and the complexities and the challenges. Our own life today is part of a chain of life that reaches all the way back – so many lives lived, countless, unnamable generations, making our own lives today, right now, possible.
Life is a miracle, and we’re surrounded by it, yet the world we live in seems to take is as a given, as kind of mundane … but if we’ve ever been close to birth ourselves, any birth, for that moment in time, that new beginning could not be further from anything ordinary or mundane.
When each of my children was born, I knew the miracle that life is with my whole being, I knew it, and I felt it like a miracle. That new life had just begun, right in front of me, blew my mind, the wonder that it is wasn’t lost on me then. I knew in my being then that it was a miracle of extraordinary proportions, and for a while that miracle lingered right in front of me… Then time passed, there were many, many hours of lost sleep; adjusting to parenthood is a thing all of its own. Then there was life with toddlers, then grade school kids, then teenagers, life was/has been is a lot. The pressures and demands of life, and the difficulties inherent in being in relationship, staying in relationship, all of it, over time, has had me forget over and over again my own encounter with the majesty of the miracle of birth, the miracle that is life. I’ve sidelined my own direct experience of birth, of that incomprehensible beginning … I’ve sidelined the miracle of my own existence, countless times, it’s been all too easy for me to forget the miracle, the miracle of life, the miracle of existence that is each and every living being I share this life with, and each and every living being that made my own life possible.
That each and every life has a remarkable, miraculous beginning is one thing we all share. The miracle of birth is the beginning of every life.
When we’re anticipating a new beginning, we have an instinct to prepare, to get ready for the change that is to come, best we can.
And then, when the big moment has passed, life picks up again, we can get distracted, stop noticing the miracle. The stuff of the world always has the potential to swallow us up … all too easily the the magnificence of that ‘common’ miracle, the miracle that holds hope, all the potential bound up in the promise that’s carried by new beginning, that wild miracle that is life, all thatcan slip out of view, all of it can be all too easily be forgotten – we got ‘stuff’ to do.
Birth changes everything, and birth can not a change a thing.
Our Christian story brings us back to the beginning, to the miracle of birth every year, because to make sense of life through Jesus’ life, his ministry, his death on the cross, and his resurrection, we must think first about birth, his birth; stay mindful of the significance of birth; truly understand that no life is accidental, or incidental, mundane or “ordinary,” all life is ordained by God, it is of God. … but we keep forgetting this.
As we read through Scripture, as we read the news, we encounter story after story in which we humans forget this, we forget it over and over. We do not treat all life as being of God, as sacred, holy. We build unjust societies, brimming with violence and death, we are masters of limiting life, controlling life, taking life. We build societies that hold some life is of great value whereas other life/other lives hold little or no value at all. Again and again, we fail to understand that life, all life is of God, is bound to the truth and reality of God; living well and living fully in this life is the call of every single living being, living together and living lives that are centered on God and infused with love, for one another and all Creation, this is the purpose of all our lives.
And it all starts with birth. Jesus entered this life just as we did to change the way we think about it.
If we forget the miracle that is the beginning, we will all too easily forget what we’re to do with the rest of it, with the rest of our life as we live it, with the lives of others we live alongside. We’ll all too easily forget that others’ lives started and are as miraculous as our own.
As Christians, we marvel at the miracle of incomprehensible proportions that is Jesus’ birth, feel the hope and possibility that radiates from that moment in our shared history, sense the potential for a world that’s to be healed and led by a Savior finally come among us … and yet, as we do with all birth, the miracle shared by every single one of us, this can be forgotten, and life can carry on as if this mighty miracle were not actually the reason and foundation for it all.
Fully prepared or not, Christmas is here. We now begin our journey into all that comes next. And we journey on, thanks to the mighty miracle of Jesus’ birth, we journey on as church. We journey as church so we might stay mindful also of the time that comes after the birth, the months and years that follow the miraculous beginning.
The moment of joy, the time set aside for celebration, it is good, and it will pass, but the truth of the miracle remains, always, unchanged, whether we’re mindful of its presence or not.
There will be complexities and difficulties ahead, for sure, no birth ends all that. There will be distractions and other demands on our attention – but how might the weeks, months, and years that lay ahead be changed if we’re able to stay mindful of the miracle? Not only the miracle of birth, but through the coming of Jesus, the miracle of life itself, bound as it is to the eternal, exquisite and life-giving truth of God.