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Jesus was born 2,000 years ago and is yet to be born in the
lives of those waiting to hear his saving Word. We have just
celebrated Christmas and the message is yet to be reborn in the
lives of many of us. With the coming of Christ the kingdom has
come, yet we still wait for its coming when he returns. Past,
present and future events are all woven together in a tapestry of
timelessness.
John the Baptist and the other John, the Evangelist, both
became weavers of God's action, pointing to the Christ and
reporting about him. Notice that here at the beginning of the
Evangelist's Gospel he does a remarkable thing with time, with
the chronology of how these things happened. Keep in mind that
John gives us no nativity story. There is no manger scene, no
holy family, no visit of the magi. Not even the genealogy which
Matthew uses to place Jesus' birth within the historical and
spiritual lineage that will testify to his origin. Christmas, for
John, is telling people who this Jesus really is. John preferred
to begin the story with a poetically crafted philosophical essay
on how Jesus was actually the Word of God, spoken to create all
things. From that before time began image of Jesus, John would
shift to the time when our Lord began speaking the Word of God
among us, the beginning of his public ministry.

To do this John the Evangelist blends the whole historic story
with the present story and places Jesus within the timeless
chronology of Creation. This Jesus, whose coming we celebrate at
Christmas, was present at Creation, the very agent of God's
creative power and voice. Pay attention once again to the tenses
of the verbs: "In the beginning was the Word ... became flesh ...
lived among us ... and we have seen his glory ..." From there the
Evangelist will go on to tell his personal witness of Jesus'
words and deeds: what Jesus did before their very eyes "here and
now," beginning with his public introduction.
Enter John the Baptist. As the Evangelist wove the tenses of
verbs with creation, the Baptist wove the tenses of verbs using
his own understanding of who Jesus was and when. Notice the
tenses again: "He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he
was before me. From his fullness we have all received." And
again, "No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is
close to the Father's heart, who has made him known." It is a
blending of what has been and what is; what we have seen occur
and what is yet to come. Throughout the story of Jesus, as John
the Baptist experienced him and as John the Evangelist reports
it, we are getting ready for the Christ to come. It is the
ancient formula of our faith, a timeless mixture of past, present
and future: "Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come
again."
I know of a pastor who tells a marvelous story about a seven-
year-old boy in the first Sunday school class he taught. The
pastor was a senior in high school at the time, just beginning to
have his first experiences at teaching the faith. You learn much
that way from the children and from the teachers around you who
were so helpful. Little Jeremy was a precocious young man who
always came early and stayed late. He was forever chatting and
asking unanswerable questions -- at least questions his young and
inexperienced teacher couldn't answer. The teenage teacher did
know enough to realize the relationship is the true lesson and he
truly enjoyed getting to know Jeremy.

One particular lesson stood out of the extra-ordinary
contribution Jeremy eventually made to the pastor's appreciation
of a mystery. One Sunday he was trying to explain, as well as he
could the "remember me" phrase in the last supper. He talked
about how it seemed to him that when we eat the bread and drink
the wine it is as if Jesus was here with us now. Or, he
described, we might think about Jesus as if we were actually back
there in the upper room. Years later he came to know that Jeremy
was way ahead of him but he didn't appreciate it then. Jeremy
launched into some sort of time-machine gibberish, as only a
seven-year-old could describe it. The teacher became very
impatient at the time and even more impatient when Jeremy stayed
after class again, trying to help the young teacher get it.
For several years that young Sunday school teacher had no need
or occasion to think about the conversation. It didn't cross his
mind until about three years later while trying just as hard to
follow along in an equally confusing situation. This time it was
in a college physics class -- the prof trying to describe some
aspect of quantum mechanics. Now, the physical sciences aren't
the forte of too many of us. As an encouraging aside, the
professor allowed as how all of this is highly theoretical and
tried to make the connections as best she could, with the
relativity contributions of Einstein. It's understood by only a
few, she said, even at her stage of learning and research.
Suddenly a strange feeling began to come over the Sunday school
teacher -- now physics student -- that he had heard all of this
before. Somewhere, at sometime, someone else had tried to tell
him how time could go so fast you could step into the future (on
what are now called "cosmic strings") and return by getting off
in time to greet yourself getting on.1 Suddenly he realized it
had been Jeremy. That little boy had some deep theoretical
capacity -- in the genius of a child's imagination and thought
process -- to develop an advanced technical concept of time
travel.
The fact is that this line of thinking is not science fiction
any longer. Since I first heard this story I have managed to

weave concepts of space-time mechanics into my teaching about
some of the mysteries of the faith. The results are remarkable.
Young people get it. And just as remarkable to me is how people
seem to unlearn these possibilities as they grow older and what
is real and can be possible takes over. The greater the "would-
be-wisdom" of people, by the world's standards, the less open
they may be to the mysteries of the faith. The older my classes
and audiences, the less the elements of space-time travel seem to
help people understand the space and time images of the faith.
How the "Word became flesh and dwelt among us" remains a
mystery. We might appreciate it more if we imagined Christ's
coming across dimensions of space and time from the divine
dimension of heaven, if you will, to the dimension of our
awareness. Eternity can indeed be an intriguing mystery. We might
appreciate it more if we added the convergence of our theology
and modern science's possibilities in the dimension of space and
time travel. For some it might be helpful and for others it won't
matter. Yet Jesus, as the eternal Word, without whom nothing was
made that was made, must span the eons of space and time. That
same Jesus "lived among us and we beheld his glory." The same
Jesus that is present in the sacrament and in the serving
fellowship of the Lord's people. Perhaps quantum physics is a
more compatible framework than our puzzlement. "Cosmic strings"
we might call it today. They called it things like remembering
and transfiguration.
These are dimensions that come to life for me whenever some
child asks me what there was before God. Or where do the dead go
at death? It gets a bit complicated, don't you know, when things
have to fit into our dimensions of space, time and chronology,
such as the resurrection of the dead. And just what did Jesus
mean when he said, "Today you will be with me in paradise?" On
the one hand you could take it figuratively and consider it a
poetic phrase about the promise. Or you can take it literally and
then you have a problem because he didn't rise for three days and
didn't ascend for a few weeks. Another

possibility that excites me is that it was a dimensional leap. It
all was that very day, as he and the repentant thief were to
experience it. For you and I there is another dimension that
included a whole different experience of the same space and time.
It is the realm of God -- call it the kingdom.
The mysteries of life and death -- life in the faith -- may get
lived out in the dimension where time is only a perception of the
human situation. And space is only a dimension that makes sense
within our limits. This means that during Advent we are preparing
for the coming of Christ who is already here. A dimension leap
has happened. It means that in the re-living of the mystery of
the cross on Good Friday we are participating today in what
happened once and for all. When Jesus stepped out of his grave
that means you and I walked out of ours. The Christ who was
present at creation is the same Christ who has died, and is risen
and will come again. Into our lives -- past, present and future.
Now, lest we think this is all far too hypothetical, it seems
to me that we do some of the same things with the major events of
our life. We have a way of merging past, present and future to
celebrate the most important events. That's what gives our
celebrations their timeless character. Let me suggest some
examples. Take the thoughts and images surrounding your
celebration of a birthday. In recalling your birth you are doing
more than enjoying an important day with friends and family. You
are doing more than using it as an opportunity to receive some
gifts that remind you of how you are appreciated by those around
you. You are recalling and bringing forward into your present
experience that day when you were born. What mother or father
among us enjoys his or her child's birthday without looking back
to the birth? You reflect on that day some years back when the
gift of life was first delivered to you and to the world. The
celebration brings it forward into current experience. Even the
future is suggested when we wish for one another, "Many happy
returns." Of course we all hope you have many more birthdays.

Christmas is like that. When we celebrate Jesus' birth we are
bringing the occasion forward. It is as if we could all gather at
the Bethlehem hillside and hear the original angel chorus. It is
like having a chance to go with the shepherds, and in a symbolic
way we do, as we make our way to church on Christmas Eve.
We do the same thing on our anniversaries. What couple doesn't
bring the whole happy occasion forward on their anniversary? They
recall the preparations, the wedding ceremony and the party,
enjoying it all over again. Each celebration of communion is like
an anniversary. It is a way of bringing the past forward. It is a
way to reach forward into the future coming of the kingdom and
bring it all to reality now.
When Jesus said, "Do this to remember me," he was doing much
more than recalling it. The Greek word is anamnesis and it means
much more than remembering. It is a memorial that has a way of
blending past, present and future all together. It means that
when we are at the altar table we are also at the table in the
upper room. When we taste the bread and the wine we are enjoying
the appetizers of the messianic banquet yet to come.
John was doing just that kind of blending of the events of
Jesus' life and our own. To introduce Jesus to his friends and
followers, John the Baptist admitted that Jesus was the one for
whom they were waiting, not John himself. Then John the
Evangelist blended what is hoped for with what is. History has
changed when you meet the Christ. It is happening again every
time you celebrate his presence.


1-David H. Freedman, Time Travel Redux, Discover, Vol. 13, No. 4;
April, 1992; pp. 58-59.