Second Sunday After Christmas
Preaching
Lectionary Preaching Workbook
Series VII, Cycle C
Theme For The Day
Jesus Christ is God's autobiography.
Old Testament Lesson
Jeremiah 31:7-14
With Consolations I Will Lead Them Back
During the first part of Jeremiah's prophetic ministry he was a prophet of doom, condemning those who had turned from the Lord's ways. In the latter part of his ministry, after the disaster and ruin of the Babylonian assault had become apparent, he changed his tune, becoming a prophet of hope. Today's passage belongs to that latter period. The Lord will gather the people from all points of the compass, bringing them back home in a great procession. It will be an emotional reunion: "with weeping they shall come, and with consolations I will lead them back," says the Lord (v. 9). The returning exiles' journey back home will be far easier than their journey into exile. The route back will take them by cool, refreshing streams and along straight paths. "He who scattered Israel will gather him, and will keep him as a shepherd a flock" (v. 10) -- the image of a shepherd recalls that of the Davidic monarchy. Israel's kings had failed the people; the Lord, however, is the true shepherd, and will not stop until every lost lamb is returned to the fold. To "sing aloud on the height of Zion" (v. 12) is to resume worship in the devastated temple. The Lord will give the people "gladness for sorrow" (v. 13). There are some who assume that life should have no dark side, that any amount of suffering is unacceptable, and reflects poorly on God's love and concern for creation. This is not the perspective of the Bible. The important thing, to Jeremiah, is not that there is such a thing as sorrow, but that sorrow passes, and that God replaces it eventually with gladness.
New Testament Lesson
Ephesians 1:3-14
A Plan For The Fullness Of Time
This is one of those passages that provides an embarrassment of riches for preaching. There is predestination: "he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world" (v. 4). There is adoption ("He destined us for adoption as his children," v. 5) -- a common practice in the Roman world, adoption was a means by which a favored young person fully participated in a family's wealth and good fortune. There is "redemption through [Christ's] blood" (v. 7). There is a sense of God's will as mysterious ("the mystery of his will," v. 9) -- mystery religions were common in the Greco-Roman world, and there was a healthy sense of the holy as being partially obscured and not capable of analysis. The most fruitful homiletical approach, however, in light of the New Year's holiday, may be to explore the phrase, "a plan for the fullness of time" (v. 11). There is the sense, here, that not only does God have a plan for creation, but that even time bends itself to God's purposes. Time itself is transformed by God's grace and power. One day it will become full, fruitful, complete.
The Gospel
John 1:(1-9) 10-18
The Word Become Flesh
The Prologue to John is one of the most famous, as well as the most mysterious, passages in the New Testament. Although verses 1-9 (dealing with the work of the divine logos in creation) are supplied as an additional reading, the main focus of the lectionary text is on verses 10-18, which speak of the coming of the logos into the world, and the world's less-than-enthusiastic reception of him. In the first part of this passage, John speaks in terms of Platonic philosophy that would have been familiar to many of his more educated readers. Concepts such as a pre-existent logos and emanations of light from a central divine principle would have had a certain resonance in his readers. But then John gets very specific indeed: "the Word became flesh and lived among us" (v. 14). God, here, begins as a distant and all-but-unattainable philosophical principle; but then Jesus, the logos made flesh, comes and lives among us, making God known (v. 18). The shift in person at verse 14 is significant; having spoken in the third person, John now shifts to the second. "The Word ... lived among us." No longer is John speaking in abstract philosophical terms; he has shifted to personal witness, to speaking of his own experience. He has entered the story of God's salvation, as we all must enter it if we are to receive the gift.
Preaching Possibilities
Here's a trivia question. What one thing do the following people have in common: Benjamin Franklin, Martina Navratilova, Fred Astaire, Adolf Hitler, Katharine Hepburn, Spiro T. Agnew, Casey Stengel, and Saint Teresa of Avila?
The answer is, each of them has written an autobiography.
Archaeologists have dug up the earliest known autobiographies, deep in the Egyptian desert. Written by the pharaohs on stone slabs, they record -- in hieroglyphics -- the greatest events of each king's reign. Many of them also include instructions, from pharaoh to son, on how not to repeat the father's mistakes.
Modern autobiographies aren't nearly so frank when it comes to this whole subject of mistakes. This has led some people to think they're not much use for anything (such as Will Rogers, for instance). Rogers once quipped, in his own autobiography, "When you put down the good things you ought to have done, and leave out the bad ones you did do -- well, that's memoirs." Henry Kissinger admitted to much the same tactic, when he said, of his own autobiography, "I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850." Film producer Samuel Goldwyn grew so sick of Hollywood types promoting themselves that he remarked, "I don't think anybody should write his autobiography until after he's dead."
Yet despite all the bad press, autobiographies are still hot sellers in the bookstores. Whether it's the "kiss and tell" memoirs of a Hollywood socialite, or the ponderous life story of a general or politician, autobiographies sell.
Why do they? What makes them so fascinating? Surely it has something to do with a deep desire, present within most of us, whether famous or ordinary, to tell our story. As newscaster David Brinkley titled a book of his personal commentaries, Everyone's Entitled To My Opinion. Autobiographies are a gift of the self, a revelation.
Now here's the question that's more to the point, for a sermon. If God were to write an autobiography, what would it be like?
Some might respond, "God already has written an autobiography: it's called the Bible." We could make a case for that.
Many of us have learned to look at the Bible not as a single book, but as a whole library, whose process of creation has spanned hundreds, even thousands, of years. This library has many different human authors, each one expressing a unique viewpoint. It's a bit of a stretch to describe this entire library of laws and poetry, history and theology -- and so much more -- as autobiography.
Others may be inclined to see the creation -- this world in which we live -- as God's autobiography. Indeed, that's the sentiment of at least one well-known hymn:
This is my Father's world:
He shines in all that's fair;
In the rustling grass I hear him pass,
He speaks to me everywhere.
But that's a bit of a stretch, too. Many people look out at the natural world and claim to see traces of the Creator's hand. They behold the awesome spectacle of the Grand Canyon ... the wonders of the eagle's flight ... the intricate secrets of photosynthesis, and declare, "How could this possibly have come into existence without God?"
Yet, for every person who claims the natural world points to a Creator, there are countless others who see, in the natural order, little more than a frightening randomness: who despair at the vision of what existentialist novelist Albert Camus calls "the benign indifference of the universe."
Neither the Bible nor the natural world can qualify as God's autobiography. To the person of faith, each one reveals signs aplenty of the Lord's loving touch. Yet, to the unbeliever, the Bible is too easily reduced to a cultural artifact; and to the skeptic, the order of creation becomes a series of mere coincidences, lost in an expanse of infinite probability.
So what is God's autobiography? There's one more candidate -- one we can glimpse in today's reading from John: "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."
To the gospel writer John, it's clear: Jesus Christ is God's autobiography.
Jesus Christ was not created by God. Jesus Christ is God. They are one and the same, and have been so since before creation. When it came time for God to compose an autobiography, to truly tell the human race what Yahweh, Lord of hosts, is like, God chose for an artistic medium not paper, not stone, not even gold, but human flesh: a living, breathing human being. God's autobiography is none other than the infant born to Mary, and laid in a manger ... who was carried on his mother's back on the flight into Egypt ... who astounded the scribes in the temple at age twelve ... who cured a man's blindness with a paste made of dirt and his own spittle ... who died on a cross in bloody agony. The autobiography of God is the same one who rose from the dead, and allowed his disciples to touch his wounds ... who ate a piece of fish, like any other human being ... and of whom it was said that, when he broke bread, "their eyes were opened and they recognized him."
This doctrine has a technical, theological name: it's called "incarnation." Literally, "incarnation" means "in the flesh" -- from the Latin carne, or "meat." It's the same place our words "carnivorous" and "chile con carne" come from. When we describe Jesus as "God incarnate," what we mean is "God in the flesh": God revealed not in stardust, or crystalline structures or vibrations of the cosmic spheres, but in the same living stuff of which we ourselves are made.
Mind-boggling, isn't it? But the good news is we don't have to understand it. We have but to experience it -- as we can in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. "This is my body ... This is my blood." This is God, among us.
Prayer For The Day
"O Come, O Come, Emmanuel," we sang, O Lord,
a few short weeks ago.
"Emmanuel -- God with us."
We sang it as a bright hope,
but one we scarcely understood.
How, indeed, can we understand this wonder,
this greatest of all miracles?
Our minds are too small, O Lord,
but our hearts are just large enough
to receive what you have to give.
May it be so for us, this day. Amen.
To Illustrate
John Betjeman, former poet laureate of England, writes of the Incarnation in a poem titled, simply, "Christmas":
No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare
That God was Man in Palestine
And lives to-day in Bread and Wine.
***
New Testament scholar J. B. Phillips tells a little parable that goes something like this ...
Once upon a time a very young angel was being shown the glories of God's universe by a more experienced angel. He saw many spectacular things: whirling planets, blazing suns, magnificent comets. Then the older angel pointed out a rather insignificant-looking blue-green sphere turning rather slowly on its axis. The young angel was decidedly underwhelmed.
But the senior angel drew his attention back to this small celestial body. "That," he declared, "is the visited planet."
"The visited planet? You don't mean visited by...?"
"Indeed I do. God has visited that planet. God took on human form and went down to that place and lived there as one of them."
The thought was almost incomprehensible to the little angel. But the older one persisted. They went back in time and observed the planet from its beginnings. From time to time they saw flashes of light appear on the planet's surface. The older angel explained that every glow of light was a time when God's knowledge and wisdom broke through. The earth went on circling around the sun, until there appeared a light so intense that both angels hid their eyes. It was over in an instant. The little angel knew instinctively that this was the visit they had just witnessed. "Why did it last such a short time?" he asked.
"Most people failed to recognize him for who he was. They preferred their own darkness to his light. In the end, they killed him."
The young angel was horrified. "Well, I suppose that's the end of the story, then."
"Keep watching," said the senior angel.
The earth turned three more times on its axis, in absolute blackness. Then the brightest of lights appeared. "They killed him. But he conquered death. He rose again and appeared to many people before he returned to Heaven."
The angels continued to watch. They observed that now instead of the darkness, tiny points of light spread out across the face of the earth causing a rosy glow. "You see what is happening?" the one said to the other. "The bright glow is all the people who believe. They continue to tell others about God's visit. The glow continues to spread as God is born anew in each one's life."
***
In M. Night Shyamalan's 2000 film, Unbreakable, a security guard named David Dunn miraculously survives a catastrophic train crash outside Philadelphia. Not only is he the sole survivor out of 132 passengers, he also is completely unharmed. Later, he is approached by a man named Elijah Price, who it turns out has a rare disorder in which his bones are extremely fragile. Price has acquired the nickname, "Mr. Glass." He is the opposite of Dunn, who is "unbreakable."
Shyamalan's film is an intriguing science-fiction tale, but the wonder of the Incarnation is that God enters the world and becomes breakable.
***
Emil Brunner, in a sermon titled "The Great Invitation," tells this story:
Two neighbors have quarreled and parted company for some reason or other. Then it occurs to one of them that this situation is just not right. She writes a letter to her former friend suggesting that they make peace.
She receives no reply. Come now, she thinks, I must try again. So she writes: "Let us make peace and resume our former friendly relations." Still no reply. Then, one bitterly cold winter evening, the woman decides to undertake the long journey to her neighbor's house on foot. She arrives panting, dusted with snow, and petrified with cold. She repeats by word of mouth her invitation. Finally it begins to dawn on the neighbor that here is a real human being, frozen, drenched, and panting. Now his heart melts and he takes the invitation seriously. Now he says, "Yes."
This neighbor, Brunner says, is God. God has written us many a letter and we have not answered. Finally, God has come to dwell as a poor man among humans, as one with nowhere to lay his head, as one who must die on the cross because people still refuse to believe God's invitation. And yet, in that hour, the eyes of some are opened. Such is the love of God toward us, so piercing in the invitation that we cannot now fail to say, "Yes."
***
I was talking to somebody not long ago who said, "You know, I used to believe in God; but then, as I grew up, I found it harder and harder to think of this old man up there in the sky, so far removed from all the pain and suffering down here in the world." And I said to him, "I don't believe in that god either! The God I believe in is the God I see in the middle of the pain and the suffering down here in the world. Without Jesus, the crucified Jesus, sharing and bearing the pain and sin and suffering of the world, I don't actually know who on earth or in heaven God might be at all." You see, if you envisage a god up there in the sky, detached from the reality of the world, any worship you offer will simply be a distant acknowledgment of majesty, like the ploughboy doffing his cap as the great nobleman rides by ignoring him. And if you go the other route, as my friend was inclined to, and say that therefore the word "god" can only refer to the impulse of goodness inside ourselves, then you'll find it pretty hard to sustain any real sense of worship at all. All you're left with is the ploughboy imagining himself to be a nobleman. But if Jesus is to be the lens through which you glimpse the beauty of God, you will discover what it means to worship, because you will discover what it means to be loved.
-- N. T. Wright, For All God's Worth: True Worship and the Calling of the Church (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), pp. 9-10
Jesus Christ is God's autobiography.
Old Testament Lesson
Jeremiah 31:7-14
With Consolations I Will Lead Them Back
During the first part of Jeremiah's prophetic ministry he was a prophet of doom, condemning those who had turned from the Lord's ways. In the latter part of his ministry, after the disaster and ruin of the Babylonian assault had become apparent, he changed his tune, becoming a prophet of hope. Today's passage belongs to that latter period. The Lord will gather the people from all points of the compass, bringing them back home in a great procession. It will be an emotional reunion: "with weeping they shall come, and with consolations I will lead them back," says the Lord (v. 9). The returning exiles' journey back home will be far easier than their journey into exile. The route back will take them by cool, refreshing streams and along straight paths. "He who scattered Israel will gather him, and will keep him as a shepherd a flock" (v. 10) -- the image of a shepherd recalls that of the Davidic monarchy. Israel's kings had failed the people; the Lord, however, is the true shepherd, and will not stop until every lost lamb is returned to the fold. To "sing aloud on the height of Zion" (v. 12) is to resume worship in the devastated temple. The Lord will give the people "gladness for sorrow" (v. 13). There are some who assume that life should have no dark side, that any amount of suffering is unacceptable, and reflects poorly on God's love and concern for creation. This is not the perspective of the Bible. The important thing, to Jeremiah, is not that there is such a thing as sorrow, but that sorrow passes, and that God replaces it eventually with gladness.
New Testament Lesson
Ephesians 1:3-14
A Plan For The Fullness Of Time
This is one of those passages that provides an embarrassment of riches for preaching. There is predestination: "he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world" (v. 4). There is adoption ("He destined us for adoption as his children," v. 5) -- a common practice in the Roman world, adoption was a means by which a favored young person fully participated in a family's wealth and good fortune. There is "redemption through [Christ's] blood" (v. 7). There is a sense of God's will as mysterious ("the mystery of his will," v. 9) -- mystery religions were common in the Greco-Roman world, and there was a healthy sense of the holy as being partially obscured and not capable of analysis. The most fruitful homiletical approach, however, in light of the New Year's holiday, may be to explore the phrase, "a plan for the fullness of time" (v. 11). There is the sense, here, that not only does God have a plan for creation, but that even time bends itself to God's purposes. Time itself is transformed by God's grace and power. One day it will become full, fruitful, complete.
The Gospel
John 1:(1-9) 10-18
The Word Become Flesh
The Prologue to John is one of the most famous, as well as the most mysterious, passages in the New Testament. Although verses 1-9 (dealing with the work of the divine logos in creation) are supplied as an additional reading, the main focus of the lectionary text is on verses 10-18, which speak of the coming of the logos into the world, and the world's less-than-enthusiastic reception of him. In the first part of this passage, John speaks in terms of Platonic philosophy that would have been familiar to many of his more educated readers. Concepts such as a pre-existent logos and emanations of light from a central divine principle would have had a certain resonance in his readers. But then John gets very specific indeed: "the Word became flesh and lived among us" (v. 14). God, here, begins as a distant and all-but-unattainable philosophical principle; but then Jesus, the logos made flesh, comes and lives among us, making God known (v. 18). The shift in person at verse 14 is significant; having spoken in the third person, John now shifts to the second. "The Word ... lived among us." No longer is John speaking in abstract philosophical terms; he has shifted to personal witness, to speaking of his own experience. He has entered the story of God's salvation, as we all must enter it if we are to receive the gift.
Preaching Possibilities
Here's a trivia question. What one thing do the following people have in common: Benjamin Franklin, Martina Navratilova, Fred Astaire, Adolf Hitler, Katharine Hepburn, Spiro T. Agnew, Casey Stengel, and Saint Teresa of Avila?
The answer is, each of them has written an autobiography.
Archaeologists have dug up the earliest known autobiographies, deep in the Egyptian desert. Written by the pharaohs on stone slabs, they record -- in hieroglyphics -- the greatest events of each king's reign. Many of them also include instructions, from pharaoh to son, on how not to repeat the father's mistakes.
Modern autobiographies aren't nearly so frank when it comes to this whole subject of mistakes. This has led some people to think they're not much use for anything (such as Will Rogers, for instance). Rogers once quipped, in his own autobiography, "When you put down the good things you ought to have done, and leave out the bad ones you did do -- well, that's memoirs." Henry Kissinger admitted to much the same tactic, when he said, of his own autobiography, "I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850." Film producer Samuel Goldwyn grew so sick of Hollywood types promoting themselves that he remarked, "I don't think anybody should write his autobiography until after he's dead."
Yet despite all the bad press, autobiographies are still hot sellers in the bookstores. Whether it's the "kiss and tell" memoirs of a Hollywood socialite, or the ponderous life story of a general or politician, autobiographies sell.
Why do they? What makes them so fascinating? Surely it has something to do with a deep desire, present within most of us, whether famous or ordinary, to tell our story. As newscaster David Brinkley titled a book of his personal commentaries, Everyone's Entitled To My Opinion. Autobiographies are a gift of the self, a revelation.
Now here's the question that's more to the point, for a sermon. If God were to write an autobiography, what would it be like?
Some might respond, "God already has written an autobiography: it's called the Bible." We could make a case for that.
Many of us have learned to look at the Bible not as a single book, but as a whole library, whose process of creation has spanned hundreds, even thousands, of years. This library has many different human authors, each one expressing a unique viewpoint. It's a bit of a stretch to describe this entire library of laws and poetry, history and theology -- and so much more -- as autobiography.
Others may be inclined to see the creation -- this world in which we live -- as God's autobiography. Indeed, that's the sentiment of at least one well-known hymn:
This is my Father's world:
He shines in all that's fair;
In the rustling grass I hear him pass,
He speaks to me everywhere.
But that's a bit of a stretch, too. Many people look out at the natural world and claim to see traces of the Creator's hand. They behold the awesome spectacle of the Grand Canyon ... the wonders of the eagle's flight ... the intricate secrets of photosynthesis, and declare, "How could this possibly have come into existence without God?"
Yet, for every person who claims the natural world points to a Creator, there are countless others who see, in the natural order, little more than a frightening randomness: who despair at the vision of what existentialist novelist Albert Camus calls "the benign indifference of the universe."
Neither the Bible nor the natural world can qualify as God's autobiography. To the person of faith, each one reveals signs aplenty of the Lord's loving touch. Yet, to the unbeliever, the Bible is too easily reduced to a cultural artifact; and to the skeptic, the order of creation becomes a series of mere coincidences, lost in an expanse of infinite probability.
So what is God's autobiography? There's one more candidate -- one we can glimpse in today's reading from John: "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."
To the gospel writer John, it's clear: Jesus Christ is God's autobiography.
Jesus Christ was not created by God. Jesus Christ is God. They are one and the same, and have been so since before creation. When it came time for God to compose an autobiography, to truly tell the human race what Yahweh, Lord of hosts, is like, God chose for an artistic medium not paper, not stone, not even gold, but human flesh: a living, breathing human being. God's autobiography is none other than the infant born to Mary, and laid in a manger ... who was carried on his mother's back on the flight into Egypt ... who astounded the scribes in the temple at age twelve ... who cured a man's blindness with a paste made of dirt and his own spittle ... who died on a cross in bloody agony. The autobiography of God is the same one who rose from the dead, and allowed his disciples to touch his wounds ... who ate a piece of fish, like any other human being ... and of whom it was said that, when he broke bread, "their eyes were opened and they recognized him."
This doctrine has a technical, theological name: it's called "incarnation." Literally, "incarnation" means "in the flesh" -- from the Latin carne, or "meat." It's the same place our words "carnivorous" and "chile con carne" come from. When we describe Jesus as "God incarnate," what we mean is "God in the flesh": God revealed not in stardust, or crystalline structures or vibrations of the cosmic spheres, but in the same living stuff of which we ourselves are made.
Mind-boggling, isn't it? But the good news is we don't have to understand it. We have but to experience it -- as we can in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. "This is my body ... This is my blood." This is God, among us.
Prayer For The Day
"O Come, O Come, Emmanuel," we sang, O Lord,
a few short weeks ago.
"Emmanuel -- God with us."
We sang it as a bright hope,
but one we scarcely understood.
How, indeed, can we understand this wonder,
this greatest of all miracles?
Our minds are too small, O Lord,
but our hearts are just large enough
to receive what you have to give.
May it be so for us, this day. Amen.
To Illustrate
John Betjeman, former poet laureate of England, writes of the Incarnation in a poem titled, simply, "Christmas":
No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare
That God was Man in Palestine
And lives to-day in Bread and Wine.
***
New Testament scholar J. B. Phillips tells a little parable that goes something like this ...
Once upon a time a very young angel was being shown the glories of God's universe by a more experienced angel. He saw many spectacular things: whirling planets, blazing suns, magnificent comets. Then the older angel pointed out a rather insignificant-looking blue-green sphere turning rather slowly on its axis. The young angel was decidedly underwhelmed.
But the senior angel drew his attention back to this small celestial body. "That," he declared, "is the visited planet."
"The visited planet? You don't mean visited by...?"
"Indeed I do. God has visited that planet. God took on human form and went down to that place and lived there as one of them."
The thought was almost incomprehensible to the little angel. But the older one persisted. They went back in time and observed the planet from its beginnings. From time to time they saw flashes of light appear on the planet's surface. The older angel explained that every glow of light was a time when God's knowledge and wisdom broke through. The earth went on circling around the sun, until there appeared a light so intense that both angels hid their eyes. It was over in an instant. The little angel knew instinctively that this was the visit they had just witnessed. "Why did it last such a short time?" he asked.
"Most people failed to recognize him for who he was. They preferred their own darkness to his light. In the end, they killed him."
The young angel was horrified. "Well, I suppose that's the end of the story, then."
"Keep watching," said the senior angel.
The earth turned three more times on its axis, in absolute blackness. Then the brightest of lights appeared. "They killed him. But he conquered death. He rose again and appeared to many people before he returned to Heaven."
The angels continued to watch. They observed that now instead of the darkness, tiny points of light spread out across the face of the earth causing a rosy glow. "You see what is happening?" the one said to the other. "The bright glow is all the people who believe. They continue to tell others about God's visit. The glow continues to spread as God is born anew in each one's life."
***
In M. Night Shyamalan's 2000 film, Unbreakable, a security guard named David Dunn miraculously survives a catastrophic train crash outside Philadelphia. Not only is he the sole survivor out of 132 passengers, he also is completely unharmed. Later, he is approached by a man named Elijah Price, who it turns out has a rare disorder in which his bones are extremely fragile. Price has acquired the nickname, "Mr. Glass." He is the opposite of Dunn, who is "unbreakable."
Shyamalan's film is an intriguing science-fiction tale, but the wonder of the Incarnation is that God enters the world and becomes breakable.
***
Emil Brunner, in a sermon titled "The Great Invitation," tells this story:
Two neighbors have quarreled and parted company for some reason or other. Then it occurs to one of them that this situation is just not right. She writes a letter to her former friend suggesting that they make peace.
She receives no reply. Come now, she thinks, I must try again. So she writes: "Let us make peace and resume our former friendly relations." Still no reply. Then, one bitterly cold winter evening, the woman decides to undertake the long journey to her neighbor's house on foot. She arrives panting, dusted with snow, and petrified with cold. She repeats by word of mouth her invitation. Finally it begins to dawn on the neighbor that here is a real human being, frozen, drenched, and panting. Now his heart melts and he takes the invitation seriously. Now he says, "Yes."
This neighbor, Brunner says, is God. God has written us many a letter and we have not answered. Finally, God has come to dwell as a poor man among humans, as one with nowhere to lay his head, as one who must die on the cross because people still refuse to believe God's invitation. And yet, in that hour, the eyes of some are opened. Such is the love of God toward us, so piercing in the invitation that we cannot now fail to say, "Yes."
***
I was talking to somebody not long ago who said, "You know, I used to believe in God; but then, as I grew up, I found it harder and harder to think of this old man up there in the sky, so far removed from all the pain and suffering down here in the world." And I said to him, "I don't believe in that god either! The God I believe in is the God I see in the middle of the pain and the suffering down here in the world. Without Jesus, the crucified Jesus, sharing and bearing the pain and sin and suffering of the world, I don't actually know who on earth or in heaven God might be at all." You see, if you envisage a god up there in the sky, detached from the reality of the world, any worship you offer will simply be a distant acknowledgment of majesty, like the ploughboy doffing his cap as the great nobleman rides by ignoring him. And if you go the other route, as my friend was inclined to, and say that therefore the word "god" can only refer to the impulse of goodness inside ourselves, then you'll find it pretty hard to sustain any real sense of worship at all. All you're left with is the ploughboy imagining himself to be a nobleman. But if Jesus is to be the lens through which you glimpse the beauty of God, you will discover what it means to worship, because you will discover what it means to be loved.
-- N. T. Wright, For All God's Worth: True Worship and the Calling of the Church (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), pp. 9-10
