Village Shepherd

The twelve days of Christmas are nearly up. In a couple of days time it'll all be over. The decorations will be down, the turkey finished at last, the presents almost forgotten. And so today we take a last look back at Christmas, and a good look forward to this whole new year. It feels like we have a huge, clean sheet stretching out ahead of us. A bit like a blanket of snow with no footprints in it. But in a way, 1998 is already marked - by what went on in 1997 - just as a blanket of snow may look fresh and untouched, but is actually dependant for its contours on what lies beneath it. 1998 is new, but is also a continuation of 1997, and depends on 1997 for its very existence. And that seems to be true of all new things. They always depend on what's gone before, so that quite often, their newness is almost swallowed up in the continuity. Usually, they're new, but part of a continuous process rather than completely radical and different. When God entered humanity in the person of Jesus, on that first Christmas day nearly 2,000 years ago, it was a new initiative by God. Dependant on what had gone before, but also completely radical and different. Here, for the first time, God was actually coming into his people, into the midst of humanity. He had previously been apart from them. Guiding them, leading them, loving them, caring for them, but outside them. Now for the first time, he entered humanity. God became human himself, in the person of Jesus. So that for the first time, God experienced human life for himself. No longer as an observer, as he'd been before, but as a participant, as a central character. And he experienced the whole of human life. Birth, babyhood, infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood. Life with its rapidly changing and confusing human emotions - joy, delight, love, pain, suffering, death. There are no human experiences unknown to God himself, through the person of Jesus. He's felt them all, he's been part of them all. So the first Christmas Day, the Incarnation, was different. This was a whole new initiative on the part of God. An initiative designed to open up all sorts of new possibilities. Like there was now a whole new sheet spreading out before humanity, just like a fresh, untouched blanket of snow. But what has happened as a result of that first Christmas? Has anything actually changed? What difference has the Incarnation, God becoming human, made to the world? We still have wars and terrorism. We still have murders and rape and theft and violence. We still have children dying of starvation in many poor countries. We still have increasing numbers of people sleeping rough on the streets of our own cities throughout the depths of winter. The poor grow poorer, and there are many more of them. The rich, on the whole, grow richer. There is corruption in high places throughout the world. And human beings still suffer. There's divorce and redundancy and debt and drugs and death. Despite God become human, human misery continues to abound. Just as 1998 is likely to be very similar to 1997, so life after the Incarnation seems to be very similar indeed to life before the Incarnation. Why is this? When Jesus was born, nearly 2000 years ago, he was God. Perhaps we can say God was within him, was his inner being. As Jesus grew and developed physically, so he grew and developed inwardly. The God within him was able to develop fully, so that Jesus' thoughts were God's thoughts, Jesus' deeds were God's deeds. The God within Jesus developed to his fullest possible potential, so Jesus and God were one person. Jesus, though a human being, was God. But it didn't just stop there, with Jesus. Ever since that first Christmas, God himself has been part of every baby to be born. So that we too have God within us. We too have the choice to allow the God within us to develop to his fullest potential, or to crush him out of existence. And that's a free choice for grown-up people. As far as God is concerned, we're no longer slaves, but are now sons and daughters, inheritors of all the blessings he has waiting for us, if we choose to accept those blessings. But if the choice is to remain a free choice, a grown-up decision made by grown-up people, then God can't interfere. He must leave us to the consequences of our choices. So that if we choose war and violence and evil, then the consequence is that people will be killed and maimed and damaged. If God were to reach down and somehow miraculously remove all the innocent people in any war situation, we'd never choose peace. If God were to reach down and cure all those people suffering from horrendous diseases, medicine would never advance. We'd never have any need to learn anything, and no motivation to do so. And God would be treating us again like children or slaves, taking us out of the reach of dangerous toys. But if we choose to allow the God within to develop, if we open ourselves up to God, then he'll not only guide us and lead us, but he'll also redeem our sorrows and our tragedies and our sins and our mistakes. Just as he redeemed the tragedy and sin of the crucifixion and brought out of that awful situation something new and glorious, so he'll redeem our troubles, bringing out of them something new and glorious. The Incarnation has made a difference, because it's brought the possibility of change within. If every human being allowed the God within to develop, then wars would cease, problems would be solvable, and we'd all learn how to handle pain and suffering. Jesus has shown us how to develop the God within, God the Holy Spirit. It seems that in God's eyes, free will for humans is of paramount importance. But that doesn't mean God is no longer concerned with his people. Throughout the ages, from the time of pre-history onwards, God has spoken with his people. Now, in Jesus, whilst maintaining free will for humans, God's message has been fully realised in a unique way. Jesus is the message from God which is the culmination and summary of all previous messages. And so in his gospel, St. John used a kind of shorthand for Jesus. He referred to Jesus as the 'Word of God', and he summed up the importance for human beings, of God's message of the Incarnation: to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God; who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; and we have beheld his glory. As 1998 stretches before us, a clean sheet, ready for anything, ready to be made or marred by our free will, perhaps it will become the year when the Incarnation became real for us. The year when we allowed the God within to develop.