The Jesus born into our midst today invites us, over and over again, to take part in what God is restoring.
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Advent Devotional for the Nativity of Jesus Christ
December 25
• John 1:1-14
I hope, as you read these words, that there is joyful Christmas music in the background. Maybe something on the sound system instrumental versions of the beloved carols of the season, or some Austin-themed soundtrack setting those carols to fiddles and squeeze-boxes and harmonicas, or maybe Willie Nelson crooning “Silent Night, Holy Night!” Or perhaps, there is still ringing in your ears some amazing anthem that your church choir performed just last night during midnight Communion. I hope there is music as you read these words.
After all, when Christmas comes it reminds us that the gospel of this God Who draws near to us in Jesus Christ is finally so joyfully and incomprehensibly delightful—so much so that our best theological constructs, our best arguments for the Incarnation, begin to melt away and can hardly be grasped unless we sing them. So it was that John the gospel-writer wrote what I believe is, at its root, a hymn: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God … All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came 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 … And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory … full of grace and truth.” That’s not just scripture, not just theology. That’s music!
How can we not sing at Christmas—or, for that matter, in any season of the year—when, whatever our circumstances, we are in touch with some evidence of God’s breathtaking initiative to come and dwell with us? Whatever our circumstances!
Back in September, I watched a video on my New York Times app. Just a few minutes long, it followed a man—his hair all akimbo, his pants stained with dirt, his tee-shirt drenched in sweat—as he walked around his yard and his home on one of the Florida Keys. In the background were overturned cars, ponds of sea-water covering what had been his yard, and so much more of the evidence of Hurricane Irma. The man was narrating tearfully as he walked. “In this garage [its walls were blown away] I kept an antique chest-of-drawers that once was my grandmother’s. It had held a number of keepsakes I wanted my children to have someday. Now it’s all gone. There is nothing. But I’ll stay here; this is still home.”
“This is still home,” he said. A ruinous landscape, but he’s not leaving. On this day, God is drawing near to him, too. God is breaking into the middle of his circumstances, just as God is drawing near to us, and the light shines once more into the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it!
The Jesus born into our midst today invites us, over and over again, to take part in what God is restoring. He invites us to believe that the world is headed somewhere good, and that we’re being born into a story that is still being written. Long-awaited, He is here now to companion us as we seek to follow Him. He is the One, as Barbara Brown Taylor has said, “Who is made out of the same stuff we are, and Who is made out of the same stuff God is, and Who will not let either of us go.”
This is news that we can forever applaud, and believe, and sing.
Holy Christ, draw near to us today and uphold us in every circumstance that we may sing with the angels of your glory and your mercy. Amen.
Theodore J. Wardlaw
President
For the glory of God and to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary is a seminary in the Presbyterian-Reformed tradition whose mission is to educate and equip individuals for the ordained Christian ministry and other forms of Christian service and leadership; to employ its resources in the service of the church; to promote and engage in critical theological thought and research; and to be a winsome and exemplary community of God's people.
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