That last reading was entitled ‘St. John unfolds the great mystery of the incarnation.’ As we think about Christmas, we can usefully do so in terms of John’s inspiring words – v9 ‘the true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. ’ St. John, the intimate friend and companion of Jesus’, sets out for you and for me a clear explanation of what happened when and why God, in one of his forms of being God, chose to be born as a human being (that is what ‘incarnation’ means) and, as v 14 reminds us, ‘lived among us’.
Although he explains here when and why Jesus came, we are not told how God was able to do it. But, really, there are times when faith requires of us that we allow God to be God and to accept and trust not only that he knows best, but that we simply cannot know the answer to every question we would like to put to him. This we may do - trust him in all things - with confidence because we know also that Jesus died for us (proof of his love) and rose again (proof that he could be trusted and believed.)
St. John tells us v4 that Jesus is ‘the light of all people’ – the light of the world. (I’m sure many of you have seen that wonderful painting by Holman Hunt which not only shows Jesus standing at the door of a house – it could be yours or mine - holding up a bright light, but makes very clear, by the fact that there is no handle on the outside, that the door has to be opened from the inside – that is by you, by me). St. John reminds us here too v10, 11 &12 that many people both in Jesus’ own time and still today did not, would not, receive him; they would not open the door of their lives to him and invite him in.
The reasons for not inviting him in are many, but usually boil down to a conscious decision on someone’s part not to do so. A little later on in his gospel ch3 v19 & 20 St. John explains why they do not do so in the following words; ‘the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light’. That darkness can take many forms: sometimes ignorance, sometimes shame, sometimes bitterness, and many other things like that which create ‘darkness’. But all these things Jesus longs to forgive and to heal if only we will open the door of our lives and allow him to come in and heal whatever needs healing and change whatever needs changing. But he cannot if we won’t because he respects our free will to choose his offer or reject it.
One of the biggest barriers I find to people accepting and receiving Jesus is, sadly, the arrogant belief that they have no need of Jesus or that they know better than he does. So often human beings think that they can improve on creation, on life, and can organise things better than God. Yet they do not realise that behind creation and the laws he has given us for living is a wisdom they can never better, and that are very foolish to tamper with this wisdom since the consequences of doing so will always be less and worse than accepting, however mysterious, God’s wisdom for his world.
I heard a story the other day about a turkey farmer. He was sitting in his local pub in Norfolk one Christmas Eve, consoling himself with a pint. A stranger saw him looking miserable and asked him what the matter was. ‘It’s Christmas’, he said, ‘I hate it: every Christmas Day my family squabble over the turkey. You see there are six of them and they all want a leg. It’s impossible.’ ‘Well why not breed one with six legs; that would solve your problem. I’m a genetic engineer so I could tell you what to do.’ And so he did. The next Christmas Eve the man found the Turkey farmer in the pub consoling himself again with a pint. ‘What’s the matter?’ said the man, ‘didn’t you manage to breed that six-legged Turkey? ‘The man looked up from his pint and replied, ‘Oh we bred the Turkey all right; the problem is we havn’t managed to catch it yet.’
Taking God at his word, trusting that he knows best - however mysterious, however challenging to our own ideas about life and how to live it - is what the man Jesus taught us to do. It is because he is ‘the light that lightens everyone’ that we should open the door of our life to receive him.
As we now listen once again to the Christmas Collect of the Incarnation with its life-changing prayer that we may be ‘born again and made your children by adoption and grace’, let us open our hearts and our minds, the doors to our lives, to receive him and allow his light – the light that shines in the darkness – to bring, as that marvellous carol Hark The Herald Angels Sing puts it, ‘light and life to all.’
May I wish you all a blessed and joyful Christmas.
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