Becoming Who We Are

Becoming Who We Are

Reflections on John 1.1-14

 

Christmas Day

25 December 2022

 

Holy Trinity Anglican Cathedral

New Westminster BC

 

         If I were ever told that I was to be exiled and I could only take one of the four Gospels with me, I would choose John without any hesitation.  His account of the mission and ministry of Christ never fails to draw me in.  Even texts that I have heard many times always show themselves to have more to them that I remembered.  John also has a better sense of humour than the other three canonical Gospels!

 

         Today’s familiar and, some might say, spectacular text is just such an example of a familiar text that keeps revealing new insights.  For the past couple of days I’ve been pondering just one phrase in one verse:  “But to all who received, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.” (John 1.12 NRSVue)  I keep coming back to ‘he gave power’.

 

         Other translations of the Bible into contemporary English give different readings.  The Revised English Bible reads “he gave the right”.  The Common English Bible reads “he authorized to become God’s children”.  All these are efforts to translate one simple Greek word that betrays a simple translation:  exousian.

 

         The word is most often translated as ‘authority’ but it has a deeper meaning for us as we celebrate the birth of Christ.  It’s a word to free us, to empower us, to give us hope.

 

         Exousian means a power, a right that comes out of our very being, our ousia to use the Greek word.  It’s a word that describes something that flows out of a person, a living spring that can be hindered in its ability to flow freely out of us.  It’s a spring that never runs dry despite the best and manifold efforts humans make to obstruct its power to transform and transfigure us.

 

         When I was a boy, I loved to build dams on the many mountain streams where I grew up.  I would any material I could find – tree limbs and branches, rocks and mud – to build my structures.  But I never succeeded in preventing the water from flowing.  Water always finds a way.  My dam would be breached sooner or later, just as modern structures will fail if there isn’t some outlet to reduce the pressure.

 

         My friends, within every human being, Christ is waiting to flow forth.  We’re very good at building dams to try to hold Christ back, to restrain him in some safe, tame reservoir so that he cannot turn our lives upside down in the current of love and compassion that flows from him.  But Christ cannot be dammed; the spring cannot be restrained.

 

         We who have received him, who have welcomed him, have been given power to become Christ-like.  We who have believed in his name, have been authorized, have been given the right to claim our birthright.  We can become who we really are rather than be satisfied with the many counterfeits that some charlatans and social influencers are peddling and foisting upon us.  We can become children of God because that is who we are.  That is the stream of life, the reservoir of love, within each and every human being – even those whom we might find disagreeable, dishonest, even despicable.

 

         The Child whose birth we celebrate this morning is found in each and every one of us. The invitation to follow him is not an invitation to go to some far-off place that is alien to us.  It is an invitation to explore somewhere closer to hand – our hearts, our minds, our souls, our strengths.

 

         To be honest, it is not a short or simple journey.  It is a life-journey that certainly has its ups and downs, its moments of joy and despair, its successes and failures.  But is a journey to become real – fully alive children of the God in whose image we are made and into whose likeness Christ shows the way.

 

         We can leave the Child in the manger or we can recognise the Child that is within each one of us.  Just as Mary and Joseph will nurture this Child in the years ahead, preparing him for the ministry God entrusted to him, so we can nurture the Child within us.  Let me leave you with some words from Marty Haugen’s ‘Carol of the Manger”.

 

Once again we tell the story –

how your love for us was shown,

when the image of your glory

wore an image like our own.

Come, enlighten with your wisdom,

come and fill us with your grace.

May the fire of your compassion

kindle every land and race.

 

May God give us grace to reveal the Christ within us so that all God’s children may be free and the earth may be filled with the glory of God.