The Christmas story is a story of participation; a story of God’s participation in our humanity, and our yearly participation in that story. Christians believe that in the manger of Bethlehem the creator of the universe is found in the person of a little baby.
The story invites to think that the Almighty chooses to become a vulnerable human being. This participation is at the core of the story. We are story-telling creatures forever recreating memory and telling our own story and the stories of others. Telling stories is one of the ways in which we create meaning. When we take part in Nativity plays (whether as actors or audience), or anticipate the coming of Christmas during Advent, we are participating in the story of God’s participation in our story.
If we accept the truth claim of this story we still are left with the question, ‘Why would God choose to become human?’ The traditional answer is that the fact of human sinfulness required God to mount a rescue plan. Sinfulness requires punishment, and God steps into our humanity to receive the punishment on our behalf in the person of Jesus. But that begs a further question. If God is sovereign and free then why is God required to respond to the actions of others. Indeed, such a response would render our view of God’s actions as contingent, that is, reliant upon the actions of others. That would leave God less free and, moreover, not sovereign. And why would the highest thing that God ever did, God being with us as one of us in Jesus, why would that be in response to and therefore dependent upon the wrong actions of others?
There is a different way of telling the story.
“It is not likely that the highest good in the whole creation is something that merely happened by chance, and happened only because of some lesser good.” “Christ would not have come as Redeemer if the first person had not fallen. [But] that is not the same as saying Christ would not have come.” (John Duns Scotus in, ‘Poverty and Joy, The Franciscan Tradition’, William Short).
Rather the motivation for God coming to us in Christ
“is the love that is intrinsic to God’s own being.” (John Duns Scotus)
`God’s taking of our humanity is to be understood not only as an act of restoration, not only as a response to human sin, but also and more fundamentally as an act of love, and expression of God’s own nature. Even if there had been no fall, God in his limitless, outgoing love would still have chosen to identify himself with his creation by becoming human’. (St Isaac the Syrian, in ‘The Orthodox Way’ Kallistos Ware).
The purpose of God’s sharing our life in Jesus, is that we might share in the divine life of Jesus.
“(God), indeed, assumed humanity that we might become God.” (St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation).
“In emptying Himself to come into the world, God has not simply kept in reserve, in a safe place, His reality and manifested a kind of shadow or symbol of Himself. He has emptied Himself and is all in Christ. … Christ is not simply the tip of the little finger of the Godhead, moving in the world, easily withdrawn, never threatened, never really risking anything. God has acted and given Himself totally, without division, in the Incarnation. He has become not only one of us but even our very selves.” (Thomas Merton)
That is what it means to be a Christian: a Christian is;
“not simply [some]one who believes certain reports about Christ, but [some]one who lives in a conscious confrontation with Christ in themselves and in others.” (Letters and Papers from Prison Dietrich Bonhoeffer).
Christmas in the end means that ‘our relationship to God is no “religious” relationship to some highest, most powerful, and best being imaginable… Instead, [it] is a new life in “being there for others,” through participation in the being of Jesus [the human being for others]. The transcendent is not the infinite… but the neighbour within reach… God in human form!’ (Dietrich Bonhoeffer as above)
Have a happy, peaceful and thoughtful Christmas.
Brislington Community News 