Christmas eve 2009

The Wisdom of Jesus, Son of Sirach 24. 1-12
John 1. 1-14

At Christmas our attention is firmly focused on the birth of the person of Jesus. There’s no question that this is what it’s all about. Off to Bethlehem we go; once again. We do this because the destination of all of the action in the first chapters of the gospels of Matthew and Luke are on bringing their readers to the infant Jesus in the manger. John the Baptist; Zechariah and Elizabeth; Mary and Joseph, Herod and the wise men; Simeon and Anna. All their stories point to the birth of Jesus and the fulfillment in this child of longings, poured out over centuries by the Jewish people in their scriptures.

We tell this story over and over, year after year in different ways: in our nativity scenes; in Advent calendars; we sing the story in our carols. Where would Christmas be without Jesus in the manger? But for the gospels of Mark and John there is no baby in the manger; no birth story; not even a mention of miraculous comings and goings around the birth of Jesus, and the visitation of angels and mortals of all rank; no long genealogies stretching back to Abraham and to Adam. Have you ever wondered why? Why the birth was not important to them? Have you ever wondered what you’d think about Jesus if there was no miraculous birth narrative? Would you still believe? Or would your believing be different?

John, John’s gospel, instead of giving us a birth story wows us with his flights of prose as he introduces us to the cosmic Christ; the logos of God; the mind of God; present with God from before time and yet now incarnated in the person of Jesus; this one so full of grace and truth.

What John gives us, instead of a miraculous birth story, is a window into the wisdom tradition within Judaism; deep and long through the life of Israel. This wisdom tradition is something more difficult to grasp onto than the course of events painted by Matthew and Luke which lead us to the birth; you can’t make a nativity play out of the Word made Flesh. But the beauty of this language in John and the passage from the Wisdom of Jesus, Son of Sirach is no less compelling when we allow its poetry to touch us and then hear its resonance in John.

As Matthew looks to the Hebrew scriptures for their fulfillment in Jesus so John also looks to them in Sirach for their fulfillment: then the Creator of all things gave me a command, and my Creator chose the place for my tent. He said, “Make your dwelling in Jacob,
 and in Israel receive your inheritance.” 
Before the ages, in the beginning, he created me, and for all the ages I shall not cease to be.

And so John tells us that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. The Greek here actually reads that the word became flesh and pitched tent among us. The word which is translated as dwelt or lived among us is the ancient Greek expression for pitching tent; setting up camp; living alongside; throwing in your lot.

So John here echoes this wisdom tradition in Sirach and it’s confirmation of the divine command to go and pitch tent in Israel. Between Sirach and John we hear the echo of the longings of the wisdom tradition fulfilled in Jesus.

Tragically this wisdom tradition of the church has been all but lost to us in the west; you could say that any form of wisdom is patently absent from any form of human activity in the west. But Wisdom, Sophia, was a pillar of the life of the Eastern church and continues to be so. The great cathedral of the Eastern church in Constantinople, now Istanbul, is named no less than Haggia Sophia, Holy Wisdom. This church was the focus of the life of the Eastern church for about 1000 years and for Eastern Orthodox Christians the second person of the Trinity is often known by the name Sophia – not the Son, but Sophia, wisdom – feminine to boot. The second person of the Trinity as the embodied wisdom of God.

When we begin to get a sense of this wisdom tradition the coming of the wise men from the east in Matthew’s gospel takes on a different significance. They are not just some late arrivals to the stable at Bethlehem or second-rate bits players as they so often are portrayed in nativity plays but Matthew’s signs of the fulfillment of hopes that the wisdom of God may be manifest in a world which is so consistently un-wise and unjust.

I attended the recent Parliament of World’s Religions here in Melbourne. It was so delightful to be together with so many people of faith from so many different traditions and parts of the world. What did strike me was the presence there of the members of three ancient faiths: Zoroastrians, Hindus and Buddhists. Zoroastrianism; a religion which emerged in ancient Persia; Hinduism, of course from India, and; Buddhism from further East. IN the presence of these people and as I listened to the perspectives and concerns of their faith traditions I all of a sudden realised that maybe it was memebers of these more ancient faiths than ours that Matthew tells us came to recognise and honour Jesus. I became aware that in all of these faiths, including our own, was this primal human quest to seek and find the presence of the wisdom of the invisible God present in ones who strive to live with wisdom. I felt a deep unity between each of our faiths in their quests to seek God.

Tragically our focus on and attachment to the baby Jesus is symptomatic of our attachment to historical fact and literal truth in the church. In some senses it infantalises us in the church preventing us from maintaining the quest of seeking the wisdom of God. For surely this is the task of life: to seek to enable the spirit of the living God to become present and infuse us with the life of heaven.

This Christmas can I invite you to contemplate this wisdom of God come into world in the life of Jesus. Can I invite you to contemplate how this one in whom John says is life might desire life for you. Can I invite you to contemplate how this one who embodied the wisdom and mercy of God so fully might be calling you to live more justly, live more equitably, live more compassionately and live more lightly on this sacred earth.

As we view pictures of a labyrinth at Parliament you might like to meditate on these questions and I will read of wisdom firstly from the Wisdom of Solomon and then of Jesus as image of the unseen from Paul’s letter to the Colossians.

Wisdom of Solomon
For she is a breath of the power of God, and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty; therefore nothing defiled gains entrance into her. 
For she is a reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image of his goodness. 
Although she is but one, she can do all things, and while remaining in herself, she renews all things; in every generation she passes into holy souls and makes them friends of God, and prophets; 
for God loves nothing so much as the person who lives with wisdom.

Colossians 1. 15-20

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.

Let us pray:

Holy, eternal God

grant us your grace
make in us a place where the seed of heaven may be sown and grow.
That our lives may become infused with the life of heaven
and we may live to your praise and glory all our days. amen