The nativity stories –
read during Christmas (and this
is still
Christmas) – found in the gospels of Matthew and Luke, treat the birth of Jesus
as a historical event. Luke seems especially
keen to fix historical dates to his story of Jesus’ birth, telling us that it
occurred in the days of Caesar Augustus, and when Quirinius was governor of
Syria. That the conflicting details of these two accounts of his birth have led
theologians and historians to debate the veracity and historicity, is to be set
aside this morning. It’s enough to
accept them as historical stories – stories located within the human perception
of the flow of time and space. This is
the kind of time we might describe as
chronos
time – clock time. (L’Engle, 93)
[i]
This is the kind of time that had a beginning, that exists because of masses in
motion throughout the universe; this
chronos
time moves inexorably one second after sequential second, tick, tick, tick,
60 seconds per minute, 60 minutes per hour into the future. This is the kind of time in which we live
most of our lives.
But our lectionary readings for this last Sunday of the Christmas season
include reading from John’s gospel as well as a reading from the apocryphal (or
deuterocanonical) book Sirach that each reflect upon the timeless working of
God’s presence in
kairos time, non-linear time (wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey), the kind
of time that Madeline L’Engle describes as, “Real time. God’s time.
That time which breaks through
chronos
with a shock of joy, that time we do not recognize while we are experiencing it,
but only afterwards, because
kairos has
nothing to do with chronological time.” (L’Engle, 98)
It is in the beginning with
God. It is with God before the
beginning. It is the timelessness before time, the when before the when when
there was only silence. And it is in
this timeless time that we hear the voice of Wisdom – the voice, the word of
God speaking.
“I came forth from the
mouth of the Most High,
and covered the earth like a mist.
I dwelt in the highest
heavens,
and my throne was in a pillar of cloud.
Alone I compassed the
vault of heaven
and traversed the depths of the abyss.
Over waves of the sea,
over all the earth,
and over every people and nation I have
held sway.
Among all these I
sought a resting place;
in whose territory should I abide?
[ii]
Wisdom, she speaks to
us, calls us, raising her voice for us to hear.
She was there in the timelessness before time; she was there at the beginning
when there were no heights and no depths.
[iii] Wisdom as the spoken word of God, came forth
and covered the Earth like a mist, over the sea, over the waves, into the
vaults of heaven and down through the depths of the abyss. Wisdom filled time and space.
Yet it was not enough that God and the Wisdom of God should inhabit a timelessness
that remains inaccessible to us. “God
who is Spirit at work in the tragic and beautiful world to vivify and renew all
creatures through the gracious power of her indwelling, liberating love, is
present yet again through the very particular history of one human being, Jesus
of Nazareth. The one who is divine love,
gift, and friend, becomes manifest in time in a concrete gestalt, the loving
gifting, and befriending first-century Jewish carpenter turned prophet
(Johnson, 150).”
[iv]
“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.
In the holy tent I
ministered before him,
and so I was
established in Zion.
Thus in the beloved
city he gave me a resting place,
and in Jerusalem was my
domain.
I took root in an
honored people,
in the portion of the
Lord, his heritage.
[v]
When the
chronos-time was right, the
kairos-time burst in upon us. Eternity
broke into our bounded time. “In the
hopeless time of sin” when “shadows deep had fallen,”
[vi]
when our darkened lives were bounded by
birth and death – the timeless word of God was spoken and the Wisdom of God became
enfleshed as Mary’s little boy.
Paul describes Jesus as
the wisdom of God, saying, “…we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to
Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews
and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
[vii] This is wisdom that to outsiders and those
who refuse to believe, would seem foolish, weak, frail and helpless.
And the Word became
flesh, putting her tent down among us, dwelling in space and time – in ordinary
clock time. (It is fitting then, that “Ordinary
Time” follows Christmas in the Church’s liturgical calendar…”) And we have seen this glory, living among us,
living within us.
Our lives, once bounded by the fixed constraints of time and space, bookended
by birth and death are now opened. We
are lifted up into the kairos time of
God. We are free. We have light and life in Jesus of Nazareth.
Hear the Word of God,
the Voice of Wisdom as she calls to us this morning:
“Come to me, you who desire me,
and eat your fill of my
fruits.
For the memory of me is
sweeter than honey,
and the possession of
me sweeter than the honeycomb.
Those who eat of me
will hunger for more,
and those who drink of me will thirst for
more.
Whoever obeys me will
not be put to shame,
and those who work with
me will not sin.”
[viii]
[i] L’Engle,
Madeline
Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art, Harold Shaw
Publishers, Wheaton IL, 1980.
[ii] Sirach
24:3 – 7 (NRSV)
[iii]
Proverbs 8: 22 - 24
[iv]
Johnson, Elizabeth A.
She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological
Discourse,
The Crossroad
Publishing Company, New York, NY, 1998.
[v]
Sirach 24: 8 – 12 (NRSV)
[vi]
Traditional Catalonian Christmas carol
Lo
Desembre Congelat (Cold December Flies Away)
[vii]
1 Corinthians 1: 23– 24
[viii]
Sirach 24: 19 – 22 (NRSV)
