By Bishop Christian Alsted, Connectional Table Chair
God made His word known.
This short sentence captures the nature and content of Christianity. When God speaks, He creates, new things come into being, and it is all good. At a certain time, the Almighty spoke, and nothing is the same.
While Luke gives us the Christmas narrative, John in plain and simple language takes us behind the scene and initiates us into God's story, which is the mystery of salvation
The Word became flesh and blood,
and moved into the neighborhood.
We saw the glory with our own eyes,
the one-of-a-kind glory,
like Father, like Son,
Generous inside and out,
true from start to finish.John pointed him out and called, This is the One! The One I told you was coming after me but in fact was ahead of me. He has always been ahead of me, has always had the first word. (John 1:14-15 The Message)
Jesus life and story is significant in not being His own story. His story was God's story, as a human being. However, as the theologian Johannes Sloek says, God doesn't really need a story as a human being; therefore, His story was not the story for Him, but the story for humanity.
When we proclaim the gospel narrative of Him, who became flesh and moved into our neighborhood, we also proclaim that this story is our story, yours and mine. God took our part. In Jesus, He connected our story of perdition with His story of salvation. In Jesus story, the human and the divine story comes together, and new life is created, the life of God's kingdom, which we may not be able to explain or even understand, but we can certainly live it.
Now we celebrate Christmas the Word has become flesh and blood. As John said, He has always had the first word And as we slowly enter into a new year, with all it may entail, we can be assured that He will also have the last word.
I wish you a joyful and peaceful Christmas and a hopeful new year.