The Son of God

Propers: Christmas Eve (Christmas I), A.D. 2019 A

Many ages after God created the heavens and the earth, when man and woman were formed in God's own image; long after the great Flood, when God set the rainbow in the clouds as a sign of the covenant; 21 centuries from the time of Abraham and Sarah; 15 centuries after Moses led God’s people to freedom; 11 centuries from the time of Ruth and the Judges;

A thousand years from the anointing of David as king; in the 65th week as Daniel's prophecy takes note; in the 194th Olympiad; the 752nd year from the founding of the city of Rome; the 42nd year of the reign of Octavian Augustus; in the Sixth Age of the world, all earth being at peace, Jesus Christ, eternal God, Son of the eternal Father, willing to hallow the world by His coming in mercy, was born of the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem of Judea.

Tonight is the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, God made flesh.

Homily:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

What does it mean to say that God has a Son?

God does not father children in the way that we do. True, He creates and sustains all things in every moment of their being: angels and men, galaxies and stars, animals and plants. In that sense we are all children of God. But our God is not a pagan god. He has neither beginning nor end, no limits, no lack, no flaws. He is infinite. He is perfect. He is pure actuality.

The God we worship is not good or true or beautiful in the way that we understand such things, but He is in fact Goodness and Truth and Beauty themselves. He is not a creature, but the Creator. He is not a being, but Being itself. God does not exist in the way that we exist; rather He is existence, in its truest and fullest sense. We say that God is perfectly simple, by which we mean that He has no parts, no pieces. Parts by definition have limits, and God has none. He is like bright white light, which contains within it the entire spectrum of the rainbow.

Yet whatever image we may choose for God, whatever metaphor, whatever icon, it will always fall short of the glory and beauty and radiance of who God truly is—for no matter what we do or learn or say, we can never be any closer to infinity. He is all good, all knowing, all powerful, and everywhere present. He is farther from us than the farthest star, yet nearer to you than your own jugular.

God is always more than what we can imagine: always bigger, always better, always more loving and more intimate. And everything that exists, in every moment, every heartbeat, every breath, only exists because God loves all things and pours out His Life, His Being, His Breath into all that is or ever could be. As you cannot fit the ocean in a thimble, so you cannot fit God inside your head. So what can it possibly mean to say that such a God has a Son?

Imagine your mind—not as it is, but as it ought to be ideally: clear, uncluttered, awake and aware. Now imagine what it means to know and love yourself. We all have a mirror in our minds, an image or a microcosm, of who and what we are. For us, with our limitations, that self-image is inaccurate. But imagine if it weren’t. Imagine if you had perfect understanding and love for yourself, as you really are.

Your mind then is still one, yet now also three. In knowing yourself, you are at once the knower, the knowledge, and the known. In loving yourself, you are the lover, the love, and the beloved. And what is that image of you, in your mind, doing? Well, if it’s a perfect image—if it really is you—then it’s doing exactly what you are doing. It is reflecting back to you the perfect knowledge and love you have for it. The beloved is pouring out all its love back to the originator of that love.

Thus you are, in your own head, perfectly simple, perfectly loving, and perfectly self-aware. You are One, and you are Three. Only in this way can we love.

Now, God is not a mind in the sense that we have minds. Our minds are limited, contingent. But God is more like a mind than anything else we could use to describe Him. It is an analogy, and analogies express truth, even if imperfectly. When we say that God has a Son, we are talking about the Image of God in God’s own mind, the perfect reflection of God’s Being within that very Being. If God knows all, He must know Himself. And so He has an image of Himself, within Himself.

Thus the Son is God: perfectly known, perfectly loved, eternally begotten of the Father, eternally bound in the mutual outpouring of life and love and being which is the Spirit of God. And that’s who is born unto us this night!—the Son of God who is God; the visible Image of the invisible Father; God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God; begotten, not made; of one being with the Father.

Think of the implications. God comes to earth. The Son of God becomes the Son of Man, God made flesh. And so now the Creator has entered into His Creation. The Author has entered into His own story, to become one of the characters, like us! And so now we can know God. We can know God, in Jesus, as God perfectly knows and loves Himself. And He comes down here, into the mud and the blood, born through the guts of a girl, that all of humanity, all the cosmos, all of Creation may now be bound up in the love and the life and the salvation of God’s own self.

The Son is one of us. And He puts His Spirit into us. We ourselves take His Body and Blood into our body and blood. We ourselves breathe in His Breath, baptized in His Spirit. And so what does that make us? It makes us Him! It makes us into sons and daughters of God, images of that one perfect Image. All of us are drawn, all the world is dragged, into the Trinity, into the mutual outpouring of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; into the mind of God, the heart of God, the life and joy and love of God. And we are saved! We are resurrected! We are home.

The birth of Jesus isn’t just about the arrival of some hero, though He is of course that. It isn’t just about a prophet and a teacher and a king who pays off our debts, though of course He does that as well. Christmas is about God giving to us all that He has, all that He is, His very heart; His only Son—so that God poured out into the world will draw the whole world back into God. He holds nothing back from us. Not even His life. Not even His Blood.

Tonight a world fallen into darkness and tragedy and sin is broken into by the God who made the world good and who made us in His own image. He comes that we might have life, and have it in abundance. Light Himself is born in darkness. Life Himself comes forth from the cave. Eternity now breaks into time.

And a humble young mother, and a devoted adoptive father, will hold in their hands the One who holds this and all possible worlds in the palm of His hand.

And they will lay Him in a manger, and they will care for His every need, and He will be one of us—to laugh and weep and sweat and bleed and grow and learn and live and die, at our hands and for our sake. And then He will rise again, to hallow Heaven and harrow hell, and all divisions between God and Man, between Heaven and earth, between Creator and creation, between life and death, will all dissolve in the purifying white-hot flames of His Kingdom! And God at last will be all in all.

The birth of our Creator turns this world upside-down and inside-out. No wonder that Christmas is the axis upon which our history turns.

What does it mean for God to have a Son? It means that no-one and nothing can stand between you and the glory that God intends for all that He has made. It means that you will be raised and you will be loved and you will be known, perfectly, forever. And it means that God gives to you, for all of eternity, His own heart, that you may become the heart of God.

That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown. But try fitting that on a Hallmark card.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.