A Sermon preached on December 27th (Christmas
I) at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden
Isaiah 61: 10 –
62: 3, Galatians 3: 23 – 25, 4: 4 – 7, John 1: 1 – 18
Some of you may
have read just before Christmas about the professor who was suspended from Wheaton
College, near Chicago, for her statement, posted on Facebook that "I stand
in religious solidarity with Muslims because they, like me, a Christian, are
people of the book. And as Pope Francis stated last week, we worship the same
God." As Wheaton College is an Evangelical Protestant Christian institution,
this statement was particularly courageous and her suspension probably also
did not come as a complete surprise. In fact I fear some Evangelicals are not
even sure that Pope
Francis worships the same God. And sometimes I wonder if I worship the same God
as some Evangelicals. But if I
have an issue with Professor Hawkins’ statement, it is not that Moslems and
Christians, and Jews too, worship the same God, because we all do, just
differently. It’s the “we are all people of the book” that I find to be not
entirely correct.
That all three
monotheistic religions worship one and the same God has been Catholic orthodoxy
since Vatican II. “Christians and Jews have a common spiritual heritage” and “Muslims
… worship God, who is one, living and subsistent, merciful and almighty, the
Creator of heaven and earth, who has also spoken to humanity” are two
statements from the 1965 Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian
Religions, or Nostra Aetate as it is more
commonly known. This is also orthodox Anglican belief.
There are of course significant differences in how we view
God, how we worship God, and what we believe God wants from us, and some of
those differences have to do with “the book.” The idea that we are all “People
of the Book” was a very positive one. It was the basis of the idea that Jews
and Christians living in Islamic territory were to be tolerated and allowed to
worship as before. An ideal that was not always lived up to, there is a reason why
Christianity either died out or became a small majority in most of the Islamic
world. If you wanted to get on in the Islamic world, it was better to become a
Muslim. But nevertheless this edict of tolerance was a lot better than the repeated
and widespread persecution of Jews that marked many Christian societies. But it
is at least in part a misunderstanding. Of course we share ¾ of our Bible with
our Jewish brothers and sisters and if you read the Qur’an you will see that while
we do not have the same book, we still share many stories and many of the prophets
and other characters, including Mary and Jesus, with our Moslem brothers and
sisters. But our interpretation of those things we hold in common is often
radically different, and we have our own unique revelation, part of which is John’s
Gospel.
This morning’s Gospel
reading, which we also heard three days ago at our Midnight Mass on Christmas
Eve, is part of our radically different view of God. It describes how the Word
was with God and was God from the beginning. Not only was the Word with God
from the beginning, but God created everything and everyone through the Word. “All
things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into
being.” That’s already a pretty lofty claim. But what is unique about the
Christian revelation is that it comes not just through words with a small w –
the words spoken by prophets or written in a book - but through the Word with a
capital W and that this Word, became flesh, incarnate, took on human nature as a
living human being, as Jesus Christ. This is of course what we celebrate at Christmas.
That God became human and lived among us.
What does this
mean? Firstly that God shared our lives, all aspects of our lives. God knows us
intimately. God values life and human life not only because life came into
being in and through God (John 1:3-4) but because God became part of life. And God’s
light shines into all corners and banishes every trace of darkness. So we have
nothing to fear and nothing to hide, because it is already known to God. God
loves us not despite, but because of this knowledge: “For God so loved the
world that he gave his only Son, so
that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” (John
3:16)
Secondly that
through Jesus we had and have the ability to know God. It is Jesus Christ the
Son of God who shows us “the radiance of God’s glory” (Hebrews 1:3) or as John
puts it in rather roundabout way, “No one has ever seen God. It is God the only
Son, who is close to the Father's heart, who has made him known.” (John 1:18) What
we see and know through Jesus, what we have received from his fullness, is not
just God’s infinite glory, but also God’s infinite mercy and compassion (Exodus
34:6) or God’s “grace upon grace.” (John 1:16) The world may continue to reject
God, but God does not and never will reject the world.
Finally, God’s
gift in Christ Jesus, the Word, brings a gift with him: the gift of new life described
here in this passage as the power to become children of God. For St. Augustine –
the other one, not ours – this is the promise that we will be transformed, that
the Incarnation is not a one way street: “If we have been made children of God,”
Augustine writes, “we have also been made gods.”[1] The
first Creation story in Genesis that the prologue to John’s Gospel is so full
of allusions to, tells us that “God created humankind in his image, in the
image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1:27) And
it is thanks to God’s second creation, again taking place through God’s Word incarnated
as Jesus Christ, that we are given the opportunity to fully live up to the
image we were created in and to become ever more like it in all ways.
We do worship the
same God as our Jewish and Muslim brothers and sisters, but that does not
exclude significant differences in how we perceive, receive and worship that one
God. I accept all the goodness in other religions, I believe that God’s Spirit moves
and works in all humans, not just Christians: it’s not for us to set limits to
the work of God. I accept their faithfulness and I am more than happy to work
with people of all faiths or none in good faith and for the good of God’s
creation. But for me the true revelation of God is not in our shared books and
stories but in the Word made flesh. Just like John, the “man sent from God … to
testify to the light, so that all might believe through him”,” (John 1:6-7) we
are called to act as witnesses to this Word, Jesus. But let’s not forget that our
witness to Jesus must be marked by Christlike service and humility if it is to be
genuine and perceived as such. And that is certainly what Professor Hawkins from
Wheaton College, whose story I started this sermon with, demonstrated.
My Advent
discipline – now continuing through Christmas until the Epiphany - has been to
read a poem and a reflection on that poem each day – taken from this book by
Malcolm Guite[2].
The poem for 17th December is entitled O Sapientia and is itself a poetic reflection on one of the ‘O antiphons,’
seven ancient Advent prayers that look forward to the coming of Christ by
exploring seven different names or attributes of Christ – one being sapientia or wisdom. I’m going to finish
with a few lines from this poem. It helped me reflect on the mystery of God’s
gift of the Word, and so I hope it helps you too:
O Mind behind the mind through which I seek,
O Light behind the light by which I see,
O Word beneath the words with which I speak
Come, hidden Wisdom, come with all you bring,
Come to me now, disguised as everything.[3]
Amen.
