THE WAY GOD SPEAKS

GOSPEL — JOHN 1:1-14
The Nativity of Our Lord, Christmas Day

​It all begins with a word. The author of John’s gospel invites us to step back in time, all the way back to the very beginning, to the space before and beyond the binary poles of night and day, sea and sky, flying birds and swimming fish. When all creation was yet a formless void, God coaxed order and beauty into being with just the sound of a word. By a word, the world was created, and by the Word, the world is reconciled and restored.

God speaks—through the messengers on the mountains, “in many and various ways by the prophets” (Hebrews 1:1), and through John, the witness in the wilderness. God tells the world that it is created for good, that all things are made from and for love, and that “grace upon grace” (John 1:16) continues to abound and overflow from the trusted voice and hand of our creator. Are we listening?

The narratives of Advent and Christmas include a host of unlikely voices: divine messengers, childless women, shepherds, stargazers from foreign nations, a locust-eating prophet clothed in camel hair. All are preparing us to hear the hopes and dreams of God’s kingdom from the voice of a carpenter and, later, from some fishermen and tax collectors.

Who are the many and various voices through which God is speaking today? Who are the witnesses to God’s saving work in both the darkness and the light? It might not be the voices we would think. Can we trust that God speaks to us through a variety and diversity of voices, even the ones that disarm or challenge us the most?

Listen. Listen to the witnesses. Listen to the powerless and overlooked. Listen to the voices speaking words of liberation and love, despite desperate circumstances. These are the words of the Word creating a new world, the words of eternal life for all the children of God.

From sundaysandseasons.com.
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