Readings:
Is 52:7-10
Ps 98:1, 2-3, 3-4, 5-6.
Heb 1:1-6
Jn 1:1-18
This year there is an extraordinary convergence of feasts: our Jewish brothers and sisters begin their observance of the joyous days of Hanukkah just as Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus. As our Jewish friends rejoice in the oil that miraculously lit the candelabra in the temple for eight days, so we delight in the light that has come into the world in the person of Jesus; a light that no darkness can overcome (John 1:3-5).
Many people find it difficult to enter into the lightness and joy of the holiday season. The burdens we carry and the losses we bear often seem more acute during this time. The weariness of our world with so much hatred and suffering stands in contrast to the joy we want to feel. The Gospel offers us is the assurance that we are never alone; that Emmanuel, “God-with-us” (Matt 1:23), has always been right in the midst of all our sorrows and joys, with overflowing love that has the power to transform everything, and now comes to us in the form of the Christ.
The first reading from Isaiah reminds us of how God restored the desolate city Jerusalem and restored the shattered people after the exile in Babylon. Just so, God now sets humankind free from every kind of affliction and captivity through the saving power of Jesus. The beautifully poetic Prologue of the Gospel of John offers us an image for this most profound mystery: God has “pitched his tent” among us. This is the literal translation of the Greek verb eskēnōsen, often translated less vividly as “made his dwelling” among us.
This is not a new message. During the wilderness wandering, the Israelites experienced YHWH’s presence in the tent of meeting (Exod 25:8; Num 35:34). Israel’s God was not thought of as remaining stationary in a temple but rather as traveling with the people throughout their desert sojourn. What is new is when the Holy One tents in human flesh, journeying with us in the most intimate way possible.
The first part of the gospel describes a cozy at-homeness that existed from the beginning between God (Theos) and the Word (Logos). The two share a oneness and together take delight in giving birth to all that came to be. Their intimacy is fruitful; their love does not stay at home in a closed circle but gives birth to all that lives. The supreme act of self-emptying love is the pouring forth of God’s love in the tent of human skin.
Just as leaving a sturdy home to camp in a canvas tent makes one vulnerable to the elements and to danger, so does Jesus’s donning of human flesh. John’s prologue already points toward Jesus’ rejection and execution. There would be those who would not recognize the Creator’s love masked in human flesh. They miss the truth that the divine impulse is to become one with the most fragile of humanity. Jesus seeks out and identifies with those who camp on the edge of poverty, not so much those who live in fine palaces or luxurious dwellings. There are, however, those who do receive him, who believe in his name, to whom are given the power to become children of God, born not by human means but of God (John 1:12-13).
Extraordinary things can occur when camping in the wilderness. Israel found that when God’s tent was pitched with them in the desert, it was both a time of trial and of honeymoon. Stripped of any of the ordinary ways in which they might provide for themselves, they had to rely on their divine Provider even for their physical existence, depending on manna from heaven and water from rock. In the new divine act of “grace on top of grace” (John 1:16), Jesus himself becomes Bread for a hungry people and quenches all thirst, not only in the present, but for all ages (John 6:35). The amazing thing is that, although the Logos has gone camping with humankind, he has not left the home he has with Theos. Even as he dwells with humanity, Jesus is yet “at the Father’s side” (John 1:18). The Greek expression eis ton kolpon tou patros means literally “at the breast of the Father”—an image of ongoing unbreakable intimacy akin to that of a child nursing at its mother’s breast (John 1:18). It is the same intimacy that is shared among Jesus and all his disciples, symbolized in the figure of the nameless Beloved Disciple, who at the Last Supper reclines next to Jesus (en tō kolpō tou ‘Iēsou), literally, “at the breast of Jesus.”
In our celebration of Christmas we not only rejoice in God tenting with us in human form but as followers of Christ we too are invited out of our comfortable abodes to pitch our tent with the most vulnerable and needy of God’s beloved, while resting always in our one permanent home: the bosom of the Holy One.
Sr. Barbara Reid, O.P.
President and Carroll Stuhlmueller, C.P. Distinguished Professor of New Testament Studies
Catholic Theological Union
Portions of this reflection appeared in Barbara E. Reid, OP, Abiding Word. Sunday Reflections for Year A. Liturgical Press, 2013. Pp. 9-10.