Ashland, Oregon
December 16, 2015
Dear Members and Friends of Trinity Church,
Writing in the midst of bombed out cities in the Serbian
civil war, poet Jane Kenyon reflected on God taking on flesh and becoming truly
human in these words:
Mosaic of Nativity: Serbia, Winter 1993
On the domed ceiling God
is thinking:
I made them my joy,
and everything else I created
I made to bless them.
But see what they do!
I know their hearts
and arguments:“We’re descended from
Cain. Evil is nothing new,
so what does it matter now
if we shell the infirmary,
and the well where the fearful
and rash alike must
come for water?"God thinks Mary into being.
Suspended at the apogee
of the golden dome,
she curls in a brown pod,
and inside her the mind
of Christ, cloaked in blood,
lodges and begins to grow.
The world is a thing of glorious beauty, our lives full of
wonder. The Creator made us for
joy. But often things in our lives do
not quite fill the measure of God’s good creation. The emptying of the Godhead of glory and
power, its taking on flesh in a helpless baby in this troubled world—the
incarnation—this is God’s great act to reconcile the creation as intended with
the messed up way it often appears. And
this is both an eternal, timeless act (remember, “eternally begotten of the
Father”) and one that took place at a particular time and place (in Bethlehem
or perhaps Nazareth, during the reign of Augustus Caesar). Of course, Christ’s unjust death is implicit
in, part of the package of, becoming truly mortal. And the raising of Jesus in glory, as the
final act of this incarnation, foreshadows the raising of the whole creation,
including us, in glory as well.
Let me wish you and your loved ones every grace and peace
during this season, with prayers for reconciliation for all. Together with the angels at Christ’s birth, I
pray that there be fullness of life on earth, with us all enjoying God’s grace.
With love and blessing,
Fr. Tony+
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