I know a retired pastor who, for most of the funeral sermons he gave over the course of his ministry, he entitled his sermon: “Chapters of So-and-So’s Life”. And he would proceed, simply, to tell the story of the deceased’s life from beginning to end.

In remembering a loved one who has died, families will often recount in their minds and conversations with one another their story. Not just the last years before they died. But their whole life, including life-changing events, youthful adventures, closest friends, their accomplishments and failures, where they travelled, interesting experiences—from every chapter of their life.

You would think the Gospels in the Bible would do the same for Jesus. But they don’t. Except for the first two chapters in only two of the four Gospels telling the Christmas story^[1], we only have the last three years of Jesus’ life. I used to think that’s because that’s all we needed. But there’s more to that.

20^th century educator, author and management consultant, Peter Drucker, once said, “The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said.” The art of ‘reading in between the lines’ is what is sometimes called for if we are to understand the whole truth of the matter. Can we as people of faith become non-verbally smarter? Can we hear for and learn to pay attention as much to what isn’t written than what is? Because the words we don’t have have just as much to ‘say’—perhaps even more.

When it comes to what is presented in the Gospels about Jesus’ life, we need to come to terms with the fact that Jesus remained anonymous and largely invisible for the first thirty years of his life—most of his years on earth. What do we make of that? What is the significance of most of Jesus’ life being absent from the biblical narrative?

Some authors have written fictional accounts, piecing together and extrapolating from what we do know about Jesus and his relationships and places where he lived. Christopher Moore^[2] and Sue Monk Kidd^[3] are two contemporary authors who have attempted to describe what may have happened in those invisible years of Jesus’ life after his birth. Because we don’t really know, for sure. We can only imagine.

I appreciate this effort nonetheless because in Jesus, “God became part of our small, homely world.” In Jesus, God “entered into human limits and ordinariness.” Throughout those thirty years, Jesus spent little time becoming noticed. For most of his life, he was no celebrity. Far from it. He climbed no ladder of success. In the words of Saint Paul, he didn’t consider his divinity as something to be grasped and flaunted for all to see.

Rather, Jesus spent most of his life embracing his common humanity. He spent a lot of time descending, “emptying himself and becoming as all humans are” (Philippians 2:7), “tempted in every way that we are” (Hebrews 4:15) and “living in the limitations of weakness” (Hebrews 5:2). Jesus walked, enjoyed, and suffered the entire human journey.^[4] He was ordinary, like us.

When Jesus is baptized in the River Jordan by John the Baptist,^[5] we see the heavens opened, the dove descends, and we hear the voice of God: “This is my son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” 

Traditionally we hear these words as a launching point for Jesus’ public ministry. We consider God’s words as a stamp of approval on the missional purpose of what Jesus will do—as divine Son of God. We perceive this event in light of the goal—what Christ will achieve on the cross and by the empty tomb at the end of his three-year ministry.

As we stand on the banks of the Jordan River witnessing this divine event of Jesus’ baptism, I wonder if we’re not getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s take a step back for a moment.

Because what we perceive in Jesus is not an individual, autonomous God. We need to remember Jesus is in constant relationship within the Triune God: three persons in one. We know Jesus often related in prayer to God whom he called “Abba”^[6]—Father. We know Jesus often reminded his listeners that if they have ‘seen’ him, they have ‘seen’ the Father. The “Father and I are one” Jesus prayed. And, in the bond of the Holy Spirit, Christians appreciate God as fundamentally relational.

When it comes to Christ Jesus, he has been “from the beginning”^[7] in union with God. They have been talking with each other from the beginning of time. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit—they are dancing together in relationship since the creation of the world.

It strikes me that if there is any stamp of approval at Jesus’ baptism, it has more to do with recognizing the life Jesus has already lived to that point—his first thirty years. God calls Jesus “beloved” for making it this far as a human being. For the divine Christ has embraced his ordinariness, in journeying the path we all take. “Good job! We’ve done well!” I can hear God say at Jesus’ baptism.

I wonder if there isn’t a call here for us to embrace our own humanity. As St Irenaeus is known to have advised in the 2^nd century: “The glory of God is a human being fully alive.”^[8] If God’s glory is humanity fully alive, our lives must mean something important to God. 

In other words, there is something holy about the ordinary. Each ordinary moment. Every unnoticed action. What isn’t said about us. Every ordinary conversation. Each word we use and don’t use. Every ordinary decision we make in the routines of living. Our whole lives have brought us to these moments of time that are pregnant with God’s loving presence, in Christ Jesus. Even the painful, sorrowful ones.

Let us live our ordinary lives to the fullest—as God intends—so that we, with Jesus, can also hear God’s words spoken to each one of us: “You are my beloved and in you I am well pleased.”

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^[1] Matthew and Luke

^[2] Christopher Moore, Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal (William Morrow Paperbacks, 2004).

^[3] Sue Monk Kidd, The Book of Longings (Penguin Books, 2021).

^[4] Richard Rohr, “Incarnation” in Daily Meditations (www.cac.org, 19 December 2022).

^[5] Matthew 3:13-17

^[6] John 17

^[7] John 1

^[8] Attributed to St. Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons in what is now France in the last quarter of the 2^nd century.

“And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’”^[1]

What are the voices that you have heard and inwardly digested this holiday season? What messages have you taken to heart? 

The song of the angels, the carols, the music? 

The voices of industry, the marketing experts telling you what you need to buy in order to be happy? 

The voices of politicians telling you to be afraid, and not to be afraid? 

The voice of your heart, the whisper of truth, languishing under the heavy weight of delusion and despair like a tiny candle’s flame flickering and grasping for oxygen?

Of all the disruption and renewed vigilance we have been called upon to observe during this Christmas, beleaguered by the Omicron-variant, whose voice have you listened to?

We have good examples from scripture, especially Mary mother of Jesus who had to pivot big-time dealing with the sudden news of the angel telling her what was in store for her. This is Mary who faced incredible change in her life in such short order. 

And she allowed for some reflection on this question in her life and amidst all the turmoil: Not once but twice — first when the shepherds visited the holy child at his birth and then again years later after Jesus was found conversing with the teachers in the temple — “Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart”.^[2]

What words do you hear, do you ponder and treasure in your heart now that the seasons shift again? 

“And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’”

In this short verse, we witness an intimacy within the Trinity. We get a sense of the profound love between Father and Son. This dialogue is between two persons. And we are privileged to behold such a holy moment of love expressed in the Triune God who considers Jesus ‘the Beloved’.

Jesus’ baptism is the first time in the Gospels we hear a conversation — or part of one — between God and Jesus. This loving conversation will sustain and hold and animate all that Jesus does in the thirty years of his life on earth. God is about this interface between one and the other, the connecting point between Father, Son and Holy Spirit, between Creator and Redeemer through the Holy Spirit “that descended upon him … like a dove.” A dove.

I have missed the birds. Where have they gone? Just before Christmas we put all kinds of seeds and feed on our bird houses and stands in front of our house. Memories from summer of flocks of them descending upon our property filled us with joy and expectation before Christmas. But we really haven’t seen them besides the stray nibbler. Heck, not even the squirrels have come by! The dove represents the presence of God “in bodily form”. Well, this Christmas, it doesn’t seem like God visited.

Maybe, like me, you’ve wondered about whether God was missing-in-action this Christmas. I asked the cashier at my local grocery store a couple of days ago, “How was your Christmas?” Scanning my groceries, she kept her head down, shrugged, and said, “It was quiet”. And I took that to mean not particularly a good ‘quiet’. Has God missed the boat with us this Christmas, indeed this last year? We began and ended last year in this paralyzed state, and started this new year mired again under the threat of the pandemic.

We may need the Epiphany — the revelation of God. The season of Epiphany begins after the twelfth day of Christmas every year on January 6 according to our calendar. Epiphany means ‘revelation’. God is revealed to us anew, just as God was revealed in Jesus Christ, the beloved Son of God. We may very well need the Epiphany this year like no other before.

When you think about it, most of the Christmas crèches and manger scenes don’t show us much of the baby Jesus himself. At the birth, we may feel the wonder of it all, the spiritual tenderness of the scene. He is swaddled and cradled, his presence illuminated only by light. 

But we cannot really see the face of the Christ child. The Christ child’s face is not normally the dominant image. The Christmas vision of the newborn Jesus is often one of Mary kneeling by the improvised bed. We are like bystanders from a distance who see the baby’s face only through the actors, mother and father, animals and angels.^[3]

We may need the Epiphany to behold the face of Jesus for ourselves! Ancient Celtic Christians believed that in gazing at a newborn’s face, we see the very image of God.^[4] Perhaps that is why we, young and old, are drawn to babies. And you can hardly hold a baby in your arms without gazing upon their face. Infants give us a felt sense of God’s loving presence. Babies draw us to God’s love and grace. There is no other relationship to speak of that more accurately captures the truth of God’s love than our relationship with a new born. 

Conversely, through the infant’s eyes, in some mysterious way, God beholds you. When a baby’s eyes fix upon your gaze, when the infant looks at you with those small, penetrating, gentle, inquisitive eyes, God sees you. And loves you. Oh, yes, this year especially we need Epiphany.

And maybe, just maybe in the days to come, you shall hear the voice of Jesus say to your heart — “You are mine, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

And when we are God’s beloved, we begin to live and ‘see’ through God’s eyes.^[5] The voices of the human crowd, even the negative ones, will have little power to hurt us. And we will begin to perceive the world around us through the sight of a holy child who looks with gentleness and love upon everyone we meet.

The ‘You’ is then not just for you. God turns to the whole of creation and says to all: “You are mine, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

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^[1] Luke 3:21-22

^[2] Luke 2:19,51

^[3] Diana Butler Bass, “Mary and Jesus” in Holiness and the Feminine Spirit: The Art of Janet McKenzie, cited in Diana Butler Bass “The Cottage – December 22: Advent Calendar” (substack.com, 2021)

^[4] Diana Butler Bass, Freeing Jesus, cited in “The Cottage – December 7: Advent Calendar” (substack.com, 2021)

^[5] Richard Rohr, “A Mutually Loving Gaze” Week One: Nothing Stands Alone (Daily Meditations, www.cac.org, 3 January 2022)

At the beginning of a new year, ‘change’ is on our minds. We consider dieting, exercising, forming healthy habits and other disciplines. And maybe even some plans are made. A couple weeks ago, we ordered a new scale. And it arrived promptly at our door on New Year’s Eve. Good timing. Now, will it work? And I don’t mean the scale.

I saw this funny cartoon in one of my social media feeds. It shows lots of people crowded in a church building all leaning intentionally to block the door. Outside knocking on the door is a figure that is supposed to be Jesus. The caption underneath reads: “Don’t allow Him in. He will change everything!”

Church people aren’t usually the type to welcome change. We don’t normally associate Jesus with change. Or, rather, we don’t acknowledge that walking with Jesus will. 

And yet, Bishop Michael Pryse confesses that in this COVID time he has seen something different in the Eastern Synod. He writes, “In the last nine months, I have learned that our church has a much greater capacity to change than I ever thought imaginable. We pivoted and established new models for ministry in a matter of weeks. We figured out new ways to engage in worship, learning, pastoral care and outreach ministries! I was amazed!

“And I hereby pledge to never again utter the words, ‘How many Lutherans does it take to change a lightbulb?’ ‘Change?’ The last nine months have proven that we can, and we did!”^[1]

How does growth and change happen in each of us? And do we want to let this growth happen in our lives? Or do we resist it at every possible turn?

A cherished tradition at Christmas is the candlelight service, when worshippers gather in a darkened room and share the light of Christ. Passing candlelight is not easy but is also the way the One Light is conveyed to the whole assembly. When everyone’s candles are lighted, we all participate in the One Light of Christ. The small light we hold is no different from the first candle, the source. We are not Jesus, but we participate in his energy, his life and his light.

Symeon the New Theologian said, “Just as if you lit a flame from a flame, it is the whole flame you receive.”^[2]

The Baptism of our Lord indicates that, in our baptism, we have the capacity to experience, first-hand, God’s presence directly. Our very lives reflect the ‘whole flame’ that we have received. To what degree we experience God depends on God’s loving initiative—grace, on the one hand; and our response on the other hand.

Sixteenth century Spanish mystic John of the Cross takes up the analogy of a smudgy window to make the connection between God’s grace and our response. A smudgy window, he says, is less able to transmit the sunlight shining through it. The more cleaned and polished the window, the more identical it appears with the rays of sunshine. While the nature of the window is distinct from the sun’s ray, a clean window better participates in the ray of sunlight that passes through it.^[3]

It is not easy to wipe the smudge off. Sin is so entrenched within our ego that it might very well take a lifetime and beyond for all the dirt to be cleaned out. Since the time John of the Cross mused about smudge and light centuries ago, other poets and writers have commented on how the light gets to us and is reflected from us. 

More recently, Leonard Cohen wrote about how there is a crack in everything, and that’s how the light gets in. Whether it is through our weakness or strength, we turn towards the light in whatever way we can, to do better. The pinprick of light already shining in us slowly burns and cleanses. And we change.

In the end, the personal encounter with God changes us, so that others may experience Christ more fully in us. Our job, in the end, is not to horde the light for ourselves. The experience of the Christmas Eve candlelight service would be spoiled if no one passed their candlelight along. Our purpose is to share the candlelight to our neighbour, so they, too, may have the joy of holding and reflecting the light of Christ in their lives. 

As I said, passing the light is not easy. It’s tricky. And never a perfect art form. Sometimes it doesn’t work out so well for us, or for our neighbour. Wax gets spilled. Wicks get snuffed. But, still, we try and try again. 

In the end, our participation in God’s energy, life and light means more than dwelling on debates and disagreements about our essence and/or Christ’s essence. It’s about participating in, and being changed because of, our personal experience with the Light – with Jesus. Twentieth-century American poet, W.H. Auden, offers what I consider a prayer for our imperfect response to, and sharing of, God’s grace:

How should we like it were stars to burn

With a passion for us we could not return?

If equal affection cannot be,

Let the more loving one be me.^[4]

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^[1] Bishop Michael Pryse, “Adieu—‘to God’—2020” Canada Lutheran (Vol.35, No.8, December 2020) p.30.

^[2] Symeon the New Theologian was an eleventh century Byzantine Christian monk and mystic revered to this day by Eastern, Orthodox Christians. Cited in Richard Rohr, “Christ Born In Us” Incarnation (Daily Meditations, December 25, 2020), www.cac.org

^[3] Cited in Rohr, ibid., December 10, 2020.

^[4] W.H. Auden, “The More Loving One” www.poets.org