At Morning Prayer today, the first lesson from Exodus 33 reads, in part, "And [Moses] said, I beseech thee, shew me thy glory. And [God] said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee; and I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy." (vv. 18-19) By the time we arrive at this point in the narrative, the Israelites have been delivered from their slavery in Egypt, arrived at Mt. Sinai, received the Law and the ceremonial instructions for the tabernacle liturgy, broken the Law and received it again at Moses' intercession. It has been said that Exodus "begins in gloom and ends in glory" (cf. Dr. J. Vernon McGee) And it is the same for us. The birth of Jesus is immediately preceded by the gloom of many long years of theological and moral darkness under the cloud of the Adamic transgression and the heavy weight of the Pharisaical exegesis of Moses. Afterward, that very graciousness has come among us in a mysterious and, to some, unlooked for way. Mercy has indeed been shown after the perfect manner of the Divine solicitude, now not just to historic Israel under the covenant granted to Moses, but that original blessing given to Abraham in Genesis 12:2-3 is now restored and given to Jew and Gentile alike, "And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed."
Then we come to Christmas Day itself, wherein the Gospel lesson proclaims, ""In the beginning was the Word, and the word was with God, and the Word was God....In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not." (Jn. 1:1, 4-5) The great poet John Milton, author of Paradise Lost, opens his work On the Morning of Christ's Nativity thusly:
This is the Month, and this the happy morn
Wherein the Son of Heav'ns eternal King,
Of wedded Maid, and Virgin Mother born,
Our great redemption from above did bring;
For so the holy sages once did sing,
That he our deadly forfeit should release,
And with his Father work us a perpetual peace.
That glorious Form, that Light unsufferable,
And that far-beaming blaze of Majesty,
Wherwith he wont at Heav'ns high Councel-Table,
To sit the midst of Trinal Unity,
He laid aside; and here with us to be,
Forsook the Courts of everlasting Day,
And chose with us a darksom House of mortal Clay.
The Light of the world is indeed come, puts the darkness to flight, and sustains the world in being until the second and glorious coming wherein, according to 1 Cor. 15:28 "...all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all." And yet it remains for the time being that there are many things that remain mysterious, not yet "subdued" to our limited, rational minds. We believe and confess that the Divine nature is one in essence, subsisting in three persons. We profess that Jesus is "very God of very God...And was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, And was made man". We are taught that, in order to be truly alive, we must die to ourselves. "Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?" (Rom. 6:3)
Bishop Lancelot Andrewes, preaching the Nativity sermon before King James I in 1607, says:
Of God, the prophet Esay saith, Vere Deus absconditus es tu; God is of Himself a mystery, and hidden; and that which is strange, hidden with light which will make any eyes past looking on Him. But a hidden God our nature did not endure. Will you hear them speak it plainly? Fac nobis deus, makes us visible gods who may go before us, and we see them. Mystical, invisible gods we cannot skill of. This we would have; God to be manifested. Why then, God is manifested....Were it not a proud desire and full of presumption, to wish things so remote to come together? to wish that the Deity in the flesh may be made manifest? Yet we see wished it was, by one in a place in reasonable express terms, O that thou wert as my brother, that sucked the breasts of my mother! That is, that He might be manifested in the flesh! O that He might be! and so He was. Not only manifest at all; that is great; but manifest in the flesh; that is greater. For if gold mixed though it be with silver is abased by it, what if it be mixed with the rust of iron or dross of lead? This must needs be great in itself, but greater with us; with us especially that make such ado at any though never so little disparagement; and that if any, though not much our inferior, be ranked with us, take ourselves mightily wrong. We cannot choose but hold this mystery for great, and say with St. Augustine, [37/38] Deus; quid gloriosius? Caro; quid vilius? Deus in carne; quid mirabilius? God; what more glorious? flesh; what more base? Then, God in the flesh; what more marvellous?
"God in the flesh; what more marvellous?" Indeed it is so. And it has been anticipated down through the course of salvation history, has come to fruition in time in a small and insignificant corner of the Roman Empire, has born fruit, been misunderstood and corrupted in the hearts of many throughout the past two millenia, but nevertheless remains true and accessible to all who would be saved. As we heard in today's Epistle, "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life" (1 Jn. 1:1)
And so, during the progress of this Christmas season, whether in covenant and mystery, whether in the joys or sorrows of everyday life, whether in knowledge or ignorance, whether in holiness or in the struggles that beset us, let our prayer and remembrance always be: "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; for he hath visited and redeemed his people" (Lk. 1:68)
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