hard Christmas

Christmas is so hard for so many people. Some people have had their Christmas seasons destroyed because of how they were used and abused in the past. Some people become incredibly aware of the empty place at the table; a place vacated by choice or death.

Tough.

For me this piques my desire for Christ to return. I simply want God’s love to come in all its fullness for those who struggle so desperately to have any kind of enjoyment in this world.

I realise that there are many people who will gather this Christmas, surrounded by friends and family, with things seemingly perfect.

But there are so many (more?) who are struggling. Worried about how they can pay for the oil and power to keep them warm as the snow piles up outside the window. Experiencing a bitterness in this season which seems to be absent in others.

We cry out the cry of Advent.

Come.

O Come, O Come, Immanuel.

Come, Jesus.

Jesus, whose name means “God save us.”

Come quickly, Lord Jesus.

Your people languish as you tarry.

on the incarnation: ch 9

Today we finish up our reading of St. Athanasius’s book On the Incarnation. Now, I realise that I am skipping a few chapters, but Athanasius urges the non-student reader to move from chapter 5 to the conclusion; chapter 9.

All that we have looked at together, for Athanasius, is a very basic introduction to the faith.

Here, then, Macarius, is our offering to you who love Christ, a brief statement of the faith of Christ and of the manifestation of his Godhead to us. This will give you a beginning, and you must go on to prove its truth by the study of the Scriptures. They are written and inspired by God; and we, who have learned from inspired teachers who read the Scriptures and became martyrs for the Godhead of Christ, make further contribution to your eagerness to learn.

Basic statement of faith in Jesus Christ? There are many things that Athanasius has said which are far beyond what most Christians today would be able to say. But this tells us how bankrupt our faith really is. We simply think that we can sit back and simply ‘believe’.

The question then is, “Believe what?”

“Believe what I have written,” says Athanasius. “Believe what we have learned from the scriptures.” The ancient church fathers talked about a ‘rule of faith’ through which all of scripture was to be read. They argued that there were so many ways to misunderstand what was being said in the scriptures that we had to approach them with a certain set of beliefs.

This rule of faith was not to be something random, or some collection of our favourite Bible verses. The rule of faith is the teaching of the church regarding the scriptures.

More than this, though, is the understanding that purity and holiness is required in the Christian life, even for proper understanding of the Bible.

But for the searching and right understanding of the Scriptures there is need of a good life and a pure soul, and for Christian virtue to guide the mind to grasp, so far as human nature can, the truth concerning God the Word. One cannot possibly understand the teaching of the saints unless one has a pure mind and is trying to imitate their life.

So, living a holy life, for Athanasius, is not just about giving ourselves back to God for what he has done for us, but it is about trying to live a life that allows for God to speak to us. For us to truly understand what God is telling us in his Word, we need to be holy and pure.

Yikes! Puts a whole new perspective on learning from scripture.

modern nativity

I ran across this image on Paper Bridges, and couldn’t help but share it.

How would you respond to something like this?

taking the leap

Joseph, poor Joseph. He had created quite a good little life for himself. He had a good job as a carpenter, everyone needed things to eat from, to set their food on, to place their cutlery, washbasins, even their children in. He had found a nice little girl from down the road. Someone who was so lively and full of grace. Someone who was obviously loved by God.

Poor Joseph.

He has just had a very interesting chat with this ‘good’ little girl from down the road.

“Conceived of the Holy Spirit!?! Hah! I know that is not how those things happen.”

Poor Joseph.

Now he has to put aside his bride. He will do it quietly, because he does not want to bring scorn on her, she will have enough of that; poor girl. No, he will act the gentleman. After all, all he wants is a nice quiet, easy life.
Poor Joseph.

Then he falls asleep, and God shows up. “Don’t do it,” says God. “Do not set aside that good little girl from down the street. What she says it true. This is a child like no other.”

Poor Joseph.

Now what is he supposed to do? How is he supposed to live the nice quiet life that he had hoped for? How is he supposed to raise a family, have a nice business, making a nice living, residing in a nice house, in the hustle and bustle of a nice little town?

He can’t. He has been told to take that leap of faith.

To believe.

Even though everything in his body says, “No way,” he is told to trust.

Max Lucado, in God came Near, says that we all hear that same call at different points in our lives. Perhaps some face it right now.

Perhaps changes are in the air right now. Maybe you’re in the midst of a decision. It’s distrupting, isn’t it? You like your branch. You’ve grown accustomed to it and it to you. And, like Joseph, you’ve been a pretty good branch sitter. And then you hear the call, “I need you to go out on a limb and

…take a stand. Some of the local churches are organising an anti-pornography campaign. They need some volunteers.”

…move. Take your family and move overseas; I have special work for you.”

…forgive. It doesn’t matter who hurt who first. What matters is that you go and build the bridge.”

…evangelise. That new family down the block? They don’t know anyone in town. Go meet them.”

…sacrifice. The orphanage has a mortgage payment due this month. They can’t meet it. Remember the bonus you received last week?”

So, there we sit. Hearing the call, but not wanting to move. Standing at the precipice, looking out into what looks like empty space. Hearing the call of God on our lives, but wondering where we will end up.

To all of us who want to follow him,

God

says,

“Jump.”

on the incarnation; ch 2 and 3

Last week, as we began our walk through St. Athanasius’s On The Incarnation, we saw that God created everything good, but by turning away from God, humankind became the source of their own corruption. Now, moving farther and farther away from God, they were in the process of destruction.

Man, who was created in God’s image and in his possession of reason reflected the very Word himself, was disappearing, and the work of God was being undone.

This left God with a bit of a dilemma. God could not go back on his word so that humankind, though sinning against God, should not die; but it is equally unthinkable that we, who once shared the nature of the Word, should be destroyed and turn back into non-existence through corruption.

Surely it would have been better never to have been created at all than, having been created, to be neglected and perish; and besides that such indifference to the ruin of His own work before His very eyes would argue not goodness in God but limitation, and that far more than if He had never created man at all.

For Athanasius, God is in a bit of a pickle. In order to express his goodness, he has to do something about this incredible work of creation called humankind. He could not allow them to continue on the road they had chosen. But if he does not allow them to perish, to suffer the consequences of their actions, then he would be going back on his word; something God must not do so as to express his justice.

So, God seems to be stuck. He has to express his goodness by saving his creation which is being destroyed, but he also has to express his justice and allow it to be destroyed.

Repentance on the part of humankind would not solve the problem either. True repentance causes people to stop sinning, but it does not deal with the corruption that has come as a result of the sins.

[O]nce the transgression had begun men came under the power of the corruption proper to their nature and were bereft of the grace which belonged to them as creatures in the Image of God.

What–or rather Who was it that was needed for such grace and such recall as we required? Who, save the Word of God Himself, Who also in the beginning had made all things our of nothing? His part it was, and His alone, both to bring again the corruptible to incorruption and to maintain for the Father his consistence of character with all. For He alone, being Word of the Father and above all, was in consequence both able to recreate all, and worthy to suffer on behalf of all and to be an ambassador for all with the Father.

For this reason, then, the incorporeal and incorruptible and immaterial Word of God entered our world.

So, according to Athanasius, Jesus, the Word, came into the world to do two things; to recreate in humankind the image of God, saving us from the corruption began in the garden, and to maintain the consistency of God’s character, to release him from this dilemma between grace and judgement.

This He did out of sheer love for us, so that in His death all might die and the law of death thereby be abolished because, when He had fulfilled in His body that for which it was appointed, it was thereafter voided of its power for men.

Our corruption could not be erased other than through death, or else God’s character could not be maintained. For God said that if we ate of the fruit we would die. Through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, the image of God was being restored in humankind.

[B]y the offering of His own body He abolished the death which they had incurred, and corrected their neglect by His own teaching. Thus by his own power He restored the whole nature of man.

For Athanasius, this is not a single action, or an instantaneous renewal, just as the corruption was not an instantaneous destruction of the image of God.

For by the sacrifice of His own body He did two things: He put an end to the law of death which barred our way and He made a new beginning of life for us, by giving us the hope of resurrection.

This is, however, only one of the reasons why the Word became man, according to Athanasius. When God created humankind, he created them with the ability to know him. He made them in his image so that they might be able to “perceive the true image of God, the Word himself, and through him to apprehend the Father; which knowledge of their maker is for men the only really happen and blessed life.

But, humankind through away this ability to know God through this image.

Men, foolish as they are, thought little of the grace they had received, and turned away from God. They defiled their own soul so completely that they not only lost their apprehension of God, but invented for themselves other gods of various kinds.

As a safeguard against the absolute loss of apprehension of God, he filled the world with his works so that we might be able to perceive our God in them. On top of this he sent prophets, and gave them a law so that if they did not look around and see God, they would still be able to learn about him from the people who surrounded them.

Even though God had done all this, humankind still decided to turn away from God and ignore his gracious works. We were consistent in ’suppressing the truth in unrighteousness’ as the apostle Paul says, and were determined to forget about God and keep ourselves in ignorance.

So, in order to renew the knowledge of himself that was lost in the corruption of his image, God’s image came down in the form of Jesus Christ.

Wherefore, in all naturalness and fitness, desiring to do good to men, and Man He dwells, taking to Himself a body like the rest; and through His actions done in that body, as it were on their own level, he teaches those who would not learn by other means to know Himself, the Word of God, and through Him the Father.

For Athanasius, then, Jesus, the Word, the second person of the Trinity, was incarnated, took on human flesh, for two reasons. First, he had to do away with sin and death, which could only be done by dying the death himself and then coming back to life in the resurrection. Second, Jesus came to give us the knowledge of the Father himself. He came to renew the image of God in us, so that we might be able, once again, to enjoy knowing the Father.