21st December
Written by Mike Holmes
See, Amid the Winter’s Snow
“Sacred infant, all divine, what a tender love was thine, thus to come from higher bliss, down to such a world as this!”
Sacrifice…in the nativity? Surely, we can be spared the horrors of the Passion at this time of year – let’s imbibe the joys of Christmas with mulled wine, jingle bells, and blurry eyes, amid the winter’s snow. Yet this carol does hint at some kind of divine sacrifice: plunging from bliss to such a world as this. St John elaborates something similar:
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
So if “God so loved the world”, is “such a world as this” really that bad and, if so, is God’s descent intended to save us from the world or save the world from us? 1 John 2:2 suggests a bit of both: a “sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world” – i.e. not only to redeem our individual souls but also the collective soul of the World. 1 John 2:15-17 is certainly scathing about how our love affair with the world can turn sour, leaving us entirely alienated from God and in desperate need of salvation:
“Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For everything in the world - the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life - comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.”
So on the one hand we are told “do not love the world” and yet “God so loved the world…” regardless of its faults. Worldly “love” is quite clearly different from heavenly “love”.
Christ’s radical truth lights the way out of slavery, beyond sin and onwards towards the Kingdom of God, much as the star of Bethlehem guided the Magi away from the tyranny of the worldly king, Herod, onwards to their true newborn king, an infant as royal and divine as he was vulnerable, in keeping with their respective gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
Whilst Christ indubitably brings the Kingdom of God to us in this world, Jesus is clear that “My kingdom is not of this world…my kingdom is from another place” (John 18:36). As Saying 3 of the Gospel of Thomas suggests, this Kingdom is intangible yet realisable:
“…the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living father.”
This spiritual notion of the Kingdom of God certainly chimes with St John’s mystical nativity, which reveals:
“The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” (John 1:9-13)
If we can but “See, Amid the Winter’s Snow”, through the blinding blizzard of selfish desire, the Lamb of God will appear. Let us receive Christ, of our own free will, with a Will freed from sin’s tyranny. Through truly believing in his “name” (i.e. believing that “God saves”, as per the Hebrew meaning of “Yeshua”), having tasted for ourselves the higher bliss of the Kingdom of God, may we fulfil our destiny by becoming “a sacred infant, all divine…” to lovingly carry the light of Christ to others in “such a world as this”.