Who is Jesus Christ?

Tuesday, December 24, 2024 – Christmas Eve, Isaiah 9:2-7, Psalm 96, Titus 2:11-14, Luke 2:1-14 [15-20]

Who is Jesus Christ? More importantly, who is he for us today?

Titus tells us that Christ is the “hope and manifestation of the glory of God.” But to unknowing passersby, that tiny baby lying in a feeding trough, born of parents who couldn’t even find a suitable place to be housed for the night, might not have seemed too important.

How many people just walked right by without even noticing the holy family?

I grew up watching the holiday classic “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” and I’m sure most of you know it well. Poor Charlie Brown depressed because he can’t feel the true meaning of Christmas. Then he’s put in charge of the kids Christmas play, and no one is listening to him.

Lucy’s focused on getting Schroder’s attention. Snoopy’s making trouble, and Pigpen’s making a mess. Everyone’s breathlessly running around focused on all the wrong things.

The Christmas season can be like that for us too. We’re trying to get our work done before the holiday. Or we’re planning for family to visit or taking a trip to see them. Maybe we’re caught up in shopping and cooking.

Our Christmas can be a chaotic jumble of people focused on all the wrong things too.

But then unassuming Linus steps forward, with his trusty blanket by his side, and drops a truth bomb on everyone.

He tells the kids the true meaning of Christmas. He recites Luke’s story of the shepherds, and then gives the angel’s message, “Do not be afraid, for see, I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.”

All the chaos comes to a halt at the sound of this truth. The kids get a little kinder too, finally helping Charlie Brown decorate his sad little tree. When they heard the truth about Jesus, they were suddenly inspired and empowered to embody his love in their actions toward the other kids.

The birth of Jesus even sets off a heavenly chorus of singing and joy that turns humble shepherds into evangelists. So, when we ask ourselves the question, who is this Jesus, we might be tempted to just fall back on words we’ve heard the church say, that he’s “God incarnate” or that he “died for our sins.”

But I’d like to invite us to think about incarnation a little differently.

I’d like us to think about it as the glorious plan that God had from the beginning of time, and that it didn’t just happen once long ago in a man named Jesus, but happens in all times, in all places, and in all people.

I’ve mentioned Father Richard Rohr, one of my favorite Christian writers, before. He quotes Paul’s passage in the letter to the Ephesians where he writes that God’s plan for the fullness of time from the very beginning of creation was to “sum up all things in Christ, in heaven and on earth.”

In other words, the incarnation of God in Christ was always “plan A” and not a “Plan B” mop-up rescue operation because humanity messed up.

Rohr argues that incarnation was always about showing us that the spiritual nature of reality (the formless, the invisible) and the material nature of reality (what we can see and touch),

are, in fact, one and the same! And they always have been, ever since the Big Bang, which scientists estimate happened around 13.6 billion years ago. ‘God’s Spirit hovered over’ creation from the very first moment of existence as we know it—and this statement is at the very beginning of the Bible (Genesis 1:2), setting the trajectory for the rest of the book.”

We’ve been taught most of our lives that God incarnated once, 2,000 years ago in the body of Jesus. But Rohr tells us that

Yes, that was the unique and specific human incarnation of God, which Christians believe is found in the flesh and blood person of Jesus. That was perhaps when humanity was ready for a face-to-face encounter…But matter and spirit have always been one, since God decided to manifest God’s self in the first act of creation.”

This is really good news! Because if matter and spirit have always been one, then we are part of that wholeness!

And not only that, but Jesus, this incarnate presence of God in Christ, is in every one of us, and always has been.

In one of his recent daily meditations, Father Rohr shared a story told by the twentieth-century English artist, mystic, popular religious writer and poet, Caryll Houselander, who died in 1954. I think this is one of the most beautiful stories I’ve read.

Here’s what she said happened to her one day while she was riding in a train crowded with everyday commuters:

Quite suddenly I saw with my mind, but as vividly as a wonderful picture, Christ in them all. But I saw more than that; not only was Christ in every one of them, living in them, dying in them, rejoicing in them, sorrowing in them—but because He was in them, and because they were here, the whole world was here too … all those people who had lived in the past, and all those yet to come.”

When she left the train, her vision continued:

I came out into the street and walked for a long time in the crowds. It was the same here, on every side, in every passer-by, everywhere—Christ….I saw too the reverence that everyone must have for a sinner; instead of condoning [their] sin, which is in reality [their] utmost sorrow, one must comfort Christ who is suffering in [them]. And this reverence must be paid even to those sinners whose souls seem to be dead, because it is Christ, who is the life of the soul, who is dead in them; they are His tombs, and Christ in the tomb is potentially the risen Christ….

Christ is everywhere; in Him every kind of life has a meaning and has an influence on every other kind of life…. Realization of our oneness in Christ is the only cure for human loneliness. For me, too, it is the only ultimate meaning of life, the only thing that gives meaning and purpose to every life.

After a few days the ‘vision’ faded. People looked the same again, there was no longer the same shock of insight for me each time I was face to face with another human being. Christ was hidden again; indeed, through the years to come I would have to seek for Him, and usually I would find Him in others—and still more in myself—only through a deliberate and blind act of faith.”

Who is Christ for us today? He is the life of the soul. The ultimate meaning of life and the cure for our loneliness. He is the one who gives us purpose. The one who gives us joy.

May he come alive in all of us today, and every day.