WHAT
SHOWS ME THAT GOD CARES?
by
Mary Earle
The
wonder of the Incarnation is that in Jesus we are told that God
and humanity are meant for each other. We discover that God
loves bodies, God plays with matter, God speaks to us through
quarks and atoms and molecules, through blood and lymph and bone.
Through every human race and culture. The Christian story tells
us that God chooses to be human, chooses to know human life from
the moment of conception to the suffering of death. In
Jesus, God knows intimately what it is to be a toddler, to have
a stomachache,
to feel the rain and wind, to be betrayed and forsaken, to die. Incarnation
is about God choosing to be one of us, so that we might become
communities of compassion, mercy, courage, justice,
care, God’s embodied presence here and now.
Historically,
at this time of the year, the peoples of the Celtic lands (Scotland,
Ireland, Wales, Brittany, Cornwall, Isle of Man,
Galicia) marked the natural rhythm as autumn turned to winter.
This was a time for watching for the light’s return, even
in the midst of darkness. This was a time for pondering endings
and beginnings. As Christianity came to these lands, perhaps as
early as the first century, there was a ready embracing of the
proclamation that Jesus was the Son of God. As
far as we can tell, the pre-Christian religious practices of
the Celtic peoples were
inclined to celebrate the natural world as shot through with
divine presence. For them, a faith tradition that celebrated the divine
becoming human was plausible, welcome and true. Incarnation was
not a stumbling block as it was to the Greeks. This faith that
had a central story of a man who came from God and returned to
God, a man who was God’s Son, did not seem so far-fetched
to the Celtic mind.
The
first time I went to Wales in 1994, Patrick Thomas, Welsh author
and Anglican
priest, told us that in every Welsh nativity
scene, a washerwoman accompanies Mary, Joseph and Jesus at the
manger. For the Welsh
tradition, if Jesus isn’t born daily
into the common household, then there’s really no point of
celebrating the birth at Bethlehem. Jesus’ birth, singular
as it is, also shows us the sacredness of each child, knit together
in the mother’s womb by God’s own Spirit. Jesus’ birth
reminds us that each household is dear to God.
Hearkening
back to a time when the church was one, and having resonance
with Eastern Orthodox theology, the Celtic Christian
tradition is at ease with proclamations from the early church,
such as this from Maximus Confessor: : “The Word of God,
who is God, wills always and in all things to work the mystery
of his embodiment.” The Celtic Christian tradition would
agree with C. S. Lewis when he writes, “God loves matter;
he invented it.” George McLeod, who founded the modern Iona
Community in Scotland, said, “Matter matters.”
The
Celtic tradition looks at the world and wonders at the fact that
there
is anything at all. The natural world is perceived as
pointing beyond itself, to the divine Source. God’s presence,
as A. M. Allchin has observed, makes the world. God’s presence
makes you, makes your family, makes each person. God’s presence
invites loving, active response. God’s incarnate presence
provokes us to action, to care, to justice.
At
this season of the year, when we celebrate the birth of the baby
Jesus in the midst
of the hubbub in Bethlehem, this tradition
invites us to notice God being birthed in our midst, in one another,
in our friend, in our foe. As the Welsh poet Donald Evans wrote
of the baby born in the manger at Bethlehem,
He
loved the earth, loved it as a lover
because it is God’s earth:
He loved it because it was created by his Father
From nothingness to be life’s temple.
Copyright
©2003 Mary Earle --From “A
Celtic Christmas” by Mary Earle
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