Yesterday was Advent Sunday. The text for the day was the Prologue of John's Gospel. (Jn1.1-14) Wanting to explore the great paradox of the "outcast and stranger, Lord of all", I preached on John 1.14: "The Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us....and we beheld his glory....full of grace and truth."
What to make of the Colossians claim "He is the image of the invisible God". And how to understand the Hebrews prologue:"The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of God's being..." (Heb 1.3) These two verses are theologically implicated in John's Prologue with its vast window on to the cosmos, creation, light and darkness and the invasion of human history by the Word who was in the beginning with God. "The Word became flesh...lived amongst us...we beheld his glory",
So I reduced all that precise, sophisticated discourse to children's talk level. "Jesus is God’s selfie". That contemporary addiction to the smartphone as both mirror and camera gives us a way into the profoundest truth about God. Jesus is God's selfie.
Is that true? Or is that a sell-out of the rich content of our faith by trivialising truth for the sake of some connectedness to contemporary cultural addictions? Jesus is God's selfie. Is this children’s talk mode of the banal "that's a bit like Jesus" type? The Word became flesh…the image of the invisible God...the exact representation of God's being...". Jesus is God incarnate, embodied, humbled to human form. So, Jesus is God's selfie.
When you look at Jesus you see the face of God. The face of Jesus, that looks on harassed and helpless folk, like sheep without a shepherd, and feeds them; the face that looks on vulnerable people, anxious, frightened, confused, and says "I am the good shepherd"; or that looks on Jerusalem and weeps because it has no idea of the things that make for its peace; the face that looks on the Temple, the house of prayer overrun with consumerist commerce and financial services, and that face determined to overturn oppression wrecks the checkouts. Jesus is God's selfie.
If Jesus is God's selfie, then it follows that by beholding him, listening to him, Jesus' words are heard as the words of the Word of God incarnate. In Genesis 1 God spoke and it was so. "The Word" from the very beginning is the creative word that accomplishes what it says. So Jesus' words have the accent and accomplishing power of God. "Come unto me all who labour…Son your sins are forgiven….God so loved the world…I if I be lifted up….. I am the resurrection…." What Jesus says echoes what God already says, accomplishes what God already purposes, and foregrounds the heart and thoughts of God for all he has created. Jesus is God's selfie.
Jesus is God's selfie, the God who turns water into wine, so that the wedding isn't an embarrassment. The God who in Jesus is the bread of life broken, but who also takes bread and breaks it and feeds the hungry, and who takes bread and says this is my body.
Jesus is God's selfie, the God who washes feet, even the feet of Judas; the God who looks power in the eye and face and says "You have has no power unless God gives it"; the God who prays for his enemies who are engineering his death with all the ruthless efficiency of Empire and the blind fear of a religion so under threat it validates violence.
Jesus is God's selfie, the God who dies for the sins of the world that whoever believes and trusts that love will not perish but have everlasting life. All of that is what John means, "The Word became flesh and lived amongst us....and we beheld his glory."
Advent is the time to remember who God is, and that Jesus is God incarnate. What we see in Jesus is God. In Jesus, God's selfie, “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell…” The fullest revelation of God is in the humanity of Jesus, “outcast and stranger, Lord of all”. In Jesus God did something so completely new the world can never be the same. The world for all its powers and systems, its structures of control and ambitions towards absolute autonomy, can’t change what God has done and is doing by acting as if it never happened. Jesus, the image of the invisble God; Jesus the exact representation of God's being; Jesus, the Word made flesh; Jesus the light shining in the darkness. Jesus God's selfie.
These are Advent words loudly spoken. They try to put into words God’s final Word, who is the person Jesus. And it is this Jesus, incarnate, crucified, risen and coming, who calls us to a new advent, a new adventure.
Advent is the time when if we listen, behold, think outside the status quo and the givenness of things, we will hear God calling us to new directions, new commitments, new risks, new ways of loving the world as God does.
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