At last week's Prime Time Christmas gathering, I shared several readings from poets and theologians and we sang many of the great carols of our faith. One of the readings was written by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Protestant pastor in Germany during the years Hitler was in power. Bonhoeffer led a movement to oppose Hitler's regime and was imprisoned and ultimately put to death. He wrote these words about incarnation:
In Christ we are offered the possibility of partaking in the reality of God and in the reality of the world, but not in the one without the other. The reality of God discloses itself only by setting me entirely in the reality of the world, and when I encounter the reality of the world it is always already sustained, accepted and reconciled in the reality of God. This is the inner meaning of the revelation of God in the man Jesus Christ.
The incarnation of God in human form -- through the life of Christ -- created an unbreakable connection between the spiritual world and the physical world. We cannot know one without the other.
One of our church members was recently put on trial, and the jury found him guilty. He now waits for sentencing and prepares himself for a future that will probably include prison time. He is a prayerful person of strong faith, and that faith has given him a peace that passes understanding.
The spiritual life does not guarantee ease and serenity. Far from it. John the Baptist was imprisoned and beheaded for speaking the truth to power. Jesus Christ was arrested and crucified for claiming his divine authority.
And yet through Christ we know that God is real and that God is disclosed in the reality of this still imperfect world. It gives us hope to realize that this world is ultimately held and sustained in the reality of God.
Emmanuel. God is with us. God is with us no matter where life takes us. Because unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given. And the government shall be upon his shoulders.
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