Participation

Happy New Year good people!

Now, please read that again. Let me play captain obvious: in reading this you have made it to 2021, which is an incredible gift. You and I have been given another day and another year.

Amazing.

This past year, umm, what else really needs to be said?

Let’s tie some clouds together. We have just come out of season known as Advent, which means arriving, while carrying in it the element of active anticipation for this arrival. This detail, active, is crucial for us to grasp, because we are not on the sidelines for that which is about to arrive. We are actively waiting, so we are in this, which leads to an important element to how we understand the day and following season known as Christmas.

Participation.

Christmas is the celebration of the Incarnation of Christ, which is a here and now reality. Christmas is Spirit celebrating flesh and materiality, while flesh and materiality simultaneously embrace and celebrate Spirit.

Christmas is the union of Spirit and Flesh, the consummation of marriage.

This phenomenon affirms the Divine goodness within Creation, inviting our participation in stewarding creation’s continued becoming, while also moving towards what Jesus called the Renewal of all things. An early follower of Jesus, Peter, followed Jesus by calling it the Restoration of all things, and another guy who is credited with writing a large chunk of the New Testament, Paul, called it the Reconciliation of all things.

Renewal.

Restoration.

Reconciliation.

Christmas is the consummation of the union of Spirit and flesh, of the Divine and humanity partnering together for this transcendent work.

And this has always been the invitation, going all the way back to a garden where the Creator asked humanity to participate in naming creation, while also stewarding creation in its continued becoming.

And as we read about the Divine interacting with that old fella Moses, we hear the clear call to participation:

“And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them.

So now, go.

I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”

Just before these verses we read, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them, crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them…”

Wow. First, the Divine sees and hears and is concerned about suffering. Secondly, did you catch the nod to the three-tiered language of “come down” to rescue? And apparently the Divine’s arrival moves in concert with Moses being called to go, similar to Jesus arriving and then calling a handful of teenagers to go with him as he walks in the realm of God’s kingdom.

Participation has been baked into the Grand Narrative from the very beginning.

We’ve been actively waiting, in a massively heightened way in 2020 I might add, and now it’s time we actively participate in…

Restoration.

Renewal.

Reconciliation.

Now that would make this new year a great year.