“No man hath seen God at
any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath
declared him.” St. John 1:18
God speaks
to His people. This is where all
Biblical religion begins, with a God who knows us and who addresses us, who
wishes us to know Him and the truth about Him.
He has spoken, our Epistle lesson says, “at sundry times and in divers
manners.”
All things
began with His speaking, “let there be,” and it was—by the Word, Saint John
assures us, “everything was made that was made.” God speaks through the creation itself—in
vistas that take our breaths away, in the ordered progression of sun and moon,
in the complex laws of nature. The
heavens tell His glory, the Psalmist assures us,[1]
and all things return the cry, “bless the Lord, praise Him, and magnify Him for
ever.[2]”
God speaks
in the conscience, our common faculty for knowing right and wrong, that “light
that enlightens every man that comes into the world.” He speaks through our deepest longings and
highest aspirations, our yearning to know that which is noblest and best, and
to be united with it. He speaks in our
desire to love others, in our search for deep stillness, in our persistent
sense of justice.
And He has
spoken in history. Our ancestors in
faith were those who “called upon the Name of the Lord,[3]”
but they did so only after He had spoken to them first. He spoke to Noah, and told him to gather
every creature in a safe place. He spoke
to Abraham and told him to strike out for a new homeland, trusting that He
would give him a family along the way.
He spoke to Moses to reveal the law, to Deborah and Gideon to free His
people from their oppressors. He taught
David to sing His praises and told Solomon to build a house for His glory, and
commanded Nehemiah to make a wall strong enough to hold them together in
peace.
And of
course, He spoke through the prophets. A
prophet is one who utters the word that God has given, one who stands before
the people and announces “thus saith the Lord.”
Sometimes He spoke words of rebuke, reminding them of their sacred law,
urging them to repent while time remained.
Sometimes He spoke words of encouragement, to remind them that their
faithfulness had not been ignored, to exhort them to wait patiently for
deliverance yet to come. Sometimes He
spoke to awaken hope, describing an ingathering and restoration of His
scattered children, a glorious new city, a deeper fellowship with Him, hearts
made new by the work of His Spirit.
“At sundry
times and in divers manners” He had spoken before. But His people would not listen. They ignored His warnings, and rejected His
laws. They forgot His promises and wearied
of waiting. They turned away from the
light and loved darkness, “for their deeds were evil.[4]” There had been spokesman after spokesman,
hero upon hero, each of them with his own fatal flaw. There would be revival in one generation, and
then steady decline again, one step forward and two back. Again, God would speak, never wanting the
connection to break, remaining consistent, steadfast.
For all His
speaking, God seemed far away. His words
were plain enough, but they never quite seemed to take root in the hearts of
His people. Maybe they just didn’t know
the law, or maybe it just seemed too hard for their faltering resolve and
conflicting desires. Maybe, the
temptations around them were just too attractive, or those raised up to lead
them a little less effective than they should have been. This hard-heartedness, this failure to hear
and obey, it penetrated deeply into human nature. It was not a problem of the ears only, or
even of the mind. The desires, the will,
they too were twisted away from the One who addressed them.
“God hath in
these last days spoken unto us by his Son.”
He who had spoken so faithfully, for so long, sent the Word to be among
us as one of us. That perfect pattern by
which He made all things, the message of the prophets, the One who had called
them to victory over their enemies, He left the realms of glory to take on our
common flesh. He was born as we are
born, and lived amid the beauty and the folly, the glory and the pain of this
world.
In time,
great pearls of wisdom would drop from His lips and He would do mighty works
that showed God’s power and His love for all people. He would be an embodiment of the
commandments, a sign of the true potential of the human will. He would draw us to Himself by His preaching
and His grace-filled actions, making us one with Himself, members of His body,
sharers in His life. “The only begotten
Son, which was in the bosom of the Father, hath declared Him.” He reveals what He alone can reveal, and
gives to us the capacity to know what without Him we could not know, and to do
what apart from Him we could never do.
And yet,
when He first came, He said nothing. The
Word made flesh was silent as He slept in the hay, and when they came to praise
Him they found a king with no throne, wrapped in rags. The shepherds heard no sermon. No sacraments were instituted for the benefit
of the wise men. There were no miracles
in the cradle.
There is a
great mystery here, and we may do best to leave it at that. But perhaps we can say this much. To hear and respond to the God who speaks to
us is not in the first instance a matter of ideas and pledges and rules. Those all have their place and they are
charged with the authority of the One who gives them to us.
But this
miracle of self-giving, God sending His Son among us to hunger, suffer, yes to
die, does it not reveal something even more profound about God’s true
purpose? This setting aside of His
majesty, this placing of Himself into our hands, knowing full well what we will
do with Him, does this not testify to a love far deeper than we will ever be
able to express?
While He
remains silent, the Word speaks in our hearts, and He draws Himself to us, as
we fall before Him. He who was in the
bosom of the Father reveals what lies in the Father’s heart, and it is this
never-failing love for all He has made.
It’s our hearts that must be
changed first.
The ideas,
the pledges, the deeds, they will come when once we have truly loved Him. He comes in love to awaken love in us. He speaks but in a baby’s cry, but when we
see Him in faith, we understand all things.
Let us hear Him. Let us adore
Him. Let us love Him.
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