2nd Sunday Before Lent

Colossians 1.15-20; John 1.1-14

We are at the very heart of Christian theology today with these readings. The writer to the Colossians, presumably St. Paul and the writer of St. John's gospel are both telling us, as best they can, with the language they have, that Jesus is God. This is what marks out those who believe it, as Christians. Anything less of a belief means that you are not a Christian in the true, orthodox sense. And it's from this belief that the whole of Christian theology has been built. The musings, meanderings and meditations of every Christian theologian from the 4th century have started at this point. And it is on this belief that the Creed we recite every Sunday is built. It's important though that this isn't simply an intellectual exercise. We have to find some way of making our belief that Jesus is God relevant to our daily life. Indeed, we could say that it's more important to view it the other way around, that because this belief that Jesus is God is essential to our daily life that we can then build our theological thinking on that.

We say that Jesus is fully God and what that then means for us is that God is no longer remote from us. God is with us is what is meant by Jesus being born amongst the people. Jesus called God 'Father', an expression of a relationship with God, similar but more intimate than the relationship that Moses had with God, to whom he 'spoke as a man with his friend'. And Jesus calling God 'Father' is an acknowledgement by Jesus that he is from God, or 'out of' God. St. John records Jesus praying for his disciples that they might be one and be one with him as he is one with God, his heavenly Father. Here again, that connection and intimacy of God with his people is underlined. So Jesus prays for our relationship with God to be as his relationship is with God.

So, we are at one with God simply because that's how it is with this God of Jesus who is our God too. And God drives the point home to us in Jesus crucifixion and his resurrection. Again, St. John tells us 'God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that all who believe in him may not perish but might have everlasting life.' That everlasting life or eternal life is our life with God, our life in God which we are experiencing now. All it needs is our acknowlegment of God and our faith in God for it to become real. Just as Jesus' whole life, every second of it was lived by faith in God, so that's what eternal life means for us, every second of it being lived by faith in God.

So we really need to look at what faith means to understand how this teaching about Jesus being God can be real in our everyday life. Well having faith in someone means trusting them in all they are and do. And it's not necessarily an easy thing. People let us down all the time, simply because we are human and fallen and not perfect, as God is. God is always faithful but we are not. All throughout the Bible we read of God bewailing the fact that his people are faithless. But he goes on forgiving them time after time after time for their faithlessness. And he goes on showing how he is faithful time after time after time, by answering their prayers, meeting their needs. He answers our prayers too, always, and so keeps faith with us always. But again we have to remember that he answers our prayers in his way not ours. And so when our prayers seem not to be answered that's the time for trust, that in God's wisdom and in God's time the answer will be made known to us. And we remember that God's time isn't our time, God's time is eternity and the answer might lie on the other side of the dimensions of this life that we can see and can understand. There's so much of life that we don't understand but that we take on trust and we have to take on trust that our prayers will be answered, always by God.

And as we pray, as we worship, we can pray and look for the answers now, trusting, because God is Father to us as he was to Jesus. And God is here amongst us through his Spirit, all pervading given after the man Jesus was no longer here. So we can still pray as Jesus prayed and have faith as Jesus had faith. Jesus is that bridge between the almighty God and us, being God for us and to us and is that through his Spirit now. That's why we pray our prayers to and through Jesus Christ. He is the bridge, the connection between us and God, but also God himself, the bridge, the connection is God in his humanity, Jesus. He shows how close we are to God and reassures us that we can trust God for each day, each second of each day.

And then it's for us to live each day with that trust in God. That's how it works you see. Although God prompts us we have to respond, positively, in faith and then we get to know him, then we get to understand more of how God is with us and and how we must be with him to have that relationship with him that he wanted with his creation, before Adam and Eve fell from grace. Because it's the man Jesus, God incarnate that restores that relationship, that means we can have that relationship with God again as not just creator and created but as Father and child and Father and child in the best sense, Father and child in the sense of God and his Son Jesus.

So we see how Jesus is God simply through our trust that all of this works. And although it's not easy to live that way by any means, that's what we have to do before we can begin to understand God at all. And it's when we can live that way, and begin to understand because we live that way that we can begin to talk about it and have the authority to talk about it, so that Jesus might continue to be Good News to all.