SUNDAY 2 JANUARY 2005
Jeremiah 31: 7-14; John 1: 1-18
The images on our television screens and in our newspapers over the past week, together with the information given and stories told, have been horrifying. Day after day, the horror has grown worse as the magnitude of the disaster created by last Sunday’s tsunami in South and South East Asia has unfolded before our eyes. The amount of devastation and the human scale of the catastrophe are of apocalyptic proportions, and are almost too much to grasp. The warning about the human cost of the disaster potentially doubling or worse through rapid spread of disease is chilling. 2004, which had more than its fair share of horrific stories of pain and misery unleashed upon human beings by other human beings or by the forces of nature, ended with a horror story of proportions nobody would have imagined.
The dawn of a new year which is usually greeted as a new beginning, a fresh start, is heavily coloured by last Sunday’s tsunami disaster. We have no clearer message about the vulnerability and fragility of human existence than this one which is still unfolding before our eyes. It is chilling for New Zealanders who live on one of the major fault lines in the Pacific ‘ring of fire’ to be reminded of our vulnerability either to earthquake or volcanic eruption, or to a tsunami racing towards us across the Pacific following an earthquake somewhere else around the Pacific rim. A new year dawns full of potential, brimming with possibilities, and weighed down by the sobering reminder that “frail as summer’s flower we flourish, blows the wind and we are gone.”
That the human family has responded so immediately and generously to the disaster is one ray of light in a bleak scenario. That New Zealanders, even while on holiday, have responded so well and continue to do so is deeply encouraging. In hundreds, indeed hundreds of thousands, of little ways and big ways, fellow members of the human race are responding to the plight of human sisters and brothers of different ethnicities, cultures and faiths to their own. We are all one, we are all at risk, on this unpredictable, fragile planet called Earth.
And we are all one at prayer. Christians and Buddhists, Muslims and Hindus, are one as their prayers mingle in the face of monumental disaster experienced indiscriminately by Hindus and Muslims, Buddhists and Christians. We are all one in our prayers and in the realisation of our human vulnerability. It takes something like this to remind us that despite religious and social differences, despite political and economic differences, we are all one people before the powerful forces of nature.
On the second Sunday after Christmas, the lectionary presents we Christians with the whole of what is called “The Prologue” to the Gospel according to John. It is a grand theological statement couched in the philosophical and theological language of the day drawing on both Greek and Hebrew imagery and thought-forms. It is a ‘big picture’ statement, giving a broad sweep of thought about the Christmas mystery of God coming to be at one with the human race. In contrast to the stories of Matthew and Luke, which are about a remarkable birth, or should we rather say about the birth of someone who became singularly remarkable, John asks and answers the question, “what did the coming of Jesus mean?”
Verse 14 of that statement read “And the Word became flesh and lived among us…”
The Greek verb translated as “lived” is more specifically translated as “tented” - “And the Word became flesh and tented among us…” Or better still, "…and pitched tent among us…” For original Jewish readers of the Gospel, this was intended to capture the image of the ‘Tent of the Presence’ which the ancient Hebrews on their Exodus journey pitched in the middle of their camps to signify the presence of God among and with God’s people. God shared their wilderness journey with them.
When we come together on the first Sunday of a new year, on this first Sunday after the tsunami, we come together as a people whose faith tradition does not place God at a remote distance, uncaring, unfeeling. We come together as a people whose God has “pitched tent” among them, and shares their pains and sorrows, their tribulations and fears; a God who chooses to be one with them and among them.
I thought of that image of ‘pitched tent’ one night this week as again in mute horror I watched the 6pm TV news, and saw survivors in Banda Aceh living in makeshift tents on traffic islands in their devastated city. I thought of the massive international disaster relief effort beginning to lurch into action; I thought of international news teams collecting heart-rending stories and having to witness tragedies no one should have to witness in order to bring the impact of the disaster home to us; I thought of New Zealanders readying themselves to go to – and in some cases already in – disaster areas for the gruelling task of victim identification or for relief purposes; and I thought of the Prologue to the Gospel of John.
God, says John, ‘pitched tent’ among us... There is
no clearer way of expressing John’s understanding of the
Christmas mystery right now than by literally or metaphorically
‘pitching tent’ among the victims of the tsunami
disaster, either in person as some people are able to do because
of their skills and experience, or through the generosity of our
giving to one of the agencies working on the ground in places of
destruction, and by the support of our prayers.
In fact, it might well be a most appropriate New Year’s
resolution, to resolve to be a ‘tent pitcher’. To
resolve to be one with others in their pains and struggles, in
their loss and deprivation, as well as in their joys and
successes, happiness and fulfilment.
“And the Word became flesh and 'pitched tent' among us…” Thanks be to God.