Advent Reflections by Dr. Elisabeth Rain Kincaid

Getting ready for Christmas is not only about what we do but how we enter into God’s story of Christmas. In the great prologue to the Gospel of John, we read that “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” What words in the history of the world have ever seemed less plausible, more amazing, and more challenging to understand?  We can understand a tired mother, an anxious father, a newborn baby, curious shepherds, and even stretch to imagine choirs of angels. But when we are told that God has broken into our world, into our history and taken on a body just like us – it is too much for our minds to comprehend. In his poem Christmas Oratorio (1944), W.H. Auden describes this mental struggle: “Once again, as in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed To do more than entertain it as an agreeable Possibility[.]” By the end of Christmas day we are already thinking about cleaning the dishes and packing away the ornaments for next year.  The glorious impossibility lies already in the past, whether of the night before or far back in the years of our childhood credulity. St. John’s gospel does not let us return to our complacency. This wasn’t a story that happened in the past alone, a fairy tale for children. The Last Gospel is not the end of the story, but the beginning. We know how the Gospel unfolds, through Jesus’s ministry, his teaching, his rejection, his crucifixion, and his resurrection. But we do not yet know exactly how his Gospel unfolds in our life – although St. John promises it will be full of grace upon grace and end in glory. Christmas Day is not an ending, but God’s great new beginning which we are each called to be part of. The Word has come! He is here, among us, now and tomorrow and for-ever more.