This week we look at the Jesus’ experience of baptism, the wilderness and an exorcism; and how he “repents”, receives the life of God, and resists and confronts evil. This seems to be a model for experiencing and living a new way, in a new dimension – the Kingdom of God. We also look at Jesus’ challenge to follow him into this new way, and consider how we can receive God and overcome evil both within ourselves and in the world.
A message from the series “New Beginnings.” New Year’s resolutions reflect our hope that our lives don’t have to stay the same. The magi saw a new star and resolved to follow it wherever it led. Our lives are also journeys into unknown territory, and we may still be surprised by how God acts and where we find the Divine.
The birth of Jesus is the epitome of incarnation (God with us). God is love and present in all things. Jesus, as God’s presence, points us to see God all around us: in ourselves, in one another, in nature, in art, in beauty. Christmas is a time when we celebrate that God is here and embrace the new world that God is bringing into being: a dream made real in the birth of a baby in Bethlehem.
We talk and sing about the incarnation at Christmas as if it was something obvious and prosaic rather than inexplicable and paradoxical. As we try to understand what it all means we invariably get to the point of realizing this is where rationalizing ends and surrendering to mystery begins. There is an extravagance—even a recklessness—to the love of God revealed in the Christmas story, which elicits the same kind of abandonment in response.
We talk and sing about the incarnation at Christmas as if it was something obvious and prosaic rather than inexplicable and paradoxical. As we try to understand what it all means we invariably get to the point of realizing this is where rationalizing ends and surrendering to mystery begins. There is an extravagance—even a recklessness—to the love of God revealed in the Christmas story, which elicits the same kind of abandonment in response.