Seen, Heard & Touched

Advent Festival Homily, Dec. 20, 2017. 1 John 1:1-4. Topic: Seen, Heard & Touched. This passage from the First Letter of the Apostle, St. John, is one of my favorite writings of the whole New Testament.  It is so full of life and meaning in its very few words. As he wrote these words, St. John was an elderly man, in his 90’s, thinking back to the days when he was a very young man, fixing his nets by the sea when he first encountered Jesus of Nazareth. 

John experienced and witnessed so much in the 3 years he lived with Jesus: water turned to wine, the blind recovering their sight, lepers being made clean, demons screaming as they were driven from the possessed, and even the dead being raised to life! He heard the voice of God from Jesus’ very own lips and touched Him with his own hands; He leaned his head upon the Lord’s chest at the Last Supper. With the others, he abandoned Jesus in the Garden of Olives but repenting, he was the only man to return and stand at the foot of the Cross of his Best Friend.

In this short passage, John is summing up for us his reflections of over 70 years concerning this Best Friend, this Messiah, promised by the prophets for centuries and finally having arrived. And that’s why I especially love this passage at Christmastime.  It reminds us that Jesus of Nazareth, born of Mary in Bethlehem, was a real person, God-in-the-flesh, a God unlike the mythic gods of ancient Greece and Rome who stood aloof and afar from human beings treating them like pawns on the chessboard of life.

The pagan gods laughed at humans in our tragedies. They lived selfish lives in a heaven that was merely the fantasy utopia of gross hedonism.   They thrived on war, thirsted for blood, and lusted for pleasure. They were strict and demanding of their measly human subjects whose lives they were said to hold or crush in the palm of their hands.

Our God, the one True God, broke through the darkness of fear that people had of the gods and became one of us, someone who could be seen and heard and touched. Someone with whom we can form a real relationship. Someone with whom we could share life.

That’s what Jesus’ Christmas title of Emmanuel means: God-with-us, God-among-us, God-like-us, God-as-one-of-us. John reminds us that we never need to face life alone because God has made Himself known, as Brother and Friend, with us to the end, as Emmanuel. 

And so, doesn’t it make such great sense that this great Awesome God chose to first come as a baby and live exactly as we all must live? 

·      Jesus did not HAVE to be born, but he chose to be.

·      Jesus did not HAVE to work for a living as a laborer, but He chose to do so.

·      Jesus did not HAVE to suffer and die, by he chose it.

And so really, we can never shake a fist at God and say “But you don’t understand!”

And so, these opening verses from the First Letter from St. John are really a great Christmas announcement that we are never alone. That’s the tidings of comfort and joy that the angels proclaimed in the hills of Bethlehem 2,000 years ago. And John knows it is true:

·      He saw it.

·      He heard it.

·      He touched it.