SECOND SUNDAY BEFORE LENT Year B
12 February 2012

There are two different ways to approach Jesus. We can approach him as a human being – in his humanity – or as God – in his divinity. Getting the balance right took the first Christians the better part of two centuries; and even then it was a further two hundred years before the Fathers of the Church felt confident enough to formally define what the Church believed:

The one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, is recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and subsistence, not as parted or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son and Only-begotten God the Word, Lord Jesus Christ

… words we call The Chalcedonian Definition, acknowledged by all mainstream churches as the basis of our common faith. And in our readings today we find Paul and John, each in his own way, grappling with the same issue; trying to explain, at the dawn of the Church, and long before the Council and Chalcedon, just who Jesus is.

Paul is writing first. Because of the way the Bible is organised we sometimes forget that. But Paul's letters date roughly from the period between 40 and 60 A.D., during his missionary endeavours, whereas the Gospels were the fruit of further reflection and only appeared later – in the case of John's Gospel probably not until around the year 90 A.D. Colossians, like the epistles to Philemon, the Ephesians and the Philippians dates from the late 50s when Paul was under house arrest in Rome, a fact he refers to in the text. It represents his mature reflection on the nature of the message given him to proclaim; and its language is exultant and unequivocal. Christ is,

The image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation … in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible … He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the first-born from the dead … in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.

It has taken Paul a decade or more to come to this; there is nothing like it in his earlier letters. But it is hard to conceive of a clearer statement of Christ's divinity. This is Jesus, equal with God, ruler of creation, head of the Church. It's an image we see reflected in the Creed almost verbatim.

Against this background John's words, in our Gospel which we know so well from Christmas morning, are almost a corrective. Yes, Jesus is co-equal with God, his very Word, the full expression of his nature: but he is also the one misunderstood and rejected by his own people, a light shining in the darkness but nevertheless ignored. More than that, John emphasises as the very climax of the passage the humility of the Word, who takes our nature and dwells among us for our sake; Jesus in his humanity.

He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

It's a commonplace in some circles, of course, to accuse Paul of distorting the original message of Jesus: of turning Jesus the gentle Galilean preacher of home truths into Christ the mythological God-figure and object of worship … of turning him from Jesus the man into Christ the God.

A similar line of argument says that because the exalted picture of Jesus it presents is so unlike the Jesus of the Gospels or Paul's earlier letters, therefore Paul cannot have written Colossians (or, for that matter, the very similar letter to the Ephesians). Those who argue this way then have an excuse for setting aside much else of what Paul wrote.

But John's understanding of Jesus has clearly developed in precisely the same way. Like Paul he sees a Jesus uniquely identified with the Father: at his side in creation, to take an image from today's Old Testament reading, rejoicing in his presence. Through him all things were made, as we affirm in the Creed. Like Paul, John has reflected on his experience of Jesus and come to recognise him for who he is, both God and man. If his words emphasise the Incarnation more, it is because he knows what it is to have seen the glory of Jesus, having been with him in his earthly ministry in a way Paul was not.

For many outside the Church today (and perhaps not a few within), it is the human aspect of Jesus that is more immediately appealing. And that is in an important sense how it should be. It is in the weak-ness of our human flesh that God reveals his glory: a glory that John tells us is revealed fully only in the Cross; and that Paul tells us is made perfect in weakness.

But the faith of the Church has always been that the human Jesus is also the divine Christ: The one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, is recognized in two natures … not as parted or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son and Only-begotten God the Word, Lord Jesus Christ. Only as both can he save us.

We pray in the words of the Collect for Christmas I, used by Roman Catholics as the Collect for Christmas Day itself:

Almighty God, who wonderfully created us in your own image and yet more wonderfully restored us through your Son Jesus Christ: grant that, as he came to share in our humanity, so we may share the life of his divinity; who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.