Where is Jesus to be Found?
Colossians 3:1-3 1Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. 2Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. 3For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.
To all of us who feel that the Christmas season is sometimes too much, I bring you good news of some consolation – we are not far from remembering what Christmas is all about.
We live in a world ruled by the power of advertising and publicity where the best selling, the most popular, the biggest of all time, the new thing is what we are told to seek. And the publicity mind-set sometimes spills over into our religious outlook as well, and people wonder, “If God really exists, why doesn’t He make His omnipotence more visible in this chaotic world?”
As we celebrate the birth of Jesus, it is important to remember the hiddenness of His life. At birth, He entered this world without much fanfare, except for the angelic announcement to some insignificant shepherds on the hillside. He was born away from the glitter and glamour of Rome or the pomp and ceremony of Jerusalem, in a stable on the outskirts of a small obscure village. He lived his life in relative obscurity. Even His miracles were often companied by the command to avoid publicity. His entrance to Jerusalem drew a crowd, but His death drew only a few of His despondent disciples.
His Resurrection was relatively obscure. There was no angelic host. Just a single angelic being with the simple announcement, “He is not here; he has risen, just as he said” (Matthew 28:6 NIV). While He made himself widely known to His disciples, there was no widespread publicity of His resurrection.
So into our age of much noise and very little light, Jesus silently and secretly enters into our world.
The hiddenness of His birth, His life, and His resurrection are signals that we are to have hope in the hiddenness of His life. It means that God steals silently down to be born in us today. It means that His hidden presence is coursing through the day to day events of our lives to maintain a home, to raise our children, to earn a living, to get along with others, and to survive the hectic times of the Christmas season.
The hiddenness of His birth means that in all of these events we are upheld by a mystery we cannot see, we are sustained by a power we cannot measure, we are redeemed of mistakes by a mercy that is always a surprise, and that when we die, we die not into nothingness, but as Paul said in Colossians 3:3 we die into a life hidden with Christ in God. The hiddenness of His birth means God lives in us even when we are not aware of His presence, and we can reflect the life of Jesus, working miracles and changing the face of the earth, not with noise and publicity, but with quietness and calm as we seek to know the Jesus hidden at the center of our lives. And as we seek to imitate Christ, we can never be totally certain of what His life in us will mean for the undoing and redoing of our life, the lives of those around us, and of our world.
From as sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope
© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell
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