Wormholes

As Christmas nears, we open our hearts to hear the message of the angels - the Word has been made flesh. It is a message of glory, a message of redemption, a message of peace.

More and more, the world we live in lays stress on secular and material values. The heavenly and the spiritual get crowded out. People still strive after things that cannot be weighed or measured, like beauty, happiness or peace, but they are just as likely to be contented with some temporary stimulant, or a pay rise, or the latest TV offering.

As Christians we are citizens of two worlds, the earthly and the heavenly. We are called to see earthly things through heavenly eyes, although alas, we often have to describe heaven in earthly terms!

We often fail to see how confusing this is to outsiders. There are more and more people for whom religious language - our talk about heaven - is no more than gobbledygook. "Lift up your hearts," our liturgy bids us - but anatomically nobody moves a millimetre. We find words in dictionaries - how can they be made flesh? And these realms of glory, where exactly are they? Where must we point our telescopes?

For us who believe in Jesus as God's Messiah, the Christ, there are links between the earthly and the heavenly. Christianity, more than any other religion, is about crossing barriers - and in worship and in prayer, we consciously pierce through the barrier between earth and heaven. And if we truly see Christ in our neighbours, if we see them too as citizens of heaven, we can begin to break down the barrier to allow God's will to be done "on earth as in heaven."

In Mary's womb the two worlds converged, and at Bethlehem heaven and earth were joined as one. Children's stories are full of other worlds down rabbit holes, up beanstalks, through looking glasses or wardrobes. Science-fiction writers speculate on the existence of wormholes - short cuts to evade the laws of time and space - but Jesus' incarnation is something completely different. It is a passage from a world beyond time, beyond material things, into the measured world of our own limitations, our own preoccupations, our own selfish and sinful values.

Thanks to the events at Bethlehem, and to the events at the end of Jesus' earthly life, we are able to live, through him, as citizens of heaven and to share in eternal life: in existence outside time. The darkness of this earthly world cannot blot out the light from heaven. Matthew, Luke and John all use this image of light. In Matthew, the Magi are led to Jesus by a star. In Luke, God's glory "shines" around the shepherds. And John describes the coming of Jesus with the words: "The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world."

This Christmas let us follow the Magi and the shepherds, and worship this Light - Jesus, the Light of the world. May this Light cast out the shadows deep within us (and if we cannot recognize those shadows, we are still on the wrong side of the wormhole), and fill us with the Light of heaven. And may we shine with this light so that we too convey God's glory in a dark world, the glory of the new-born King.

HD