A Personality-Changing Experience of Faith

	Fr. Roger Vermalen Karban

The readings for Christmas, December 25, 2001, Eucharist during the day, are Isaiah 52:7-10, Hebrews 1:1-6, John 1:1-18.

Today’s Deutero-Isaiah reading provides a key for appreciating not only our other two readings, but also the feast we’re celebrating.

Both the author of the Letter to the Hebrews and John begin their works by reflecting back on the importance of Jesus in faith history. The former opens his letter with the famous words, “In times past, God spoke in partial and various ways to our ancestors through the prophets; in these last days, he has spoken to us through the Son, whom he made heir of all things and through whom he created the universe . . . . ”

All who experience the risen Jesus in their lives eventually follow the same pattern. They begin to look at everything which happened to them before as preliminaries to that life-changing event. Nothing can compare to it; nothing has been the same since it took place. Because of that phenomenon, followers of Jesus logically parallel all creation with their own experience. Just as the life they now live could never have existed without Jesus, so they presume all life could never have existed without Jesus. Not only did the ancient Jewish prophets revolve their oracles around him, God revolved God’s creation around him.

No one expresses this better than John in the well-known prologue to his Gospel. “In the beginning was the Word,” he writes, “and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be. What came to be through him was life, and his life was the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

There’s certainly nothing the matter with such universe-changing theologies. They’re the logical outgrowth of one’s personality-changing experience of the risen Jesus. If Christians don’t begin to think in such broad terms about their faith in Jesus, one could begin to question whether they’ve actually had such an experience.

But on the other hand, how did biblical Christians look a the world in the days or hours before they discovered the risen Jesus inhabiting it? What prepared them for the event? That’s where Deutero-Isaiah comes in. He’s the only author of today’s three who doesn’t reflect back on something which has already happened.

Deutero-Isaiah prophecies not after, but during, the Babylonian Exile; during the worst event Jews had encountered to that point of their history. In spite of this depressing environment, the prophet is convinced that Yahweh’s help is just around the corner. So convinced that he speaks about it as though it’s already here. “How beautiful upon the mountains,” he proclaims, “are the feet of those who bring glad tidings, announcing peace, bearing good news, announcing salvation, and saying to Zion, ‘Your God is King!’ ”

Of course, Deutero-Isaiah’s original audience knew no such peace and salvation had yet arrived. It existed only in the faith-motivated vision of the prophet. Having faith in what could be made him look at what is in a different way. Those who didn’t share his faith, didn’t share his vision.
Both the Hebrews author and John had a basic faith in God working in the world before they experienced Jesus alive in that world. We forget that those who have the faith to reinterpret the past, first had to have the faith to interpret the present.

Celebrating Jesus’ birth, we can easily fall in the trap of just sitting back, singing songs about it and expecting all to be well with the world.
All isn’t well.

Perhaps things aren’t going as our Christian biblical writers had anticipated because we rely too much on their faith and never develop the personal vision of God working in the world which made their faith possible.