The fine Swedish Christian weekly newspaper, Sändaren, is now closing for the New Year. Hurry and read it at www.sandaren.se
It’s a loss for freedom of expression, because the opportunity to express yourself once again will be reduced. I’ve been writing columns in the paper for a few years and reading it even longer. I will miss it.
I have just handed in the last text. It asks a crucial question. When is Jesus actually born? It may sound like a stupid question, because it’s December 25, right? The early Christians aren’t so sure. Since he’s the father in heaven, they start thinking. Not just about the ascension and the resurrection they have also seen, but about his origin, his birth. Not many years pass before they agree that Jesus has been with God since the beginning of time. Yes, even before that. As “the Spirit hovered over the waters” at the very beginning of the Bible, so the Son is also “before all things”. So writes the preacher Paul to the church in Colossae, Turkey, about 30 years after Jesus dies. The letter establishes Christianity’s significant difference from Judaism, namely that Jesus is there from the beginning with God and with the Spirit. As I say it out loud in church in chorus with everyone else, I believe in Jesus as “his only begotten Son”. So God has carried him. It’s the same expression we use to describe being pregnant. In the Danish National Church, we must also use another creed, the one with the long word, the Niceno-Constantinopolitan. It says it even more clearly. Jesus is “born of the Father before all time”. So God has given birth to Jesus. God has “birthing ability”, as the esteemed theology professor, Theodor Jørgensen, calls it in a sermon quoted in the book with the Christmas-relevant title, “God’s humanity”. Otherwise, only women have it. Calling God “father” is therefore not the same as God being a man, says Theodor. It must be expanded to describe God as a parent, as someone who is both male and female. Martin Luther, the monk and theologian behind, among other things, the Danish Lutheran/Evangelical Church, also emphasizes this. In 1520, in his Small Catechism, he writes that Jesus is “true God, born of the Father in eternity.” So God gives birth to his son all the time. Not just on December 25, but “for ever and ever”. He has always given birth to him and will always give birth to him. Do we understand the magnitude of that particular (Christmas) gift? Hardly, because it means, I think, that every now is a birth, a new moment, a second of eternity, a piece of existence, of life, given to us. By God. Thank you, thank you.