2nd Sunday after Christmas Year C John 1,1-18

Sometimes, dear friends, under the influence of various sufferings, we find ourselves in a state in which we have the impression that there is no one in the world who understands us. And to anyone who would try to comfort us, we will say: “What do you know what I am experiencing!” And we consider his words of comfort to be empty. We have the impression that we are completely alone and abandoned in our suffering, and that there is really no one in the world who can understand us. And often it’s true!A journalist once decided to write an extensive article about the fighting in a war that was just raging in a certain part of the world. In order to know as much as possible about her and her details, he decided to go straight to the front line and experience everything the soldiers were going through there. The soldiers knew this and were ordered to take him under their protection. Many times he even went straight into battle with them. During the nights, he then wrote notes about what he had experienced. After about a month, when he thought that he had experienced enough and that he already had enough information for the article, he returned home. It took him a long time to put all the information he had into his article. When he finished it and showed it to the editor-in-chief, he was thrilled. He reserved the main place for him in the magazine, and since the article was long, it was published for continuation in five consecutive issues. The article caused a great response and our editor was extremely satisfied. However, one day, out of nowhere, a letter came to his editorial office. It was from a soldier who fought in the front line. He was in the hospital with serious injuries. A soldier writes in a letter to the editor: „I know you meant well. But what you have gone through – although I bow before it with respect – does not yet give you the right to speak for us who live and fight in difficult conditions. There is an unbridgeable gap between the newspaper correspondent and the regular soldier. As a journalist, you were not fully part of the team. You were not subjected to demanding discipline, and if you were stomped from the front, you would not be tried as a deserter. If you really wanted to understand what it looks like here, you should have joined the team, lived and fought with other soldiers, not knowing if you would live to see tomorrow, or whether you will still see your friend with whom you are now close.“The journalist acknowledged that the soldier was right. If he really wanted to understand the war and the lot of the soldiers who fought in it, he would have to completely become one of them. Not only during the monthly so-called internships where he was protected, and which he knew would end when he wanted, but completely, without protection, without certainty, without knowing, what will he do, what awaits him and how long it will all take. But was he capable of this? Hardly. But then how deep was he in the skin of those who experienced this? A certain legend says that all people who ever lived on earth once gathered before the throne of God. They were a very gloomy crowd. Each of them had many complaints, and they were all very angry with God. „What does God even think of himself as?“, they asked. One of the assembled groups consisted of Jews who suffered greatly in their persecutions. Some of them died in gas chambers and concentration camps, complaining how could God know the suffering they had gone through!? Another group were slaves – black men and women with burnt signs on their bodies. There were large crowds of them. These suffered a lot of humiliation from those who called themselves „God’s people“. Is God able to know what they were going through? Furthermore, there were long crowds of refugees, left from their countries, there were homeless people who had nowhere to lay their heads. There were also the poor who constantly fought for their existence. There were sick and suffering from all possible vices, and hundreds and hundreds of other groups, and each complained of God. What does he know about people and what people have to endure?

A leader was then selected from each group, and a commission was to be formed from these leaders to deal with the indictment against the Almighty. Instead of God, who was once supposed to judge them, they decided to judge God. The judgment they finally passed on God was as follows: God is condemned to live on earth as a human being and to have no protection to protect his divinity. And here is a list of details:

Let him be born Jewish.
Let him be born poor.
Let the legality of his birth be suspicious.
Let him do hard work, and let him be affectingly poor.
Let him be rejected by people.
Let him have friends, only those whom others despise.
Let him be betrayed by one of his friends.
Let him be indicted on false charges, tried by a court burdened with prejudice, and convicted by a cowardly judge.
Let his friends leave him and try what it means to be terribly abandoned.
Let him be tortured, and then let him die at the hands of his enemies.

When the commission pronounced its judgment, there was an approving cry. When he finished last, the roar of the crowd was almost deafening. Then they turned to the throne again. And there was a shock and silence: Where the throne was before, now there was a cross and Jesus on it.

“The word became flesh and dwelt among name“ we read, friends, in the Gospel on this Sunday. God do not be condemned by anyone. God anticipated this condemnation. He condemned himself – to become completely one of us – so that we, whatever situation we may be in, would be able to realize that God understands, and God knows what we experience, because he himself in Jesus Christ fully experienced everything that we experience.

Dear friends, I wish you a blessed Sunday.