We are deep within the Christmas season now, and holiday activities are in full swing. So it is a good time to contemplate the meaning of Christmas. Too often the choice seems to be between Santa Claus or the baby Jesus, secular or theistic, or perhaps opt for celebrating the winter solstice as an alternative. But it is possible to celebrate Christian holiday spiritually from a nondual perspective. The holiday of Christmas expresses the oneness that is our true nature and the nature of the one reality.
The core theological message of Christmas is incarnation. The Gospel of Matthew communicates this by saying that the birth of Jesus fulfilled the prophecy of Immanuel, which the gospel writer helpfully explains means “God with us.” The Gospel of John proclaims the same truth by saying that the Divine Word “became flesh and dwelt among us… full of grace and truth.”
Traditionally Christianity has understood this to speak only of the divinity of Jesus. But Incarnation isn’t just about the nature of Jesus. It is about us. In the Scriptures Christ is a representative man, just like Adam is representative. Both figures are symbolic. We are all included in the figure of Adam and the figure of Christ. The apostle Paul understood this. He says we die in Adam and are alive in Christ. In his famous resurrection chapter he says, “The first Adam became a living being; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.”
One of Paul’s favorite terms for the spiritual life is being “in Christ.” “It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.” He says we were in Christ from the beginning of the universe. We were chosen “in him,” Paul says, “before the foundation of the world.”
Christmas is about origins. It is not only about Jesus’ spiritual origin but also our spiritual origin. It is about Jesus as the Son of God and us as sons and daughters of God. That is the reason why the genealogies are included in the Christmas narratives, although you do not hear them read much in church during Advent or Christmas.
Genealogies tell us who we are. I enjoy researching my personal genealogy. I got my DNA tested through Ancestry.com a while back. I found out where I come from. My DNA comes mostly from the British Isles and chiefly from Scotland. So I attended the Highland games this fall in New Hampshire to explore my heritage, although I did not wear a kilt! I discovered I also have ancestors from the Netherlands, Scandinavia and Western Europe.
The biblical Christmas stories give us Jesus’ genealogy. They tell us where Jesus is from. Matthew’s Christmas genealogy traces his ancestry back through King David back to the patriarch Abraham. Luke’s account takes his genealogy back to Adam, who is called the Son of God. Jesus is called the Son of God according to Luke because he traces his ancestry back to the Son of God Adam.
I am reading Marcus Borg’s book The First Christmas as part of an Advent study group at our church. In fact the pastor was called to an emergency at the last minute so I led the discussion last time. Borg sees the title Son of God as a political statement. The title challenged the authority of Caesar who was called the Son of God and claimed to be descended from the goddess Venus. In John’s gospel Jesus is not only called the Son of God, but the “one and only Son” or “only begotten Son,” depending on the translation. That is a direct challenge to Caesar’s claims.
What Borg says in his book about the political ramifications of the title Son of God is certainly true, but I see “Son of God” chiefly as a spiritual statement rather than a political one. Furthermore the title is not just a statement about Jesus’s identity but our identity. We are also descended from Adam, the Son of God. Our origin is divine. That is what it means to be made in the image of God. That is a truly radical statement to make today. It was a politically radical statement for early Christians to call Jesus the Son of God. It is a religiously radical statement today to say that our origin is divine.
That is a direct challenge to traditional Christian theology, which wants to put a theological chasm between us and Jesus. The phrase “the only begotten of Son of God” has been badly misinterpreted to mean that only Christianity has the truth because we have the only incarnation of God. That is not what it says. In fact the earliest manuscripts of John’s gospel speak of “the only begotten God.” It is saying there is only one, One God, one Son. And we are all one in this One. One in Adam and one in Christ. We are all sons and daughters of God because we are one in Christ, one in God. In other words: nonduality.
Incarnation speaks not just of Jesus’ spiritual origin but our spiritual origin. John’s prologue says that we are “children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.” That is our genealogy. We are sons and daughters of the one God. According the prologue of John when we realize who Jesus as he really is, we then realize who we really are. That is what Christmas is about.
That is self-realization. This is spiritual awakening. This is new birth. This can be known by a spiritual practice. The practice is akin to the Zen koan which says, “Show me your original face before you were born” or “before your parents were born.” This is one of the most powerful spiritual pointers. When we see what it is pointing to it gives us the “power (or the right) to become children of God” says the prologue of John’s gospel.
You can see this right now. It takes no time at all. See what you were before you were born. I am not talking about speculative or mythological thinking. I am not talking about reincarnation or preexistence as separate souls. Those are ideas. This is not an idea. This is direct seeing. See who you were before your parents were born, before your ancestors were born, before the human race began, universe was born! Before the Big Bang. As Paul says, “before the foundation of the world” 13.7 billion years ago.
Look into the darkness that was on the face of the deep, according to Genesis. Don’t think about it. See it. Sense it. Intuit it. You are this, so just notice what you always are. Get beyond the idea that you are a physical creature born a few decades ago. Be aware of your unborn eternal essence. Be aware as that essence. See your face before the creation of the cosmos.
Another practice is to see your face after your death. Long after. Millions of years after the death of the body and the death of planet earth and the death of universe. Pondering death wakes us up to our deathless nature. That is why this practice of pondering death is so common in spiritual traditions.
I have had several people I know die recently. That is the price for being a pastor. Contemplating our nature after death is as powerful as contemplating who we are before birth. When you contemplate this, don’t get caught up in myths of heaven and hell or reincarnation or all that. Those are all stories created by the ego because it cannot imagine being anything but an ego.
You are so more than that. You are eternal by nature. That is what incarnation is about. See your original and eternal face. That is who you are. That is your true identity. You are not a body or a mind or a personality. You are not a primate descended from primitive mammals. You are that which did not evolve, was not born, and cannot die. That is the essence of Christmas.
Christmas is not just about contemplating who Jesus was at his birth. It is discovering what we really are. So when you hear the Christmas stories about angels and shepherds and wise men, see them as celebrating what we are in Christ, who is representative of humankind. We are sons and daughters of God, born of God. We are in Christ from before the foundation of the universe. Christmas is about us as well as Jesus.
That is it for today. Merry Christmas to you! And Grace and peace.