{"id":334,"date":"2020-12-10T08:35:42","date_gmt":"2020-12-10T13:35:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=334"},"modified":"2020-12-10T08:35:42","modified_gmt":"2020-12-10T13:35:42","slug":"of-the-fathers-love-begotten","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2020\/12\/10\/of-the-fathers-love-begotten\/","title":{"rendered":"Of the Father’s Love Begotten"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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As recently as 125 years ago, some of the world\u2019s brightest thinkers solemnly declared human beings would never fly.

They were wrong.

About the same time, engineers confidently predicted that the long-distance transmission of pictures was contrary to the laws of physics.  They were wrong, too.

These days science fiction fans are desperately hoping that the world\u2019s most eminent physicists are wrong when they assert that time travel is impossible.  Apparently we\u2019ll just have to settle for Marty McFly visiting his high-school-age parents in Back to the Future<\/em>. 

But in one important regard, anyone can visit the past.  Our time machine is music. 

Every time we encounter the songs and lyrics crafted by previous generations \u2013 especially when they are accompanied by original instrumentation \u2013 we draw close to those who have gone before us.  Music is our doorway to hearing the sounds they heard, and to experiencing their thoughts and feelings.     

That\u2019s never more true at Christmastime than when we experience Of the Father\u2019s Love Begotten.  <\/em>This beautiful song transports us to the early Middle Ages almost 17 centuries ago \u2013 a mere 300 years after the time of Jesus \u2013 and almost certainly deserves the title of oldest carol still being actively sung in the 21st<\/sup> century. 

Aurelius Prudentius Clemens (A.D. 348-413), one of Christianity\u2019s earliest poets, penned the original words in Latin.  They were ultimately set to the tune Divinum Mysterium<\/em>:

Of the Father\u2019s love begotten, ere the worlds began to be<\/em>
He is Alpha and Omega, He the source, the ending He<\/em>
Of the things that are, that have been, and that future years shall see<\/em>
Evermore and evermore. <\/em>

O, that birth forever blessed, when the Virgin full of grace<\/em>
By the Holy Ghost conceiving, bore the Savior of our race<\/em>
And the Babe, the world\u2019s Redeemer, first revealed His sacred face<\/em>
Evermore and evermore. <\/em>

Check out<\/a> Michael Lining\u2019s gracious rendition of this ancient song.  By recording his own unaccompanied voice four times, he captures the haunting beauty of medieval chant. 

It\u2019s impossible to get to the depths of what it means that God became a human being at a real place at a real time in a real family.  The most celebrated biblical description of this event is found in the opening verse of the gospel of John: 

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  <\/strong>(John 1:1)

That verse is like thick bread.  It nourishes inquiring minds. 

\u201cIn the beginning\u201d is the Bible’s way of saying that Jesus has always existed.  Jesus isn’t part<\/u><\/em> <\/em>of creation.  He himself is the co-creator of everything that exists. 

What does John mean by calling Jesus “the Word”?  That means he is the sum total of everything God wants to say.  You can catch a flavor of that whenever a hip-hop artist says, “Word.”  The entire thrust of a song is reduced to four letters:  “Word<\/em>.  You got my message?  You hear what I’m saying?”  Jesus is the complete Word, or communication, from our Father in heaven.

John goes on, \u201cand the Word was with God.<\/em>\u201d  In the Greek language there are two words that are translated “with” \u2013 sun<\/u><\/em> and pros<\/u><\/em>.  Sun<\/u><\/em> means “alongside.”  It’s the prefix for words like sym<\/em>-phony.  In a symphony all the instruments are playing alongside each other. 

Pros<\/u><\/em>, however \u2013 which is the word John uses here \u2013 is different.  It means to be “with” someone in spirit and purpose.  When a commanding officer says to his troops, “I intend to take that hill.  Are you with me?” it would be less than helpful for the troops to answer, “Of course we’re with you; we’re standing right here!”  What the officer really wants to know is whether they are “with” him.  Can he truly count on them when their lives are on the line?

That’s what John says about Jesus.  He is pros<\/u><\/em> or “with” the Father in everything the Father wants to accomplish.

Which brings us to the mysterious phrase, \u201cand the Word was God.<\/em>\u201d  The astonishing truth is that God, by nature, is plural. 

This is often misunderstood.  Bertrand Russell, the celebrated British atheist, once said, “I cannot believe in a religion whose first premise is an outright contradiction \u2013 that one is three and three are one.”  But Russell overlooked something obvious \u2013 that God is one<\/em> in the category of being (that is, there is only one God), but three <\/em>in a very different category, that of personhood.  God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  We can truly say that God is a society.

Since God is so utterly different from us, how can God ever get “the Word” to us in a form we can possibly understand? 

Throughout the Old Testament, God sends messages to earth.  Through the prophets, God sends words<\/u><\/em> to help us understand who he is.  Then, at Bethlehem, God does something fundamentally different.  God sends The<\/u><\/em> Word. <\/em>

That’s the meaning behind John 1:14:  \u201cThe Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.\u201d  Or as Eugene Peterson so memorably puts it in his paraphrase of the Bible called The Message<\/em>:  “The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood.”  God revealed himself by becoming one of us<\/em>. 

J. Robert Oppenheimer, director of the Manhattan Project, suggested, \u201cThe best way to present an idea is to wrap it up in a person.\u201d 

Or as a little girl once said in Sunday School, \u201cPeople couldn\u2019t hear God\u2019s whisper, so he said it out loud through Jesus.\u201d

Of the Father\u2019s Love Begotten<\/em> tries to say out loud what we all need to hear:

By God\u2019s grace and power, and the incredible gift of music, we can go back in time to experience the Father\u2019s final Word concerning grace, truth, and love.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As recently as 125 years ago, some of the world\u2019s brightest thinkers solemnly declared human beings would never fly. They were wrong. About the same time, engineers confidently predicted that the long-distance transmission of pictures was contrary to the laws of physics.  They were wrong, too. These days science fiction fans are desperately hoping that the world\u2019s most eminent physicists… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":335,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[9,23,110],"class_list":["post-334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-christmas-carols","tag-incarnation","tag-john-11"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=334"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":336,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334\/revisions\/336"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}