Bishop's Message: Saying Yes to God This Christmas

Dear People of the Diocese of Wisconsin,

I heard a radio interview once in which John Lennon, the former Beatle, recalled how he met Yoko Ono. He had been invited by a friend to a conceptual art show. He found one piece of the exhibit particularly intriguing. It was a step ladder that led to a magnifying glass hanging from the ceiling. Lennon climbed the ladder. He looked through the magnifying glass at a small note taped to the ceiling. The note contained one tiny word – yes. Moved by this small declaration of hope, Lennon found the artist – Yoko Ono – and the rest, as they say, is history.

The anticipation of Advent season is about to shift to the celebration of the birth of Jesus. Like that hopeful word that so moved John Lennon, the word God spoke in speaking the Word into the quiet of Mary’s womb, into the insignificant manger in little Bethlehem, and hence into the world, was God’s still, small “yes” to humanity.

The Incarnation affirms the fundamental goodness of being human with all our vulnerability, awkwardness, and anguish. There is no aspect of authentic human experience, however mundane, that is not blessed and honored by the divine enfleshment. There is no human experience, however awful, that is Godforsaken – God is with us (Matthew 1:23). At the heart of it all is not silence or indifference, but an exultant and relentless Yes!. God has created us to hear that yes and, in the Incarnation, declared us – each of us – unequivocally worthy of his attention and fellowship. The Word became flesh and lived among us (John 1:14).

To be sure, from our earliest days, humans have responded by ignoring or rejecting God's Yes and preferring in our ignorance and willfulness to speak our own “yes” to ourselves, for ourselves. But we are unable to speak an adequate yes on our own, and our self-referential “yes” invariably fragments into myriad “no's,” resulting in the incoherence of sin. To the obstinate “no” of human violence, selfishness, pride, and greed – of all that refuses or denies God’s Yes – we hear a terrifying and resolute “No!” Our “no” and God’s “No!” finally meet in Jesus on the cross. The human “no” is answered by God’s No! and, in the resurrection of Jesus on Easter morning, God’s fundamental, relentless Yes to humanity (indeed, to all creation) is reasserted.

This season we celebrate God’s yes coming quietly into our midst in the birth of Jesus. And we rejoice that that yes has resounded through the centuries and rings in our own hearts. And we recommit ourselves to responding to God’s yes with our own yes – to God, to all other human beings, and to the rest of creation.

Merry Christmas,

Bishop Matt