Imagine you’re a potter. You make many beautiful objects, but all of them have a practical purpose as well: bowls, plates, mugs and so on. Now imagine what the result would be if all those objects insisted that you did not make them, and they do not owe you anything. Moreover, many of them state that they are not, in fact, what they were designed to be. Plates say that they are actually bowls while bowls insist that they are vases, and mugs refuse to act as anything other than a statue. Think about what the consequence would be if we had to eat soup on a plate rather than a bowl, because the bowls said they were vases and the plates insisted that they were bowls. It would be rather messy, to say the least. But I wonder if we are doing something similar. Rather than honouring the God who made us, we are certain that we are independent beings who can choose to follow God, or not. Rather than accepting that we are created by God, and therefore that worship is due to the one who created us, we turn away from God and insist on going our own way. Rather than seeing God’s way of sacrificial love, we are intent on bolstering ourselves. The result? Rather more mess than trying to eat soup from a plate.
I have been spending some time this year praying with the prologue to John’s gospel. There is an amazing amount of theology packed into those few verses; just try reading John 1:1-5 and ponder the implications. Not just for who Jesus is, but for how the world was created. The fact that all that lives owes its’ existence to God should, in itself, bring us to think seriously about how independent we are as human beings. That all things were made through the Word should impact how we relate to Jesus. Then the life that is in the Word is our light; light that cannot be overcome by darkness. How does that completely revolutionise all that modern society teaches us about humanity and how we relate to each other?
We are created by God, and all things that exist owe their life to God. Moreover, this is not some distant God who set the world in motion and then disappeared; it is a God who is intimately connected to all creation; a God who is Life; a God whose life is our light; a God who became flesh (see verse 14) and lived among us. This is not a God whom we can choose to worship or not; this is a God whom we are created to worship, whom to worship should be as natural as breathing. Except … we can, and do, choose whether to worship our God or not. That is an essential part of the whole. It is a choice, and we can choose to go the other way. Except, when we do, we are like a plate that thinks it is a bowl; it doesn’t quite work.
I do need to make clear that I am not talking about why some individuals suffer and other do not; I am not suggesting that choosing to follow God means everything will go well, and if you do not you are responsible for every negative thing that happens to you, or to anyone else. It’s not that simple; neither is that decision to follow God. It is certainly not as easy as whether you go to church or not. I suspect that, in time, we will realise that there are many who know God, who do not appear to do so; and also many who seem to be followers, who actually were not. For most of us, it is a continuing choice to follow God, and a continual deepening of that choice to give ourselves ever more deeply to our God. Our God, in whom is our life and our existence; in whom is the lives and existence of those around us.
That, too, should give us pause for thought. Do we truly respond to all that is with the knowledge that God made them, with all the implications that brings? With the knowledge that the life in us and around us is part of the life that is in the Word, who is our light? How different would our lives be if we really, deeply knew that with every fibre of our being, to the depths of our souls? To know that God is so intimately and totally involved in this world that it is God who is our light, and our only true light? To know that however dark life may get, the Light which comes into the world cannot be overcome. Even when we feel that it has – and there are times in all our lives when that is so – it is not true. The Light of the world cannot be drowned or put out in darkness.
How does this affect us? To spend some time acknowledging that this choice to worship God, which we have made, is actually a choice to follow the path laid down for us at creation; that I and you and all whom we meet are created to love and follow God, whether we are aware of that or not; to know that is not I who is important, but God; that God is the one who is central; finally, to know that this God, whom we are created to love and serve, is made known in Jesus, the Word made flesh, with all that implies. For while we are created to worship God, the God whom we worship is not demanding that in human terms, but divine: not demanding, but loving; not dominating, but serving. Divine terms which we can only get a glimmer of understanding about as we gaze at the cross, and ponder the implications of what a crucified God truly means.

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