He came unto His own, and His own received Him not.
Missing our own is a horrible thing to do and bitterly lonely for anyone to whom it happens.
There is a group whose eyes should light up when they see us, but if when they see us they turn their backs on us, this is very hard to bear. If this has ever happened to you, know that Jesus knows just how you feel. If we have ever done such a thing to one of our own, then God forgive us, because we are imitating those who crucified Jesus.
Saint John already told us some of us missed our Creator, bad but understandable. We are far from the original creation. The natural order of creation conflicts with the world order tyrants create to maintain power. In the power structures in which we live, the world order, the creation is a tool and the Creator forgotten.
We worship the creator of the human world order, some fallen Caesar, and not the Creator of the cosmos. Missing the Creator might be someone else’s fault.
Missing one of our own is all on us if he or she wishes to be known.
Yet so it is and always has been. We reject those we know when they do not meet our expectations. Few can embarrass us more than “our own” as we believe their behavior reflects on us or worst of all they reveal to us by similarity what others see in us. We look in the mirror every day, but are kind to what we see. We edit out the flaws, but we see “our own” the truth comes to us without self-regard’s filter. In seeing one of us, we see ourselves.
And so we do not receive one of our own. We judge as we would do not judge ourselves.
Jesus, the redeemer, the savior, God’s anointed, had been anticipated for centuries. Every nation longs for his coming in different ways, but for similar reasons. We are God’s children, but have separated ourselves from our heavenly parent. At last God came in the person of Jesus and his own rejected Him.
Of course many of “his own” did receive him, Jewish people like John the Baptist and Saint John who wrote the Gospel. Roman soldiers, tax collectors, and Samaritans knew him and received him, but the leaders of his own for the most part rejected him. That is the pity of Christmas. The “no room in the inn” of overcrowded Bethlehem was a foreshadowing of the crucifixion where the mob and the rulers decided there was no room in the world order for Him.
His own rejected Him.
This is why in the Christmas season the rejected, the lonely, the poor, and the forgotten should always be on our minds. We should look out for those of “our own” that we might have overlooked, despised, or pushed aside.
And if you despair, if you have been overlooked, despised, or pushed asked, turn outward and look to Jesus. He is there and He will never miss His own. Every person is His own if we will only turn from our own ways, little world orders of our own, and find Him.
He was unknown, ostensibly, but those who crucified Him glorified Him. They knew Him in their wicked hearts and so could not acknowledge the kinship or they would have to change. He was that glorious and right and so from his own, those who should have helped him, He received injustice.
Forever the Christ of Christmas knows His own treated unjustly. Will we look up from our despair or our arrogance and admit we are known by Him and know Him?
If so, then there will be joy to us . . . joy to all He knows and who know Him.
Christ is born!
Glorify Him!
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A Christmas series on John 1: 1-14 (Links will not be active until the piece is published. All active by January 5, 2019).
Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14.
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