The next four weeks usher us through the closure of the Christmas season and God’s final present of presence—Wisdom Sophia, the feminine spirit that becomes both word and flesh. She is the final manifestation of God’s attempt to find us; she has been with us “[b]efore the ages, in the beginning … and for all the ages” (Sirach 24:9).
The psalmist sings joyfully about a God who has “searched me and known me.” Our God knows us, and is known by us: “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well” (Psalm 131:14).
To know us better, God becomes ordinary; as water, God claims us, and as Spirit, God commissions us. Jesus, too, looks among the “ordinary” to do the extraordinary task of building the new reign of God, starting not from the centers of power but with the powerless—ordinary people without special qualifications besides enough faith to leave everything and become “fishers of people.”
Now, as always, it is our turn to respond, to join community, to make it accountable and to be accountable to it, and to claim the only inheritance that is not susceptible to fluctuating markets. As Christians, now more than ever, we must be bankers and give freely of our savings of hope, justice, and new life, for “in Christ we have also obtained an inheritance … so that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory” (Ephesians 1:11-12).
Michaela Bruzzese, a Sojourners contributing writer, lives in Brooklyn, New York.
January 4
Full Circle
Sirach 24:1-12; Wisdom of Solomon 10:15-21; Ephesians 1:3-14; John 1:1-18
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