We are God’s work of art

Who doesn’t like a party cake? While I am a bit (too) partial to a slice of cake, I must admit I will usually scrape off any icing on it – it’s just not my favourite bit. The icing on any cake is like a special ‘something’ to finish it off. But it is not a requirement of the cake itself. The icing is a sweet and decorative addition, not an essential ingredient; it’s not something that goes into the mixing bowl as the cake is being made.

Sometimes, we might be tempted to see our own lives in the Lord as a bit like the icing. We are born, raised in family situations, and grow into adulthood. For us who are Christians, this pathway to living our lives includes our faith in Jesus Christ. But this can be seen as a kind of addition to our lives – something good we add on top of the basic product.

Yet, the ways of God do not follow this trajectory. Our lives have the grace of God present from the very beginning, at the ingredient level; we are entirely made of God’s creation, not our own. There is nothing about our individual lives which is not a part of the life of God. As St Paul put it so beautifully in our second reading today, “We are God’s work of art, created in Christ Jesus to live the good life as from the beginning he had meant us to live it.”

What makes it really worthwhile for us to accept this reality is that we can then trust that every bit of us, no matter how our lives are travelling, is made of God and from God. We are his artistic creation, every bit of us, and it is not the case that we can only claim our beauty if we ‘add’ God-like icing to our lives. It might sound a bit trite saying: God doesn’t make rubbish, but it is also true.

The trick is in accepting this truth. Nicodemus, in our gospel reading today, came to visit Jesus in the darkness of night, secretly and perhaps fearfully. As a religious leader of his day, Nicodemus was sitting on the fence with regard to Jesus. Is he the prophet and messiah of God, or is he not? He wanted to know if he could place his trust in Jesus.

Jesus does not respond to Nicodemus in an easy, reassuring way. He challenges this man of faith to dig deeper into his own heart, and to find the courage to make a commitment. Jesus says to him, “though the light has come into the world, people have shown they prefer darkness to the light.” Where did Nicodemus stand? Would he come into the light, or remain in the dark? We know that the path of light would be his choice in the end, as it was the same Nicodemus who would provide the burial place for Jesus.

The light of Christ is ours already. It was placed into our very being at our creation. God made you and me creatures of his light. There is not any bit of us that is not infused with it. It is for us, then, to choose if we are to live in the expansiveness of that light, or if we are to shrink into the shadows.

It is Jesus who shows us most comprehensively how to live in the light. Remember the gospel two Sundays ago, the gospel of the Transfiguration. There, Jesus manifested the divine light that is also ours to claim. It is in the ingredients that make up our lives. It is a light that sustained Jesus through to his death, where he was lifted up for all to see. And it is this light that had within it the power of recreation in his resurrection. Through the light of grace, the light of our re-creation, the light that lifts us up, we are saved.