It’s Christmas! Et Verbum caro factum est et habitavit in nobis et vidimus gloriam eius gloriam quasi unigeniti a Patre plenum gratiae et veritatis

Say what?

It’s Latin. I’ll say it again:

Et Verbum caro factum est et habitavit in nobis et vidimus gloriam eius gloriam quasi unigeniti a Patre plenum gratiae et veritatis.

It’s only The Greatest Story Ever Told, the fourteenth verse of the first chapter of the Gospel according to Saint John.

Here it is in English:

And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us (and we saw his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father) , full of grace and truth.

A former associate pastor of mine, Wayne L., says there are two kinds of people in the world (okay, he said in the church, but stay with me, people. I’m improvising here to include everybody) , Grace people and Truth people.

Grace people think they are full of love and good will and kindness and that Truth people are too mean-spirited and harsh and combative and inflexible. Truth people think they are full of knowledge and accuracy and irrefutable facts and that Grace people are too compromise-y and weak and permissive and gullible.

Grace people think if only the Truth people could see the light and be Grace people, what a wonderful world it would be. Truth people think if only the Grace people could see the light and be Truth people, what a wonderful world it would be.

According to my friend Wayne, both groups are wrong. He reminded us that John 1:14 tells us that Jesus Christ was full of grace and truth. The real problem in society today, therefore, is that Truth people need to exhibit more Grace along with the truth, and Grace people need to proclaim more Truth along with the grace. That’s the only way any of us have any hope of ever being like Jesus -- we must, like Him, have them both. We must be full of grace and truth.

Here endeth the lesson for December 25th.

We now return you to today’s programming, already in progress.