Sweet Baby Jesus
The annual celebration of Christmas is good for us. It is an opportunity to revisit the miracle of birth. It gives us an opportunity to revisit the miracle of Jesus’ birth.
On this holy evening, Christmas Eve 2008, we turn our thoughts once more to Bethlehem. There is born to us Jesus Christ the Lord, who is the savior of the whole world. Sweet Baby Jesus has finally arrived on the scene. What’s not to love about Sweet Baby Jesus?
This evening, the words of the Gospel according to St. Luke (2:1-20) will echo around the world. For our part of that echo, I want us to focus on the birth of Jesus – the incarnation of Jesus. The Word made flesh who comes to dwell among us. It’s the number one biggest event in human history. In fact, Jesus’ birth split history into two sections – “Before Christ” and “Anno Domini” (in the year of our Lord). Even if we refer to the division of time as “Before the Common Era” and “Common Era”, no one else but Jesus has made such an impact on the world. No one. And he continues to do so.
The Christian doctrine of the incarnation of Jesus Christ stands in a unique place. It makes a unique claim. It claims that Jesus is at once fully human and fully divine. The claim is so unique that it is called in theological circles “the scandal of particularity.” Christianity makes the very particular claim that God became flesh and dwelt among us. It claims that God entered the human race at a particular time and place – that he was born of a particular human mother – born into a country that was ruled by a certain emperor and a certain king. We can verify this time and place and these rulers in secular history.
As a priest of the Church I unabashedly make the claim that the eternal Son of God – the second person of the Holy and undivided Trinity – took flesh in the womb of his human mother, Mary the Virgin. Can I wrap my mind around that and understand it? No. I neither quite understand how it happened nor why it happened, but I believe that it happened. Faith does not require proof. That’s what faith is.
The Christian doctrine of the Incarnation of Jesus claims that the historical Jesus Christ was and is all at one time fully God and fully human. I have not figured that out, either. The Angels haven’t figured it out. Our salvation gives us privileges with God into which the angels long to look. (I Peter 1:12, NRSV) The Early Church argued over this doctrine for a few hundred years, and finally hammered it out in A.D. 451 at the Council of Chalcedon. It was there that Mary the Virgin formally received the title “God-bearer” or “Theotokos.” It was there that the limits of orthodox Christianity were defined – that is, that Jesus Christ is at once fully human and fully divine. This council declared further that humans are still humans and that God is still God. It’s just that Jesus Christ is both.
Here in the twenty-first century, we are still wondering how that Jesus could have taken our humanity up into his divinity, and brought his divinity down to our humanity. This is the great mystery. He shares his divinity with us in the mystery of the holy sacraments, the greatest of which are Holy Baptism and the Holy Eucharist. I remind us of the Catechism’s definition of sacraments: “The sacraments are outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace, given by Christ as sure and certain means by which we receive that grace.” (BCP 857) Thank God that Jesus left us the sacraments to be the means by which we partake of Jesus’ divinity. This gives us something we can touch and feel and see.
Jesus’ coming to earth turned this world upside down. The Roman Emperor Augustus thought that he was ruler of the world as he knew it. Note that our Gospel reading says that the Emperor sent out a decree that “all the world should be registered.” This was a census for tax purposes. How arrogant was he to think that he could tax the whole world?
Little did Augustus know that God was about to cast down the mighty from their thrones and lift up the lowly. Over in Bethlehem, a town whose name means “House of Bread,” the Bread of Life – the Savior of the world -- was being born. Angels were singing to frightened shepherds while trying to tell them to calm down. Jesus was being wrapped in bands of cloth and laid in a manger – a feeding trough for the animals. Jesus would later say of bread, “this is my body.” As often as you eat this bread, eat it in remembrance of me. As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you show forth the Lord’s death until he comes. Jesus is present to us in the Holy Eucharist by which he communicates with us and heals us. It’s a great mystery.
Jesus could not help but come to earth and be born into the human family. That’s because God loved the world so much that God could not hold back his love any longer. His love for us burst forth into time and space in the person of Jesus Christ.
Jesus’ coming to earth also stirred up the heavenly beings – the angels. They burst forth into the night singing “Glory to God in the highest heaven” because they could not help themselves.
Yes, Sweet Baby Jesus has finally arrived on the scene. I hope that, at least in our hearts, we will burst forth into this night singing “Glory to God in the highest heaven” because we will not be able to help ourselves. Amen.
In peace,
Linda+
The Rev. Linda McCloud
Vicar, Holy Cross Church Episcopal
Billings, Montana
406-208-7314
http://www.holycrosschurchbillings.org/
hand-carved by Trappist monks at
Mepkin Abbey, Monck's Corner, S.C.
January 2008
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