I love to revisit around Christmas Day a poem by John Shea entitled: Sharon’s Christmas Prayer. It reads: She was five, sure of the facts and recited them with slow solemnity, convinced every word was revelation.
She said
they were so poor
they had only peanut butter
and jelly sandwiches to eat
and they went a long way from home
without getting lost.
The lady rode
a donkey, the man walked, and the baby
was inside the lady.
They had to stay in a stable
with an ox and an ass (hee-hee)
but the Three Rich Men found them
because a star lit the roof.
Shepherds came and you could
pet the sheep but not feed them.
Then the baby was born.
And do you know who he was?
Her quarter eyes inflated
to silver dollars.
The baby was God.
The Christmas story, as told by a child: Joseph and Mary journeying on a donkey, no room at the inn, birth in a stable, the star and the shepherds
and, of course, the baby, Jesus who was God. All the elements of the story are there, but, for an adult, it is too easy to miss how incredible it is that God takes on flesh.
The word became flesh and dwelt among us. What a wild and unbelievable statement! The infinite heart, centre, creator, and sustainer of the universe is born as a baby and lives as a human person on this earth and, through that, gives to us God’s power to save. We’ve domesticated the incarnation, but the real Christmas story staggers the mind. Charles Wesley describes it in one of his hymns like this : our God, contracted to a span, incomprehensibly made man.
After John Shea has let the five-year-old Sharon tell the Christmas story, he notes her reaction and supplies an apt one-line commentary:
And she jumped in the air,
whirled around, dove into the sofa,
and buried her head under the cushion
which is the only proper response
to the good news of the incarnation.
Isn’t that great?
You know, no single historical figure has changed or shaped the world as much as Jesus. How did he do it? NOT by becoming King of Israel or any kind of leader in any conventional sense. Luke contrasts the power of Jesus with leaders about at that time. Caesar Augustus and Qurinius the governor of Syria. When the centre of the world was far away in the mighty imperial city of Rome, he spent what little time he had in the rural backwater of Palestine ministering not to the rich and powerful but to the weak and powerless. Michael Ramsay, a former Archbishop of Canterbury, put it like this:
“…the glory of Christianity is its claim that small things really matter…..Amidst a vast world with its vast empires and vast events and tragedies our Lord devoted himself to a small country, to small things, to individual men and women, often giving hours of time to the very few or to the one man or woman…..the infinite worth of the one is the key to the Christian understanding of the many.”
Remember this Christmas Day that the God who loves you just as you are is born this day for you. That’s the good news of Christmas that God sends his Son into the world to redeem the world and to save it from itself. He cares enough about us he becomes small and vulnerable to fully share what it’s like to be human. Strip away - if you can - the schmaltzy aspects of the nativity story and what do you have? A child born in poverty to a mother who endured labour in unpleasant, insanitary conditions and all this in a nation ruled over by a brutally violent and oppressive Roman regime.
Jesus was a man of the people he set out to serve. He knew their hurts, their needs, their pain. And if we are his church we have to get involved with people where they are too. If God has come down to us then everything has changed. The only response is Sharon’s - whirling round and diving into the sofa. You might like to try doing both this afternoon!
I end with this story encouraging a bit of awe in us as we think about what this day means: some little children in school were re-enacting the Christmas story. Their teacher wanted them to stage it themselves based on their own made up script. So they had three Marys, two Josephs, six shepherds, two wise men and a cow and a doctor who would deliver the baby. The little boy who was the doctor went behind the manger, picked up the doll and carefully wrapped it in a blanket, then with a big smile on his faces, he turned to the Marys and Josephs and said “Congratulations, it’s a boy! No, no… it is a God.”
So this is Christmas: rejoice and be glad, God has kept his promises to save and bless his people.
This day is born for you a Saviour, Christ the Lord.
Love has come down - for ever.
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