Christmas for New Birth
Have you ever held a new-born child? It is an experience without peer. A tiny life.
A person in miniature. Holding a
new-born for the first time, I was told by her parents to support the baby’s
head – a baby’s head is too large for her neck to support at first. New-borns do very little – they cry, feed,
sleep and poo. There are no smiles or
coos to reward the parent or visitor.
And yet it is one of life’s greatest experiences. Parents are driven by biology to protect and
nurture their child, but non-parents too can understand the imperative to care
for the bundle of warmth that barely fills a hand. To hold a new-born child is to hold something
that is simultaneously immensely fragile, utterly dependent and unimaginably
precious.
Christmas is when we mark the time that God took flesh in a
new-born child. God became fragile,
dependent and precious and was born to an unmarried teenager. Some of our carols get it wrong. Little Lord Jesus no crying he makes? Certainly not! Babies cry to be fed, to be
changed, to be held. Jesus needed all of
these, he would have cried. The Gospels
are more realistic. There we read that
Joseph thought of leaving Mary; that birth was not welcomed in the house, but
with the animals; that the so-called wise men nearly brought disaster in the
form of Herod’s murderous wrath; that Jesus and his family fled as refugees
from violence in their home country. We
also read of Mary’s care for her child, and her treasuring of all that
happened. The fragility and dependence
of God on his mother is a source of wonder, an image of the Word made flesh,
God become human.
We are to be born again.
To be new-born into the world.
Sometimes this sounds like we have been given super-powers, a new suit
of armour to deflect the challenges and pain that might come our way. But to be new-born is to be fragile, easily
broken by what others do. It is to be
dependent on others for care and food.
And it is to be precious beyond price.
We need to acknowledge our fragility and dependence, not to guard
against it. It is in our fragile and
dependent state that we are precious.
Can we celebrate this Christmas that our preciousness is found in being
fragile and dependent?
In Jesus, God shares in our humanity and became a
child. In Jesus, we are new-born into
the kingdom of God. We are immensely
fragile, utterly dependent and unimaginably precious.
Originally written for the Diverse Church Advent Calendar 2015.
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