by CCW | 25 December 2012 11:00
Death and taxes. Homeless in Bethlehem. “He came unto his own and his own received him not,” we heard last night. This morning we hear that “there was no room for them in the inn.” God’s Son is homeless in Bethlehem, in the city of David, where Joseph has come “to be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.” Only God could make something of great joy out of the endless trials and sad realities of human life. “And she brought forth her first-born son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger.”
It is a compelling and poignant image and one which has captured the imagination of artists and poets. A manger. There is no mention of a stable or of anything else at the manger other than Mary and Joseph, the child wrapped in swaddling bands, the shepherds and, then, later, the Kings. Angels? Well, perhaps. But the so-called infancy narratives of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke are quite sparse with their information. Yet, the fundamental idea and reality is more than enough and quite capable of embracing the works of holy imagination. That humble scene so briefly described in the Gospels becomes a veritable menagerie in the traditions of art and poetry, music and song.
We could blame the carols, themselves the wondrous vessels of devotion that convey so much of the doctrine and the idea of Christ’s Incarnation. Hymns and carols shape our understanding of holy things far more than perhaps we realize and for the most part, that is a good thing, though it should make us leery and more than a little suspect of the agendas of political correctness that issue in proscriptive changes to terms and images that result in a loss of theological understanding and meaning.
“Cradled in a stall was he/with sleepy cows and asses” the 15th century carol Puer Nobis Nascitur tells us, a carol which confronts us, too, with one of the most disturbing stories of the Nativity, the Flight into Egypt to escape Herod’s policy of infanticide, seeking to remove a potential rival to his kingship, “all the little boys he killed/At Bethlem in his fury”. Death. There is blood in Bethlehem. The massacre of the little ones.
It recapitulates an ancient story, reaching back into the Book of Exodus and the story of Moses’ birth during Pharaoh’s similar policy. It becomes part and parcel of the radical meaning of Christ’s Incarnation. “Out of Egypt have I called my son.” Just as Moses is drawn out of the rushes, so the Hebrews are drawn out of Egypt to become the people of God. That story is reimaged and transformed in Jesus. In many ways it captures the deep meaning of Christmas. Redemption and Salvation take on a real and deep meaning when we confront the hardest things, particularly the death and loss of the little ones of Bethlehem, but also of Newtown, Connecticut, for no other reason than the unreason of our humanity. Such is the reality of sin and wickedness. But this, too, is part of what we contemplate. “Jesus Christ was born for this!” as the carol, In Dulci Jubilo, reminds us. “He hath open the heavenly door,/And man is blessèd evermore.” “Now ye need not fear the grave:/Peace! Peace!/Jesus Christ was born to save!” In every way, the holy scene at Bethlehem speaks to our broken hearts and to a world of mindless violence and destructive folly.
The contemplative wonder of Christmas morn is captured in the reality of the idea that it presents. It is about the harmony of God and world, the harmony of man and nature, about the harmony between Creator and created. A long litany of creatures figures in the imaginative picture of Bethlehem by artists and poets, from the ordinary to the exotic. There is, of course, no mention of such things as ox and ass in either Luke or Matthew. There is mention only of the shepherds “keeping their flocks by night.” Nothing in the Scriptures says anything about “leaving their flocks” as some carols suggest. But nothing is said about bringing them either. And yet, holy imagination has gathered into Bethlehem images of the whole created order: animals in great array, men and women, angels and kings, rich and poor.
Such is the legitimacy of holy imagination that builds precisely on the real point. Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us. Mary’s “first-born son” is “the only-begotten of the Father,” God’s Son and Word who embraces all that belongs to our world and our humanity. In John’s prologue read on Christmas night, Jesus is “the Word made flesh.” He, literally, “tented among us,” John says, recalling at once the Old Testament images of the cloud of God’s glory that led and protected the ancient people of Israel in the Exodus. It expresses both intimacy and distance, the nearness and the utter remoteness of God and man.
In Luke’s compact and restrained account, Mary laid the child in a manger “because there was no room for them in the inn.” It reminds us that God’s embrace of our humanity is not at the expense of his divinity. The transcendent truth of God in his holy otherness is not compromised or denied in the Incarnation; in the Christian understanding, it is at the heart of what we contemplate in Christ Jesus.
“Heaven in ordinarie,” we might say with George Herbert, for that is the strong consequence of the Christmas message. God embraces our humanity. High and low, rich and poor, angels and shepherds, kings and beasts all crowd into the humble scene at Bethlehem. Somehow there is room for the whole of creation before the presence of the Creator created in God’s Son in Bethlehem. That there was no room for them in the inn speaks only to the narrowness of our human hearts. Somehow God makes a palatial paradise out of an obscure manger in Bethlehem.
But the great wonder of Christmas is that Bethlehem reveals the true purpose of creation. The whole of creation is engaged in one primary activity: worship. The whole of creation gathers to adore God Incarnate. The challenge is to find room in our hearts to worship and adore the child Christ. And only so shall we be “blessèd evermore.”
Fr. David Curry,
Christmas Morn, 2012
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