Tying in with our daily
Advent reflections about the birth of children in the Bible, these three Advent
Breathing Spaces pick up some more general themes we find in the Bible about children
and childbirth. Each talk has a poem in it – one of mine – tonight’s will be at
the end of this talk.
Last week we thought about
the miracle of the birth of any child, the sense in which every birth changes
the world even if only a little. This week’s readings, though, point us to the birth
which we celebrate at Christmas, the birth of Jesus. If every birth changes the
world, then this one absolutely transformed it. That’s the case even for those
who aren’t Christian. The course of history, the fate of nations, our musical
and artistic heritage, our laws and our customs were all shaped by the fact
that Jesus came into the world.
In fact, though, we know very
little about his birth for sure. Luke and Matthew are the only Gospels that
tell us about it, and they tell stories that are very different. There are
shepherds in one, Magi in the other. One starts in Nazareth, the other seems to
take place completely in Bethlehem. They’ve got some common features. Bethlehem
seems significant, and the child is born to ordinary, even poor, parents
against a backdrop of danger. But whether either story is historically accurate
is very hard to tell, and, in any case, Matthew and Luke weren’t really trying to
give us an historical account. Their stories are more like an overture, giving
us hints of what is to come, setting the scene, helping us to see not what happened,
but why it mattered.
We have surrounded these
Gospel stories with tinsel and magic and highly unlikely details, “The little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes” -
like no baby, ever! But the central point that the Gospel writers make is that
this child is, to outward appearance, no different from any other, not special,
not an obvious candidate for Messiahship. He’s not born in a palace, where the Magi
expect to find him. He’s not even born in the comfort of a home. He is born
among the animals, lain in their feeding trough because there is nowhere else.
We see babies like him all
the time in our news reports today. He’s the baby born in a refugee camp in a
cold, muddy tent. He’s the baby quietly starving in Yemen. He’s the baby born
right here in the UK, to parents struggling to make a home in a B & B,
because they’ve been evicted by their landlords and can’t afford the deposit
for a new place. He’s the child whom no one really notices, who doesn’t look as
if he – or she – will ever amount to anything. And yet, in the case of Jesus,
he does, because God is at work in him.
And God is at work in him not
despite his ordinariness, but because of it. This is what the Gospel writers
are telling us in their stories. He is an ordinary child, born to an ordinary
mother, but he will go on to have an extraordinary impact. His ordinariness
will be hurled back at him throughout his life. His opponents will ask him, in
fury, “Who do you think you are?”
again and again. “Why does this carpenter
from a backwater in Galilee, with no qualifications, no pedigree, think he can
turn our traditions upside down?” they will complain. His death will be a
last, desperate attempt to put him back in his place. Crucifixion was
deliberately humiliating. The Romans used it to concentrate the minds of those
who witnessed it, so that they wouldn’t be tempted to get ideas above their
station.
But Jesus embraces his
ordinariness because his whole life was a sign that God comes to us where we
are, which isn’t, for most of us, anywhere grand. He chooses fishermen and tax
collectors, women and children, as his closest circle of friends and followers.
When he casts about for symbols that will remind them of his presence, he doesn’t
go for champagne and fois gras, but bread and ordinary wine, their staple diet.
“This is where you’ll find me”, he
says, “in the people who attract no
special notice, in the bits of life that are disregarded and in the parts of
yourself that you’d rather ignore too. That’s where I’m needed, so that’s where
I’ll be.”
That’s the message which
brought hope to his first followers. They were people like Paul, who wrote that
the whole of creation was “groaning in labour pains” waiting to see the “the
revealing of the children of God,” waiting for the moment when people would
learn to see themselves and each other as the people we really are, beloved and
precious to God, however ordinary we might feel to ourselves. God comes to us,
in Christ, in all that is ordinary, and in doing so, makes it glorious by his
presence.
So here is tonight’s poem. It
is simply called “He is here”.
He is here
He is here,
blood-streaked from his
mother's womb,
slippery purple with rage
- ejected from comfort -
helplessly beating the cold
air
in the powerless protest of
childhood.
He is here
in voiceless pain,
naked,
debased,
unnamed with the dead of the
killing fields.
He is here
in the commonest things of
life.
In rough wine, acid on the
tongue
and the crumbling bread of
the poor.
He is here
unremarked,
in the eyes which ask for
help.
He is here, this Lord of
Heaven.
He has slipped, unnoticed,
into the thread of life.
He is here, this God of holy
splendour.
Commonplace and ordinary,
he has soaked himself into
all that is overlooked,
saying,
"Touch me,
break me
eat me."
He is here,
he is here,
he is here.
May 89
Anne Le Bas
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