Christmas 2008 - The Christmas Message
December 2008
The beginning and the end of the life of Jesus of Nazareth are events celebrating the weakness of God.
What is more helpless, weak and totally dependent that a newborn child?
What is more helpless, weak and utterly lost that a human being at the moment of execution? Yet this is how God has chosen to reveal Himself to us.
This helpless, weak, frightened human being - newborn child and grown man - is at the same time the Infinite God, Creator of Heaven and Earth.
What message is God, at such pains, to get across to me? What is God trying to tell me?
The message which each of us receives may differ considerably.
When I contemplate this helpless newborn child. When I contemplate this wreck of a human being, sprawled on the executioners cross - and both are inextricably linked, the first message I receive is that God is totally different to what human beings thing. That the values of our world, of our human cultures, that the ways we are brought up to think and to judge, what we regard as important or not important are totally alien to God.
The next message I receive is that God’s power is only active in human weakness, human helplessness, and human despair. Only when I have lost everything, my pride, my money, my health, my standing in the community, even my self respect, will I truly find God.
This is frightening, and I, for one, am not yet prepared to accept and embrace it.
The final message I receive is that God is not to be found (except rarely) in deep philosophical or theological ponderings. God is revealed to you and I in the relationships that exist all around us - the bond between lovers, the bond between parent and child, the bond between grandparent and grandchild. We find God, not by looking up to but by looking dawn.
And so the Christmas message? This helpless little child is my God. When will I truly accept and believe it? Her/his mum is not looking up to heaven. She is looking down at her child. That is where she sees God.