What Do We Do With The Baby Born Today?

What do we do with this baby born today? Do we celebrate his birth as we celebrate any other birth and rejoice in the safe arrival of another child? Do we use this day to remember a story from so long ago it’s seems little more than a fairy tale to be enjoyed without needing to find anything else there? Do we use this birth as an excuse for consumer excess, the saviour of struggling corporate bottom lines and the over consumption of food, alcohol and gimmickry?

  

What do we do with this baby born today?

 

It depends upon whom we see in the story.

 

If we simply see the boy Jesus, just another human child, we run the risk of making an idol out of a normal person, exalting Jesus to a place in our world he, as a middle eastern, child had no desire to occupy. Idolatry has no place in our lives and particular no place in our Christian faith.

 

This child is special.

 

In the letter to the Hebrews we read:

Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds. He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word.

There is something else happening in this story, something very important we often miss. The child born this day is the very self-expression of God, not just a reflection or image but the creative essence of God let loose in the world. Here is the one on whom the world depends for its very existence and on whom we depend for our own self-expression. Here is the one sitting at the centre of all creation. Every single element and being evolved and evolving has at its very centre the creative urge for more, for life and for wholeness empowered by relationship and love.

Here is the One who empowers us and who we are empowered to become. In this material world God spoke a word in human form as a dependent child on whom we all depend. Humanity does not stand-alone. Trees, birds’ animals and fishes are not independent beings any more than we are. We are interdependently connected to each other in the ever-expanding universe because of the Word spoken into the world this day.

Jesus is the beginning and the end of our very existence. As the Christ he sits at the centre of all creation and is the goal of evolution – we are moving through relationship toward wholeness empowered by love. We need each other just as we need love in relationship to become united in our diversity.

What do we then do with this child born today?

 

We are to live out our oneness with each other and the natural world we live in, sharing the creative spark, the creative Word God spoke in the beginning and re-spoke this day some 2000+ years ago. We are to recognise our dependence on each other as we continue to evolve and move toward the wholeness that is the Christ, the Word spoken today.

Diverse and particular, self aware and independent we may be, but that is not all we are. We need each other and we need to begin to live as if this is the case. We can no longer demonise, destroy, punish or persecute others or the natural world as if they and it are objects to be used for our benefit. Sharing the essence of God in our very being with them, the violence we do to them is violence done to ourselves. And we pay the price in a segregated and fearful world.

It seems when ever you turn on the television or your social media feed there is violence repeated over and over again. It is time we took back our world and began to live out our interconnectedness and dependence on one another; the coming of the Word of God spoken into a violent world asks us to step up and to live in a relationship respect, justice and love. Our wholeness spiritually, psychologically and physically depends upon it.

What do we do with the baby born today?

We strive to live out the gift of creative wholeness with our partners, our children and our extended families; with those whom we share our neighbourhoods, train trips and offices with; with those who do not look like us, believe like us, live like us; with those who are afraid, lonely, lost and on the edge of our society; that’s what we do.

Our task is to join with every other human being and creature alive on this planet to strive for the goal of wholeness as expressed in the Creative Word of God born this day. We are to avoid being possessed by the need for things and others as possessions; to avoid the rush for self-fulfilment at the cost of the well being of others, and to avoid turning the baby born today into an idol of all that is wrong with our world.

Today we sit with this baby and begin to imagine the possibilities if we could just let him into our lives and stoke the spark already there into a burning for wholeness. 

Mary and the Shepherds

17When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; 18and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. 19But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. 20The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them. (Luke 1:17-20)

Writing a Christmas sermon is not easy. Everyone knows the story. They have heard it all before, or at least enough of it to have said, Yep, I know what its all about. It’s a story about a baby, some shepherds and their reindeers, a funny old fellow called Santa Claws, presents and a star. I know its got something to do with chimneys, kissing under the mistletoe, three wise women from the east and a docile donkey, no midwife and only a cows’ feed trough for a bed. It’s about Christmas specials, turkeys and prawns, snow and beach cricket, a big lunch and an afternoon siesta, a boat race to Tasmania and beating the Indians at the MCG. Yep, that’s what Christmas is all about.

Really? You sure?

Christmas is also about boat people looking for a better life, refugees on Christmas Island (appropriately named), people mourning a loved one, no money to feed empty tummies, needless wars in far off lands, too much alcohol, car accidents, politicians and their platitudes, and more.

Really? Is that all?

Well no, that’s not all.

Christmas is about hope, gift, presence, love, mystery in the midst of the ordinariness of life. When, as a child, I asked my father what he wanted for Christmas he would say, “A jam tin with a hole in the bottom.” A funny thing to say. A jam tin with both ends cut out is kind of useless really. You can’t put anything in it, you can’t cover anything up with it, it is useless.

Or was he saying something else about the essence of Christmas – was he saying that it is much more than a tangible item, it is a gift that is too big to grasp and contain, to hold and to keep for yourself. It is more than something you can lock down and put a lid on. The essence of Christmas is beyond definition, beyond theological or philosophical argument, it is the presence of the Spirit in the midst of life.

The shepherds are keeping watch over their flocks – sitting around a campfire as the sheep sat around them, their night - time stillness was disturbed by a mysterious vision of angels announcing the birth of the Messiah. Now that was disturbing, for no one ever told shepherds anything – they were so much the outcasts that people barely spoke to them. Yet it is to them that the birth of the Messiah is announced. And not an announcement about a king born in a fancy palace, but a baby born in the shed put aside for the farm animals at the back of a house of lodgings – called a pub – in a non-descript country village far from the halls of power and authority.

This so intrigued the shepherds that they went down to have a look. Interestingly no-one stayed behind to watch the sheep. Why? Well, because of the racket caused by the angels, I suggest the sheep had scattered far and wide and they would have to go looking the next day to round them up. Can’t do that of a night.

So down they go and find it all as the angels had told them, and they are amazed and rush off back to share their story with anyone and everyone who would listen. They were excited.

Now, the key player in all this, Mary, responds differently. She has just given birth to a healthy baby boy, a boy she has been previously informed is the saviour of the world. I am sure she was happy, happy to have given birth in circumstances that were primitive, even for the time, and survived the ordeal and happy for the special honour this particular birth was. Yet she and Joseph don’t seem to be cracking open the champagne and passing out the cigars. They seem to be quietly watching this extraordinary event unfold around them, the birth, the gathering of the shepherds and their encounter with the angels, the visit from the locals, the strange star overhead, and the back story which preceded this event.

Luke captures their mood when he says:” 19But Mary treasured all these words (and experiences) and pondered them in her heart.”

For Mary and Joseph this event was so mysterious, so indescribable, so awe-inspiring that it was beyond their understanding at that very moment. Neither understood what this all meant, no could they, but they simply didn’t dismiss it all as some sort of myth or hallucination, but pondered, reflected, contemplated it all, allowing the Spirit of God to reveal it, as and when appropriate.

On this, the night before Christmas, let us take into our hearts the story of the birth of Jesus, the coming of the Christ, the Messiah, the one with us in this world and reflect upon it’s innocence, it’s love, it’s depth and it’s call to us, who once were outcasts, to open our lives and share it with all, regardless of who they are. Let us reflect on the gift God gives us and remember that all gifts, given and received this Christmas, are only symbols of the gift of love found in Christ.

Let us reflect on the incarnation or coming amongst of Christ and be mindful of how we are amongst those we share this world with.

Let us reflect on the fragility of that small baby who relied so much on others for life and know how fragile our lives are and how much we rely on others for our daily existence.

The story of Christmas has become a little confused in the modern retelling, or should I say, reselling of it; yet the foundational story has not changed. It is about the gift of life and the power of that gift to unbalance our complacency and cause us to ‘ponder on all these words and experiences within our heart”.

The challenge, as we move to the Eucharist and the festivities of Christmas day, is to celebrate the gift or life and live mindful of that gift everyday. Like my father’s jam tin with the a hole in it, Christmas is a gift we can never contain and it will go on revealing itself to us for the rest of our life, if we ponder on it in our hearts.