In many of our homes and churches we put up cribs to remind ourselves of this extraordinary moment. These captivating nativity scenes – a baby lying in a stable, watched over by his devoted mother and father, as the three Magi pay homage and the shepherds look on – enthral children and stir something in many adults, as well. For a while, we, too, become onlookers.
And yet, how fully, I wonder, do we grasp the magnitude of what’s being celebrated?
For Christians, Jesus’s birth is one of the two greatest events in human history – and I use the term ‘human history’ quite deliberately. “‘The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son’, Matthew writes, ‘and they will call him Immanuel (which means “God with us”).’”
Jesus came among us fully human and fully divine. He experienced the human condition in its raw completeness. His life story – an infant refugee growing up in an occupied land; witnessing poverty, inequality and oppression; experiencing injustice, persecution, bereavement, betrayal, mockery and abuse; feeling abandoned and, ultimately, suffering an unimaginably brutal death on the cross – means that Jesus endured many of the hardest trials that can befall humankind.
Whenever we feel lost or abandoned, when our world is in turmoil, when the valley is at its darkest, Jesus is the one constant we can turn to. He knows what suffering feels like. Our Lord’s birth, the Incarnation, is one of God’s greatests gifts to us. It allows Jesus to empathise with us, and he will never forsake us. God’s second great gift is, of course, the promise of eternal life for those who believe in him and follow his way.
This Advent, if you find yourself an onlooker at the Nativity scene, open your heart to the wonder at its core and experience the joy of Christmas in all its fullness.
I wish you every blessing this Christmas, and a happy and peaceful New Year.