At the heart of the mystery that is Christmas is the question ‘Why?’
Why would an all powerful, all knowing, everywhere present, infinite God choose to humble and confine Himself to being encased in mortal flesh? That which the entire universe could not contain, was now compressed into the constantly multiplying and expanding cells of an embryo. It is unfathomable, but infinity condensed itself. God put Himself in a human body, an unborn child, and God put Himself in a human body, the womb of a teenage girl. Why?
Up to this point in the story that is the Bible, God had put Himself in pillars of fire and in thunderous, earth-shaking clouds of smoke and lightning atop mountains. People saw floods, plagues, earthquakes, bloody conquests and declared, “This is God!” Perhaps this is why.
Maybe God had grown weary of His children portraying Him as the source of horrific pain and suffering and vengeance, despite His own declaration to the contrary, “Then the Lord came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name, the Lord. And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, ‘The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin.’” Could it be that God determined it was time for a different approach? Not in the sense that God’s previous efforts had failed, only that they were merely stepping stones in the maturing of humanity. As Paul would later write, part of the process of growing in every way more and more like Christ. Humanity couldn’t just skip to the end of the story without first taking the journey and learning the lessons that would come along the way. Paul even intimated this, “When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’”
When the fulness of time had come. When it was the right time, God took on humanity to deliver humanity and enable humanity to truly become His children. Just as it is with physical birth and growth, spiritual birth and growth require much pain and struggle. “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.’”
Could it be this is why? Because there is nothing more common to the human experience than birth. We all enter into life the same way, through the mess and the struggle and the pain of birth. From peasants to kings and everyone in between, we all share the same experience of entering into life the same way. From that point forward our experiences will vary radically, but not at the beginning. We all begin the journey the same way, so really, if God was going to become a human, there simply was no other way. In that moment, when the creator of the world entered the world — or as C.S. Lewis illustrated in ‘Surprised By Joy’, the author of the story wrote himself into the story — the silent night was pierced by the cry of an infant. Every time we hear the cry of an infant we are captured by it, consumed by it, as it stubbornly refuses to let us ignore it.
There are essentially two responses to a crying infant: anger or compassion. As horrific as it is to contemplate, much of the violence perpetrated on helpless infants is in response to their cries. Some hear these cries and are annoyed, frustrated, enraged. They only want to silence the baby because their cries interrupt their lives and from a hardened heart, they seek to silence the cries through shouts or even violence. The nativity story never settles for syrupy sentiment. It intentionally sheds light in the darkest corners of humanity, the ones we'd rather pretend don't exist. For King Herod, the cries of the newborn king are received with fear and pride and rage, driving him to attempt to silence those cries through violence against all the babies in Bethlehem.
For most people, the cries of a baby cause the heart to melt with grief and compassion and love. Have you ever heard an infant cry in public, a child you don’t even know and have no connection to, and your immediate impulse is to pick it up and comfort it? The instinct isn’t from aggravation or frustration, but love. Your heart both swells and breaks and you simply want to embrace the little one and love it. Not everyone responds the same, but everyone reacts the same in that we all react to a crying baby. A baby’s cries are penetrating. They pierce the air drowning out any other sounds, going straight to the core of our brains, even cutting through the callousness and hardness surrounding our hearts, pricking them with the inherent vulnerability that is in them and in us.
Is this not the reaction that men have to the gospel itself, to Jesus Himself? The cries of an infant moves us to resistant anger or to complete surrender and that is the most common response to the gospel of Jesus in the New Testament. Those who hear the cry of the gospel herald are either cut to the heart and gnash with their teeth or they are pricked in the heart and moved to grief and repentance and a desire to seek comfort and consolation. The New Testament is filled with stories of those who raged, threatened and enacted violence in response, and with stories of those who wept themselves and cried out for guidance, healing, and forgiveness.
Though He escaped the violent attempts to silence Him in His infancy, He would willingly yield to it three decades later, as the worst violence imaginable was directed at Him. On this day, He would cry out one last time, "It is finished!" In between His cries on the night of His birth and His final cry on the day that He died, Jesus wept with us in all our pain, grief, and loss. The great sermon that is the book of Hebrews reminds us, "In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death." Our tears do not frustrate or annoy Him. He doesn't try to silence us. He joins us. Isaiah calls Him a man of sorrows who associates with the grieving. And our tears are precious to Him, because we are precious to Him. "You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book."
The next time you hear someone crying, not just a baby, but anyone, listen carefully, respond patiently and lovingly and in that moment both you and they will be able to hear the cries of God Himself piercing the silent night in Bethlehem and echoing through eternity. Listen and remember, "He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
Maybe this is why. Truly, this is such a strange way to save the world.
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