The annual season we know as Christmas is a time when most people remember the stories of Jesus’ birth. The media is full of movies, articles and advertisements, which remind us of those stories. There are good stories — Joseph & Mary, Bethlehem, “no room at the inn” which is traditionally badly interpreted as inhospitality (but that is for another time), the manger, the shepherds, Herod the Great, the wise men, and the celebration by angels. They are stories we need to tell our children and on which we can reflect with our neighbors and colleagues, especially at this time of the year.
However, the real story of the birth of Jesus, the story, which both Matthew and Luke emphasize, is that the birth of Jesus is the incarnation of God. It is the appearance of God himself in the flesh. It is this event which we celebrate weekly and this person whom we worship daily. The real story of the wise men, for example, is not that they visited Jesus, but that they worshipped him and gave him gifts — an example we seek to imitate.
The incarnation, God coming as one of us in the flesh, is at the heart of Christianity and one of its central themes. This is the story we need to tell — that God humbled himself to become one of us….the humility of God….the love of God.
He became one of us to be present within his creation as a creature and unite himself to his creation. His union with creation through the flesh, through becoming a human being, sanctifies creation, redeems it, and communes with it. Becoming flesh, living in his own skin, and being raised in a glorified but yet still human body bears witness to God’s intent to live in relationship with creation itself rather than simply relating to “spiritual” ghosts floating through the “spiritual” clouds. The incarnation is God’s testimony that–and means by which–God intends to unite himself with the creation.
He became one of us in order to reveal God to us. The life of Jesus tells the story of how God would act if he were a human being. In Jesus we have a concrete example of who God is, how he behaves, and how he relates to people. We see God when we see Jesus. He embodies God so that we may know who God is. Jesus is the truth, God in the flesh. He is the life and the way; he is God available to the eyes, ears and touch. We know our God because we know Jesus.
He became one of us in order to experience and sympathize with our suffering. God in himself does not know what it is like to be thirsty, hungry or to experience physical pain. God in Jesus, however, experienced all of these human frailties. Now God knows what it is like to be a human being. He is the empathetic and sympathetic God through Jesus. He shares our pain and temptations, sits on the mourner’s bench with us, and dies with us (as well as for us). God knows humiliation through Jesus; God knows the experience of fallenness. Our God fully knows us–cognitively but also existentially and experientially.
He became one of us in order to redeem us through the sacrifice of his own life. As the God-Human, Jesus is the mediator between God and Humanity. It his human life that he offered as an atonement for our sins, but he did so not as an act of human blood sacrifice but as an act of divine self-substitution. God became human so that God might engage the powers of evil and defeat them. God became human so that God might bear sin, take it up into his own life and resolve the cosmic problem of mercy and justice–however that is resolved. God became human that we might have a representative at the right hand of the Father who is one of us.
At this Christmas season, remember the real story of Jesus’ birth. It is not found in the moralistic (though profitable) stories of Rudolf, the Little Drummer Boy, or the movie “Miracle on 34th Street”. The real story is that God became one of us so that we might become one with God. That is the story we need to proclaim year-round and celebrate daily. It is, truly, the gospel story rather than simply a Christmas story.
A touching video entitled “Emmanuel – God is with us” is available at Benji Kelly’s website that is worth a meditation or two.