The Mystery of Christmas

Last week, I was part of a choral group that joined disabled and elderly people in singing Christmas carols together. The individual and collective sum of suffering in this group was significant. And yet every one of the disabled and elderly, even those with Alzheimer’s, joined enthusiastically with us as we sang of “The First Noel” and of the “Little Town of Bethlehem” and several other carols. As they lustily belted out the familiar tunes, an unmistakable light of joy and peace which defied earthly explanation, had illuminated and settled upon their faces. It seemed as if they had caught a glimpse of heaven.

The mystery of Christmas stretches back to its very beginnings. That the God of the universe would love us so much as to condescend to be born in a manger for us, is a mystery - the greatest mystery of all.

This also is a mystery, that all those to whom the Angels appeared to announce the shattering news of the birth of the Saviour were poor, were “nondescript” in the eyes of the world - a simple and devout Virgin, her husband, poor shepherds keeping watch over their sheep at night, an obscure priest doing his seasonal service in the hill country of Judea. Perhaps this was God’s way of showing us that in His economy, worldly wealth counts for nothing.

That the Babe in the manger should have had such a fundamental impact upon the centuries that time itself was divided into “AD” and “BC” by His birth - this also is something of a mystery.

It is a mystery too, that the Incarnation (which means God almighty appearing in the flesh amongst human beings) should continue to inspire and excite and elevate the experience of poets, novelists, artists and sculptors.

It could be argued that beauty itself is sufficient cause for inspiration. To which I would still reply that you only have to witness Michelangelo’s Pieta in Rome or Ruben’s “Adoration of the Magi;” or indeed the stained glass windows of our Cathedrals; or the more than one thousand references to the Bible in Shakespeare - to realize that the transcending power of the Incarnation informs and creates beauty itself.

Adoration of The Magi - Peter Paul Rubens (1634). Now in King’s College, Cambridge

Stained glass window - Cathédrale Saint-Corentin de Quimper, Brittany, France

And then there is the mystery of limitless power being limited severely in time and space in the form of Him who took upon Himself our nature and became flesh and blood, then was “tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin” and “suffered death upon the Cross for our sakes.” That all this was done voluntarily by God is also a mystery. Jesus gives us a sense of the willing humiliation He underwent, when he pointed out (in the Gospel according to St. Luke) that should He so choose, He could have called down thousands of Angels to set Him free from those who came to arrest Him. We know of course that He chose not to summon the Angels - and therein lies another mystery of love. A few hours later, when crucified upon the Cross, the Gospel account says that those who passed by taunted Him - “If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross.” That He chose to stay upon the Cross for our sake, is yet another mystery of love - mystery upon mystery.

The mystery of the baby Jesus in the manger, surrounded by cattle and sheep, so beloved by our artists and poets, also includes multiple witnesses to the Incarnation - Mary and Joseph themselves, the shepherds, the wise men from the East and curious onlookers. Each would have had their own story of suffering and mortality, of being subject to the same, often grim human condition. And yet, few of us have any doubt, that they too experienced joy unspeakable upon beholding the Saviour - and this is dutifully reflected in the paintings of the masters. The shepherds and wise men and onlookers in the paintings, like the disabled and elderly folk we sang carols with last week, had witnessed the extraordinary mystery of the love of God reaching down to man - and were transfixed with wonder and a surpassing sense of peace that transcended every earthly experience.

Adoration of the Shepherds by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, c. 1657. Museo Nacional del Prado

Nativity icon - Eastern Orthodox Church

Suffering - profound, exhausting and apparently meaningless; suffering of all kinds in our broken and hurting and imperfect world, is also a great mystery. The Incarnation shows us that God is not indifferent - He identifies with our sufferings, voluntarily. And then, by using the suffering and turning the worst thing that could possibly happen to Him (the Cross) into the best thing that could happen for mankind (the Resurrection), the mystery of suffering unravels partially, allowing us to believe in the eternal significance of such things as love and beauty, in a new destiny for mankind, in life everlasting - and a future in which from every eye, the Lord God will wipe away every tear.

In John Keats’ celebrated “Ode on A Grecian Urn,” the poet describes the transience of this present life and contrasts it with the relative permanence of the beautiful images on the urn: (he is first describing the images on the urn):

Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave

       Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;

               Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,

Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;

       She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,

               For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

    When old age shall this generation waste,

                Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe

Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,

         "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all

                Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

Even the beautiful Grecian Urn will some day cease to be. But in the mystery of the Incarnation, the temporal meets the eternal in a stable in Bethlehem. He who claimed that He was the way, the truth and the life, makes both beauty and truth come together in the Incarnation. And beauty itself will also live a charmed life, never dying, never cloying - because of the Resurrection.

The Resurrection is the logical conclusion of the Incarnation - the suffering Saviour, the Cross, the triumph over death itself, a new beginning for all who believe and a new creation, now groaning to be free.

Will we ever unravel the mystery of the Incarnation and the love of God in Christ Jesus? Perhaps not - for then we would have to fathom fully, the mind of God.

But we do not completely understand even temporal things - like boy and girl falling in love; or sunrise upon mountain tops; or the aurora; or indeed how our own bodies work. We can still experience all these mysteries, revel in them, wrap ourselves round with them and exalt them to the skies. And these lesser mysteries probably serve as hints that we will never fully understand why God decided to leave the realms of heaven and be born in our rather inhospitable planet.

In her poem, “Christ in The Universe,” the English poet Alice Meynell starts with the Incarnation (the human birth) - then moves on to the Cross (“the young Man crucified”) and then, the triumph for planet earth, of the Resurrection (“one forsaken grave”):

With this ambiguous earth
His dealings have been told us. These abide:
The signal to a maid, the human birth,
The lesson, and the young Man crucified.

No planet knows that this
Our wayside planet, carrying land and wave,
Love and life multiplied, and pain and bliss,
Bears, as chief treasure, one forsaken grave.

It is a great privilege for me, to wish all my readers and everyone else a Merry Christmas!