Who Would Send a Baby - A Christmas Reflection

WHO WOULD SEND A BABY?

A Christmas Reflection

December 25, 2016 (Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord)
Midnight Mass: Isaiah 9:1-5; Psalm 96:1-2, 2-3, 11-12, 13; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:1-14
Mass at Dawn: Isaiah 62:11-12; Psalm 97:1, 6, 11-12; Titus 3”4-7; Luke 2:15-20
Mass during the Day: Isaiah 52:7-19; Psalm 98:1, 2-3, 3-4, 5-6; Hebrews 1:1-6; John 1:1-18

I’m writing these reflections from Steyl, Holland, the founding house of my religious congregation, the Society of the Divine Word. This evening I attended a concert given by two choirs, a women’s choir from nearby Tegelen, and a men’s choir from this little village of Steyl. It was wonderful, of course, with the main hall of this old building decked out with Christmas decorations, and the wonderful music—sung in English, German, Dutch, French, and Latin—that filled it. I thought that it was a wonderful way to prepare myself for Christmas.

One of the songs that the men’s choir sang was one I had never heard before. It was in English, by a songwriter by the name of M. K. Beall, and it was entitled “Who Would Send a Baby?” It was quite a beautiful song, and the question has kept haunting me, for I think in the answer to it we can find the meaning of Christmas.

Who would send a baby? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to send a handsome, powerful, charismatic king, one who would be able to galvanize Israel so that it could take back its culture and heritage and freedom from it’s Roman oppressors—to “make Israel great again”? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to send a skilled army commander, or a shrewd politician, or a skilled and crafty political negotiator? These kind of heroes would have certainly fit the profile of the Messiah that Israel had developed over the years.

So who would send a baby? Only a God who loved Israel enough—and all peoples and all of creation—to really save them. God’s sending a baby is more that God’s just becoming one of us—human beings, a part of creation. It’s more than the fact that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” God’s sending a baby is a powerful sign of HOW God becomes flesh—through the vulnerability, the weakness, the beauty, the attractiveness of a baby. It is a sign, in the words of a favorite theologian of mine, John Oman, that “God does not force his mystery upon us.” Another favorite theologian, Ilia Delio, says it beautifully as well: she speaks of God as “the beggar of love who waits at [every creature’s] door without daring to force it open.” What better way for God to show the divine nature than by sending us a baby. The Anglican theologian Mark Oakley speaks of Jesus as “God’s body language.” What better way for God to express Godself than in the soft, needy, loveable body of a baby. This is what the Letter to Titus means in the second reading of the Mass in the morning: this is the “the kindness and generous love of God” that has appeared—in a baby!

It’s this gentle, vulnerable, attractive, kind and generous love that gives us the perspective for reading the scriptures in each of today’s sets of readings. The reading from Isaiah at midnight sounds quite violent at first—people rejoicing “when dividing spoils,” boots tramping in battle, cloaks rolled in blood—and the yet point of it all is that these things will be “burned as fuel for flames.” A baby is born—“a child is born to us, a son us given us,” and through him the world will be “forever peaceful.” The second reading at midnight tells us of the “appearance of the glory of our great God and savior Jesus Christ,” who saves us by giving himself for us. His sign is, as the angels told the shepherds, is “an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.” This was the infant born of parents away from home, who could find no room in any of Bethlehem’s inns. This is how, in the words of the first reading at the Mass at dawn, our savior comes.

“How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of one who brings glad tidings, announcing grace, bearing good news, announcing salvation, and saying to Zion, ‘Your God is King.’” King indeed! And yet in a way that does not force us to love or obey or act. John is right in the gospel for the Mass of the day. No one has ever seen God—until now! But this is a God that might be hard to recognize since this God is so weak, so dear, so fragile. Only the real God would send a baby. But that baby is God’s “only son”… “who is at the Father’s side.” That baby has revealed who God really is. “O Magnum Mysterium,” the liturgy says: “What a great mystery!”