Αὐτὸς γὰρ ἐνηνθρώπησεν, ἵνα ἡμεῖς θεοποιηθῶμεν·
Athanasius De Incarnatione
Dei Verbi 54.3
‘He became human so that we might become
divine’
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may well surprise you to know that I have, on occasion, had recourse to the
services of a turf accountant, I perhaps ought to explain the situation a
little further. At the time I happened to have a friend whose Uncle was a
world-famous Horse-Racing Trainer; he would, from time to time, mention a horse
and a race and a date to me and I would pop down to the betting shop and put a
few pounds on the horse to win, which it invariably did. It was, though without
my parents’ knowledge or approval, a way of increasing my pocket money, which
was welcome. Yet, due to the quality of the knowledge and information I had
received, I was, unlike the rest of the people in the betting shop, not really
taking much of a risk.
Thankfully, God isn’t like this. The
mystery of the Incarnation, of the Word made Flesh, which we celebrate tonight,
tells us above else that God takes risks. In sending the Angel Gabriel to a
young unmarried Jewish girl to tell her that she is going to bear God as a
human baby, God is taking a risk. Mary could have said ‘No’ instead of which
she says ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it unto me according to thy
word.’ It is this ‘yes’ which undoes the ‘No’ of Adam and Eve to God; but there
was no guarantee that God’s offer would be taken up. Mary risked being shunned
by her fiancé and by society in general: as a woman bearing a child ‘conceived out
of wedlock’. The Incarnation was a source of shame: it was a scandal which put Mary,
her unborn child and the Holy Family beyond the pale, outside the conventions
of polite society, it broke the rules. It was scandalous, risky, and beyond our
expectation or understanding, but it worked.
Likewise, the place where the King of all
the Nations was born was not a palace, nor even a private house – people could
not or would not give them a place for Mary to give birth to her son. Instead, in a stable, surrounded by animals,
with no bed other than a feeding trough filled with straw, our salvation was
wrought – though hardly the site one would expect. The first people to whom the
birth was announced were shepherds – people on the margins of society, ritually
unclean – unable to worship in the Temple, beyond the pale. Yet, as the prophets
had envisaged God as the shepherd of His people Israel, caring for them and
guarding them, so these simple shepherds, filled with simple faith, obeying the
message of the angel, went, as they were – tired and dirty to worship the
Messiah, the Saviour of the world. They like Mary said ‘Yes’ to God – they came
as they were and they worshipped. The kingdom of God, as instituted by the
birth of Jesus Christ, welcomes the outcast, the sinner – it defies our human
expectation, it turns our world around.
People had expected a Messiah from the
family of David – it had been foretold by the prophets, Herod was afraid at the
thought of being deposed, so afraid in fact that he arranged a mass murder in
Bethlehem to try to safeguard his position. The zealous expected a great
warrior leader to drive the Romans and Greeks out of Israel. But what God gives
his world is something completely different – a weak, tender and vulnerable
infant, who needs the love, care, and protection of a human family, to show us
what love, simple faith and a trust in the intrinsic goodness of humanity can
be. Rather than bringing war, the King of Peace was born, in Bethlehem, the
House of Bread, a King who continues to feed us with his life-giving bread –
his own Body and Blood, a scandal and yet a great gift, upon which we will feed
this Christmas night.
‘And the Word was made flesh and dwelt
among us’ God, the Creator of the Universe, becomes a human being, so that
we, all of us, might become divine – a profoundly strange and surprising turn
of events. But just as the people of Israel had put a tent around the Ark of
the Covenant and carried it around until the building of the Temple in Jerusalem,
so now God would be with his pilgrim people on earth – sharing all of human
life, from birth to death, so that we might, through him, share the Divine Life
of Love, that of God the Holy Trinity: a relational God who invites humanity to
share that relationship, who offers it freely, and to all. The sheer exuberance
of such an offer, is almost profligate: it is generous in a way which defies our
human expectation and our human understanding. Yet the person of Christ is a
gift to the world, a gift which cuts through all our human conventions; a
person who can be born, live and die and rise again and reign in a way which is
scandalous – so scandalous in fact that people then and now prefer to deny the
truth of God and cling to a neater human picture. Better to deny His divinity
or His humanity than accept a mysterious reality.
All that God asks of us is that like Our Lady
and the Shepherds, we say ‘Yes’ to him, that we accept the mystery, and let the
birth of this little child change our lives and our world. For to be a Christian
is to accept the risk and invitation of a vulnerable God, and to live out our
lives in the light of this relationship, to live our lives in the knowledge of
the reality and truth of the love of God. We need to let the light of the world
shine through us, that the world may believe. We need to bear witness to Jesus,
the Way, the Truth and the Life. In the face of a world wearied by cynicism,
which finds it easy to mock, we need to let our hearts, our homes and our lives
be filled with the love which Jesus came to share. Amen
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