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The events and details that surround Jesus’ birth are loaded with contradictions and paradoxes. A virgin bears a son, and remains a virgin. Sages traverse half a continent to pay homage … to a baby. On the flipside, poor shepherds are invited to visit where no mortal would be allowed to enter: the dwelling of the Most High God — which turns out to be a smelly cave.
The Church’s liturgy reflects this so richly at Christmas:
Unto us this day is born a little Child, and His name shall be called the Mighty God…
How great is this mystery, how wonderful is the teaching of the faith! Beasts saw the new-born Lord lying in a manger.
Like today’s Gospel, and like the preparation throughout the season of Advent, through the marvels and contradictions the Church, in the end, draws our attention to the Child in the manger. And so the paradoxes turn out to be only contradictory when they are viewed from this side of heaven: in Jesus, the Eternal Word of God made flesh, it all makes sense. That we find the events of Christ’s coming perplexing speaks something about us, and the fallen ways of this world we are so used to. The Introit reminded us: *“the nations rage, and the people utter folly”.*
Jesus’ coming contradicts the idea that God would be distant or uncaring or unpredictable. He shares our human weakness, only to fill it with his undying light. What he touches, he redeems.
Jesus’ coming contradicts the tit-for-tat order of this world, where everything seems like a trade-off, a bartering with death and sin. But with Him a new Kingdom is here, with a new Lawgiver. Our new law, a revelation of the deepest thought of the heart of God, is the Gospel. True love, goodness, holiness, beauty, are all possible. Mary’s Perpetual Virginity shows this: He who comes to heal our nature will do no harm in it. Our union to Christ will incur no loss.
Jesus’ coming contradicts our notions of power, of strength, of importance: the one who rules forever comes to us not in might to lord over us, but in strength and humility, to conquer in us whatever damages us, leaving true freedom in us intact.
Jesus’ coming contradicts, and by his coming, overturns the fallen order of the world, by giving us Himself. Jesus Himself is the Truth, the Way, and the Life. So what has been in the heart of the Holy Trinity since the dawn of time is shown in the Christ-Child: that God is good, and loves mankind, and wishes to be near us, as our salvation, healing, our true freedom.
He comes to us at his birth the same way he comes to us today at the Altar, *“that, as we recognize in him God made visible, we may be caught up through him in love of things invisible.”* He comes to overturn our old nature that so cleaves to the dust of this earth, so as to make us truly love Him who is infinitely good, beautiful, and true.
The grace of God our Saviour has appeared to all men, instructing us, in order that, rejecting ungodliness and worldly lusts, we may live temperately and justly and piously in this world; looking for the blessed hope and glorious coming of our great God and Saviour.
In the midst of the contradictions and perplexities of this year this evening we stop at the manger to kneel before the Christ Child, our Wisdom, our Lawgiver, our Ensign, our Freedom, our Light, our King, and our Hope; so that in paying Him homage we may be truly set free. To Him be all glory with the Father and the Holy Spirit, forever and ever. Amen.