The Christ Child and Other Babies with Possibilities

The world was looking for a king
To slay their foes and lift them high
Thou earnest a little baby thing
That made a woman cry.   
George MacDonald

Every baby-thing is brought into the world by the birth pangs and tears of a mother. With the coming of each new baby, the future of humanity is born. The pain and suffering borne by a little child speaks more eloquently than any other voice of how we have violated the future of humankind.

This week I listened as two congressman being interviewed after returning from the refugee camps in Ethiopia. As they were leaving the camps, the starving children sang to them through pinched and hungry little faces that even starvation could not prevent from smiling. These strong men told how they just broke down and wept, as they looked into the faces of these children smiling through their pain. Then and there, they decided the top priority of this Nation under God must be to respond to the painful cry for bread being lifted from the hungry children of the world.

This week, once more, I was called to minister to a family whose wife, mother, daughter, and sister had been taken in the most tragic circumstances. It is so difficult to find words of comfort and help when such a stark tragedy strikes. But there was one who brought comfort and smiles without saying a word. It was the little child of the family that flitted in and out among the crying ones—with her winsome smile, her complete obliviousness to what had happened. With a beautiful simplicity about her she was saying with a clarity that could not be mistaken: “Its O.K. to cry but look at me through your tears. All is not lost. Look, I am here, and I am the one who brings in the future.” I had shared deep moments with the ones so tra­gically taken. I too was all torn up inside. As I was riding home, I remembered the little child who had moved in and out among us that night. I felt strangely warmed. It was almost as if the Christ child had been with us.

Suddenly my mind flitted to words from the Prophet Isaiah spoken in a very dark time. Israel had lost her last great and good king. The Assyrian conquerors were knocking at the door, and there was every indication that these were the last days in the history of Israel. All at once the Prophet Isaiah hears a word from God that these were not really the last days. Though they were days of deep travail for Mother Israel, she was giving birth to the future. Her pain was her birth pangs. The people who were really troubled and depressed said to Isaiah, if this is the word of God, give us a sign that it is so. And the Prophet Isaiah answered:

Therefore, the Lord himself shall give you a sign.
Behold a young woman shall conceive and bear a son,
and shall call his name Immanuel (Meaning God with Us).

What did the prophet mean by this? Could he have meant this? “As long as God allows little children to be born into the world, God must still have a future for us.” And then, every once in a while, things seem to be just right, and a special child is born who seem especially invested with power to bring into being the dreams of the world’s best prophets.

Isaac was such a child. God called Abraham to leave the Land of Mesopotamia and go to a land that God would show him. God promised Abraham he would be the Father of a great nation, and in his seed all the nations of the earth would be blessed. (There was a ringer in that promise.)

Abraham and Sarai did not have a son. They were past the normal age to have a child. When Abraham broke the news to Sarai that three heavenly messengers came to his tent to tell him that Sarai would conceive in her old age and bear a son, she laughed and thought it was a joke. When Isaac was born, she laughed again, but it was a laughter filled with joy because God had given her a son. With the birth of that son the future was born. To memorialize her laughter for joy she called the name of her son Isaac which means laughter.

Moses was such a child. When the children of Israel were enslaved by a threatened pharaoh in Egypt’s land, the pharaoh decided he would wipe out the future of this threatening minority within his realm, by killing all the male children and their families. By killing their baby boys he knew he would destroy the future of this people. But there were mothers who were strong, and they would not allow their boys to be killed. One mother made a little seaworthy cradle and put her child in it. She hid him in the bulrushes in the Nile River. By an act God the pharaoh’s daughter came down to the Nile to bathe, at the very spot where the baby was hid. She heard the the cry of the child and took him home with her. By crafty design, she even hired the child’s mother as a nursemaid. When the appropriate time came, Moses was the one who called on God to lead the exodus of the people of God from slavery of Egypt into the promised land. Once again the future was brought in by a very special baby.

Samuel was such a child. In the lesson about Samuel in the Old Testament, we are told about the birth of Samuel. Once more, a child was born to a childless one. This child brought in a new future. When Samuel was born, there was the high priest of Israel who with his sons had gone sour. The future of the spiritual leadership of Israel had gone sour. Hannah had the stigma of being childless. In her day, a childless woman was thought to have let her husband down, by not producing a child to carry the lineage. She also let down the nation by not producing a citizen to carry on the future of the nation. It was a time when a little was known of life after death. To carry on in the future of the nation, a person was counted on through the progeny of the children. Children were the future.

When Samuel was born, he gave meaning to Hannah as a woman in Israel. He gave meaning to Hannah’s husband Elkanah and to Israel. Samuel was also a special child who brought in a new day for the priesthood. Hannah was so thankful to God that she gave her son to be a temple boy and to train for the priesthood. A priest and prophet, Samuel brought in a new day for Israel. He brought in a priesthood that truly stood between God and the people as a prophet, pastor and spokesman for God.

This brings us to a beautiful segment of the Christmas story that is the focus of our reading today. The young woman Mary, while betrothed to Joseph, was visited by a heavenly messenger who told her she would be the mother of a very special child, who would be implanted into her womb by God himself. With her pregnancy over, she was in a stable in a strange town called Bethlehem, where her baby had been born. On the night of his birth, angels proclaimed the good news by spoken word and in song to the shepherds on the Judean hills. They came exultantly to the stable to see this baby who had been announced by angels. They went away exultantly to tell the whole town about it.       Mary was alone with her baby. As she looked into his big brown eyes, she thought of all of the events of the past year and of all the miracle things that had happened to bring this baby into being. Then the Gospel writer Luke says: “And Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart.”

I like the way the today’s English Version translates these words: “Mary remembered all these things and thought deeply about them.”

Have wondered what thoughts went through her mind as she remembered all the things that had happened? Do you suppose she said this? “I can hardly believe what has happened. Today I hold the long-looked for Messiah who will save Israel and bring a new future.” The unbelievable had happened. She was the one given the privilege of bringing the Messiah into the world. And in her arms, she held the future of the world.

Yesterday my December Psychology Today magazine came. I was taken aback when I saw this picture of a very beautiful baby on the cover and over its head it had this caption: “Whose baby am I?”

Under the caption is this teasing sentence: “High-tech conception: multiple parents, multiple problems.” The title of the lead article on this subject is: “Yours, Mine and Theirs.” Under the title is this captions “With pioneering techniques.”

In our time, science has brought about the conception of new babies—and delivered new emotional dilemmas for all involved. With invitro fertilization, artificial Insemination, embryo transfers, and surrogate motherhood, science opened a whole new bag of ethical, psychological, and legal questions that has caused turmoil in the world of law, ethics, and religion. It has caused upheaval in the lives of mothers and fathers of children born in these new ways. Strangely, we have also produced many virgin births, with the only difference being that God implanted the fertile seed in Mary and the gynecologist is now doing the implanting of a fertile egg or an embryo.

This new science reminds us that though these babies have something special about them, there is a real sense in which every child born into the world, by any means, is a child that brings in a new future. Because of Jesus the Christ Child, who blazed the new way, every child born into the world today is a potential Christ-child that has a potential to bring the good news of God by word and deed. This speaks to us as we present our children for baptism when the hand of empowerment and the water of new life is placed upon their head. We say to all, today we are entrusted with a new life—a potential Christ Child that brings in the future. These children are not only God’s special gifts to the parents but to all of us within the church

It also says something else. Each one of us has a resident within us with the possibility of bringing in a new future for our world. Perhaps until now, we have not fulfilled our potential in this regard. But there is a gift—the calling that is still within us. More than that, there is a possibility for renewal and rebirth within all of us. Our lives can be renewed, and we can still fulfil our potential.

Perhaps God is saying to us what he said to Nicodemus, so long ago: “Nicodemus you have the possibility of being born anew—being born again.” It will be just like entering, once again, your mother’s womb and being born all over again as a new person. Regardless of how old you are, you still have the potential of being born of God, of being born from above. That, I believe, is what the Christmas story is all about.

Today we are sitting around a table that has special symbols on it. They are symbols of the incarnation—of the enfleshment of God in the world. As we eat the bread and drink the blood of the grape, we are symbolizing the great reality that the eternal Christ has entered our life. Our heart is in reality the manger—and the Christ is being born in us today. As we partake, let us be quiet and feel his presence within us. May we not turn him away from our door as the innkeeper did so long ago. But may we pray simply:

0 come to my heart Lord Jesus.
There is room in my heart for you.