The Holidays

There are three sides to every coin.  Heads, tails and the edge.  I know that we don't think of the edge as a side of the coin, but it's there, and believe me, it's important, because a coin isn't a two dimensional figure.  It's 3-D, which means that it has to have depth.  And the depth is the edge of the coin, and part of what the edge of the coin does is that it adds an additional identifiable factor to the coin.  That is, a ten cent piece isn't just the smallest coin, which it is, it isn't just composed of its constituent materials which it is, but it also has key ridges on its edge that are helpful for not only identifying the coin in your pocket, but also make it so that you can't shave the coin down to keep a bunch of its silver.
Why oh why am I, an amateur numismatist, talking about coin edges? Because the additional layer, the additional depth isn't often thought of, but it's there, and you need it to have a complete, spendable coin. 
Now, at this time of year, we have a situation in which we have the birth of the baby Jesus in the manger, which is fantastic, and is a story that the world knows pretty well.  We understand births, we understand babies, we understand families, which is part of the reason that the world, religious or not, feels all kind of warm and fuzzy when thinking about the baby Jesus in Bethlehem.  Babies are designed by our Lord to be incredibly cute, for pretty obvious reasons, because we are keen to protect them, even though they need near constant effort, care and supervision.  If they looked ugly, that might be a bit of a harder sell . But think about babies that need care. 

Look at this baby warthog!  It's insane!  How could this animal be so incredibly cute, given that the adults are so ugly?  It's the same thing with naked mole rats

That's not that ugly, especially considering the finished product. Point being, babies are by and large cute, which is why Ellen's baby ratings are completely pointless, as every single infant just gets over 10/10.  100% is the base score, so the entire thing is absolutely nuts.  Babies are cute, and have to be cute to survive.  Even if you harbor hate in your hearts, it's likely that infants of your enemies will melt your precious heart. 

So, we have a baby in a manger, a baby in a stable in Bethlehem, and he was likely cute, because most babies are.  And the world, when it looks at this baby in the manger, it sees an infant, it sees a child, it sees something it understands. And because the world's only interaction with Jesus Christ is at his birth and at his death, beginning and end, Christmas and Easter, because the world only ever understands Jesus in those spheres, it misses out on the bigger issue that comes up in the scriptures, which is that Jesus of Nazareth isn't just a baby, he is God in human form.  And this is bigger than just the birth of a cute kid.

For the remainder of this blog ramble, I'm going to be discussing GK Chesterton's thoughts on babies, which are important if you want to understand the baby in the manger, and the divine working right under the surface.

The essential rectitude of our view of children lies in the fact that we feel them and their ways to be supernatural while, for some mysterious reason, we do not feel oursleves or our own ways to be supernatural. The very smallness of children makes it possible to regard them as marvels; we seem to be dealing with a new race, only to been through a microscope. I doubt if anyone of any tenderness or imagination can see the hand of a child and not be a little frightened of it. It is awful to think of the essential human energy moving so tiny a thing; it is like imagining that human nature could live in the wing of a butterfly or the leaf of a tree. When we look upon lives so human and yet so small… we feel the same kind of obligation to these creatures that [God] might feel…

This is a quote from Mr. Chesterton, and it's a fascinating thing to think about, to contemplate.  Think about your reaction to babies, to small infants, and think about how you relate to them.  They are frightening, you know.  They are frightening, they are terrifying because, as he says, the essential human energy moves and operates such a tiny thing.  You know how you feel about newborns, about their tiny tiny fingernails, their little tiny eyelids, their tiny knees, their soft feet, all those things are moved and operated by the, as he calls them, the essential human energy.

Well, that is a powerful drawing card for the essential, key moment in the Christian faith to the outside world, a world that likes babies because they're cute, but it's bigger in the Christian story.  For the Christmas story begins with the birth of the baby in the manger in Bethlehem, but it carries on to the next day, Christmas day, and the discussion of the pre-incarnate word of God, the word of God that not only predates Christmas day, but predates everything else.  Let's indulge ourselves by going down memory lane, and looking at the very beginning of the Bible.

In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth,

the earth was a formless void, and darkness covered the face of the deep,

while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.  And God said 

'Let there be light' and there was light. And God saw that the light was good.

As Christian people, it should be a matter of some interest that right there in the beginning of everything, page one of the Bible, back as far as things possibly go, before anything was made, we have the Trinity.  God, his Word and his Spirit.  The Holy Trinity, and that Word, the Word that makes everything, the Word that speaks everything into being, that Word of God that was responsible for everything, and as the New Testament says, through him all things were made, that is who Jesus is.  

The beginning of the Gospel of John tells us that Jesus was with God from the beginning, was the essential creative force behind all that we see around us.  He set and underpinned all the rules, all the mechanisms through which the world functions, and that was his role and his responsibility.  Through him were all things made, and without him nothing was made that has been made.  Now that we've gotten that out of the way, now we can think about Christmas day a little bit differently.  For in Christmas day, we have something going on that's bigger than you'd think.  Oh, sure, it's straightforward enough to consider the possibility that there was a baby born in a stable somewhere and he ended up being special, that's the feel good story of the year.  But the story is bigger and more important than that, because that baby born in a stable isn't just a baby, he's God.  And just like that Chesterton quote above, if we're a bit jarred by imagining the essential humanity moving tiny fingers, well imagine the essential creative force of the entire universe moving those same tiny fingers.  Imagine the creative force that made gravity being held down by it for the first time.  Imagine the creative force that made oxygen breathing it for the first time in hungry gulps.  Imagine the creative force that made the human digestive system being all of a sudden desperately hungry, and unable to do anything to satisfy that hunger.  Imagine the mind behind all of creation being brought low, being brought so terribly low, as to have to cry out for help to accomplish absolutely anything.

Christmas is a very humbling time if you consider who Jesus actually is, the word made flesh.  Not just a nice guy, not just a good or capable leader, not just a man who works hard and does his best, but the creative force behind everything that has been made, that's him.  If you understand things this way, then you'll understand Christmas a lot better, and why it's a big deal.