Human Vulnerability
It's all so odd, when you come right down to it. We're getting ready to celebrate the birth of a baby, a birth that happened two millennia ago in a backwater village in Palestine. The more cynical among us might see it as nothing more than a sentimental story that has persisted through the ages. Yet somehow we are drawn to look beyond the sentimentality, even to see through the unlikelihood of the story to the truth of it all.
In this baby, born in a stable of a poor mother and father we are invited to see God becoming king. This baby, born as God among us, came to set the world right, to inaugurate a new age and a new kingdom. This baby is not a storybook myth, but was a real life baby. Born with a body like yours and mine, he would set out to redeem a fallen world and to make things right again. This baby, placed to sleep in a crude wooden feed trough would one day be nailed to the crude wood of a cross, there crucified for us and for our salvation.
In this baby, born in a stable of a poor mother and father we are invited to see God becoming king. This baby, born as God among us, came to set the world right, to inaugurate a new age and a new kingdom. This baby is not a storybook myth, but was a real life baby. Born with a body like yours and mine, he would set out to redeem a fallen world and to make things right again. This baby, placed to sleep in a crude wooden feed trough would one day be nailed to the crude wood of a cross, there crucified for us and for our salvation.
The birth that we celebrate at Christmas was merely the opening chapter in a lifetime of work and teaching, all inaugurating a new kingdom and all pointing to the climactic event when he ascended the throne of the cross to complete the work of this new kingdom. The manger is never very far from the cross.
Christmas begins the story of God taking on our vulnerability, our pain, our sorrows, our joys, and our celebrations. The Word becoming flesh is God’s commitment to the inherent vulnerability of humanity. If there’s one thing we have learned in this time of pandemic, it’s our inherent vulnerability. A virus that we can’t even see has brought us to our knees and cost the lives of hundreds of thousands around the world. I learned this past week of another colleague/friend who died from Covid-19. Peter was just 3 years older than me, and as far as I knew a fit and healthy man. That makes four now.
God entered into that vulnerability, making a commitment to the entirety of what it means to be human. The death of the Son of God is one location of that commitment. But so is the womb of Mary, the stable, and the manger. This is how God chose to act. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. God with us brings us a life that is real life and a kingdom that is love and peace and freedom.
God is coming in human flesh, born of a poor couple traveling far from home, God who always has been and still is at work in the world. The invitation at the heart of the Christmas celebration is to see the one whom John calls the Light of the World, to believe in the Light, and to trust that the Light is indeed making all things new.
Pr. Jim Honig, M. Div., S.T.M.
Shepherd of the Bay Lutheran Church, Ellison Bay, Wisconsin
Christmas begins the story of God taking on our vulnerability, our pain, our sorrows, our joys, and our celebrations. The Word becoming flesh is God’s commitment to the inherent vulnerability of humanity. If there’s one thing we have learned in this time of pandemic, it’s our inherent vulnerability. A virus that we can’t even see has brought us to our knees and cost the lives of hundreds of thousands around the world. I learned this past week of another colleague/friend who died from Covid-19. Peter was just 3 years older than me, and as far as I knew a fit and healthy man. That makes four now.
God entered into that vulnerability, making a commitment to the entirety of what it means to be human. The death of the Son of God is one location of that commitment. But so is the womb of Mary, the stable, and the manger. This is how God chose to act. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. God with us brings us a life that is real life and a kingdom that is love and peace and freedom.
God is coming in human flesh, born of a poor couple traveling far from home, God who always has been and still is at work in the world. The invitation at the heart of the Christmas celebration is to see the one whom John calls the Light of the World, to believe in the Light, and to trust that the Light is indeed making all things new.
Pr. Jim Honig, M. Div., S.T.M.
Shepherd of the Bay Lutheran Church, Ellison Bay, Wisconsin
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