The Babe wrapped in swaddling cloths lying in a manger was to be the sign of the good news of a great joy.
At first it was the sign to some shepherds out in the field, humble people, people unnamed in any record we know of, but people who would obey in haste the word spoken to them and then would make known far and wide what had been said to them concerning the child, and that they themselves had seen Mary and Joseph and the Babe in the manger.
According to the account, the angels painted a word-picture of the Nativity scene to the shepherds; they went and saw the scene just as it had been told to them, and then they painted the word-picture themselves wherever they went.
As one result of their description we have that same scene depicted in our churches and communities, the manger scene, sometimes a very modest manger scene, sometimes a vary gaudy one, sometimes a very large one, sometimes lit up as in the gardens of the Boddens and the Crightons and many others, but always with the same basic elements and at the centre of it all, the Baby in swaddling cloths lying in the manger. This is the first family photo, so to speak, of the Holy Family.
The nativity scene is the great sign of Christmas, and shows us that we are not just celebrating holidays without content, or merely a break in the school year, or a winter festival, or a shopping spree, or a public holiday.
The churches and our communities are celebrating Christmas, a great and traditional flag that has been raised up from the early centuries of the Christian era declaring the birth at a particular time and place on the world’s stage of a Saviour, Christ the Lord.
It is our duty not only to maintain the Season of Christmas, but to maintain its central meaning. No matter if it incorporates into itself the other elements I listed and more, so long as the central significance of it is held out standing taller than the rest.
The Saviour, Christ the Lord, the Son of God, was born, a baby Boy, into our world, the world that God created, and the world that God sorrows over. This is the point of the joy and the special kindnesses to which we are called at this time.
Titus 3: 4-5 declares that when “the goodness and loving kindness of God our Saviour appeared, He saved us ... in virtue of His own mercy.” This refers to the coming among the world of men of Jesus Christ.
His coming among us was the manifestation or “appearance” of the goodness and loving kindness of God.
Whatever difficulties we have in life, and whatever our complaints might be from time to time, here, we are taught, we have an ineradicable witness to the goodness and loving kindness of God.
Yes, a hurricane may have destroyed our house, yes, a tsunami may have drowned our village, yes, an earthquake may have destroyed our livelihood, yes, inflation may have eroded our savings, and yes, the defects in our character and the faults that caused us to choose wrongly may have left us friendless. Nor were we ever promised an easy passage in life.
The Babe that was born in Bethlehem, who might be thought to have merited unmatchable privileges, died cast out and cast off by the men of His generation. He came to His own and His own received Him not.
“The goodness and the loving kindness of God” fully took part in our woes, in order that with Him we might fully surmount them. Moreover He saved us, as the Epistle to Titus says, “not because of deeds done by us ... but in virtue of His own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal in the Holy Spirit, which He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ.”
Julius Caesar said that he came, he saw and he conquered. But this King came, He suffered and He conquered so that we too might suffer and conquer. The news of great joy that was brought to the shepherds was news of a gracious blessing through which God would grant to His people the means of great victory.
This blessing was conferred upon us through the incarnation, the coming among us of the Son of God. For we claim, as those baptised into the Name of Christ, that like the shepherds at Bethlehem before the manger, we have found in Him the One that truly releases us.
In Isaiah 62:10, the prophetic word to us is “Build up the highway, clear it of stones, lift up an ensign over the peoples.” The Lord has a proclamation to the end of the earth. Today, Christmas is the ensign, the flag, that we have to fly over the peoples. It is not only a proud ensign but a gracious one, the most gracious that can be imagined. In virtue of His own mercy, the Lord has washed and regenerated His people.
Thanks be to God!
