My Birthday is Today, Its Christmas Eve

Today is the sixty-third anniversary of my birth. My mother tells me that she first thought it great that I was born on Christmas Eve. In a time when mothers were often kept for a much longer period, she was allowed to go home sooner because of the Christmas season. My mother's birth was on the 30th, my sister's January 10th. My mother and father was married on the 23rd - six years before I was born. My grandparent's anniversary was also on the 24th (or thereabouts). My sister's first marriage was on the 21st of December. Her oldest child, Jeff, died at age twenty five, on my mother's birthday. Terri and I lost our first child, Michelle, at her birth, on the 31st of December 1974.

Our Savior's birth is customarily and traditionally celebrated by most Western Christians on the 25th of December. It was, according to the Scriptures, a joyous day. It was a day worthy of Angelic praise. The shepherds are given an announcement from Heaven saying that a Savior is born that night. They are told the event was one of great joy.They initially experienced great fear. While they had the news, they did not yet have the full meaning of that Good News. They traveled to where the baby lay, on the night of his birth. They are moved by wonderment. They inform Mary and Joseph about the Angels and their message. They begin to spread the news to anyone who would listen to them. We are told, by inference, that Mary grows somber and contemplative.  She tried to hold this revelation in her heart, but it is too big for any human heart of capture or the human mind to fully comprehend.

I wonder if Mary and Joseph, with all the shepherds and all the residence of Bethlehem retold this story throughout their lives or, with the passage of time, it all seemed dreamlike.

Thoughts such as these most often occupy my mind on the day of my birth. After all, I have a message of Christmas to present tonight at our traditional service of worship. How strange it would be for me to stand in the pulpit and say, "I bring to you this night, a message of great joy. To you, sixty-three years ago, was born the man who stands before you." What hope do I bring? What salvation to I secure for anyone? So on a day when I might, and do, entertain celebratory thoughts concerning my temporal  existence on this mortal coil, and how brief it seems to me, breaking through this self absorptive narcissism is the thoughts of another's birth. A birth, unlike mind, that bears an eternal weight of glory. (Though I am promised to one day share some semblance of that glory.)

In my own insignificant biography, the last week of the year is occupied by memories of pain and somber joy - of life, and death, of hopes realized and hopes snatched away. As He is throughout the entire year, so He is on this day - a bright hope in the midst of lesser hope and even real sorrow. Hope and sorrow, are at the core our Lord's life as well.

On this night, my Savior is born - who is the Christ, the Son of the Ever Living God. As the shepherds became and Mary remained, we too can be filled with "the wonder of His love."

Merry Christmas, my friends.

Did the Son of God Weep as a Baby?

All babies cry. If one should not cry, it would be a reason of great concern. A pediatrician would be consulted. “Why doesn’t my child cry?” What might be the cause of this? My cursory research indicates some babies just don’t cry as much as others. Not crying is within the outer range of a normal state of health. Most babies show emotions even if they don’t cry. They may stir or whimper when hungry or cold. Even those children who do not cry or seldom cry as infants will learn to weep or cry out as they mature.

My little granddaughter, Bella, is a bit more than a year and half old. The other day we were playing some sort of game where we acted out parts. I was a growling lion and played my part a little too convincingly and scared her. Her face began to clinch up around her mouth, I saw that her upper lip quivered. My heart sank as a saw tears well up in her eyes, then she let looses with a full cry. I tried to offer her comfort but, I remained, the roaring lion, so she wanted nothing from me except to go away.

The classic Christmas carol, “Away in the Manger,” described a tranquil Christ child. This sleeping infant was He fully God and fully human, and his humanity slept. But did his Divinity also sleep? This question asks too much of a childrens’ lullaby. That it was not written by Martin Luther is a firmly established conclusion among those who study the history of hymns. It was originally a two stanza son. The third verse was added decades latter.

Away in a manger, no crib for a bed,
The little Lord Jesus laid down His sweet head.
The stars in the sky looked down where He lay,
The little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay.

The cattle are lowing, the baby awakes,
But little Lord Jesus no crying He makes.
I love Thee, Lord Jesus, look down from the sky
And stay by my cradle till morning is nigh.

Be near me, Lord Jesus, I ask Thee to stay
Close by me forever, and love me, I pray.
Bless all the dear children in thy tender care,
And fit us for heaven, to live with Thee there.

The first stanza merely sets the scene. He is called “Lord” even as a baby. He is the child king.  One can plainly see how this song can be used to recount the Birth story found in Luke’s Gospel. He is a poor baby who does not even have a proper crib for a bed. Yet, even in these lowly settings he sleeps with the peace of a holy child.

The second stanza is a story of a baby that is awakened by the sound of cattle lowing. Most babies would cry when their full sleep is interrupted. This child, we learn, is special and keeps a calm demeanor. A theological quandary is subtly present here. Does the infant Jesus know all things as God the Son knows all things? Can he do all things as God can do all things? The other side of this question concerns God the Son. Does he who is timeless become bound to the restraints of time? In Philosophical terms, does the Infinite become finite? Is the God/Man Jesus a weak and lowly child – who must have his bodily needs met by his parents? Is the infant Jesus instinctually fearful of falling? Does he cry when hungry or when suddenly awakened by cattle? Was it his Divinity that kept him serene in the verse where it is said he does not cry? I believe the man Jesus grows in his awareness of his Divinity. I don’t then conclude that God the Son grows in his awareness of His humanity – he does become as we are in every way. That means he knows our fears and feels our helplessness as an infant dependent on others for providing food and affection.

A good balance to the theology of Away in the Manger is Charles Wesley’s hymn “Gentle Jesus, Meek and Mild.”

Lamb of God, I look to Thee;
Thou shalt my Example be;
Thou art gentle, meek, and mild;
Thou wast once a little child.

Between these two songs is the song Gentle Mary, Laid Her Child.

Gentle Mary laid her Child lowly in a manger;
He is still the undefiled, but no more a stranger:
Son of God, of humble birth, beautiful the story;
Praise His Name in all the earth, hail the King of glory!

The best poetry can say big things in few words. The hymn, “Infant Holy, Infant Lowly” captures best for me the wondrous message of the incarnation of God. In the full witness of such hymns I can sing my faith in the words found in the third stanza of “Away in a Manger.” I pray, “Be near me, Lord Jesus.”

My Guilty Pleasure Christmas Hymn

In the song "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" what is the referent to "it"? According to the writer of the hymn, that which came upon a midnight clear was a song; a song sung by the angles. So we sing a song about a song.

I am a little bit dismayed over its shallow theology. My first complaint is that it is not really a song about Jesus - it is a song about a future "age of gold." Second, it is wrong when it speaks of angles singing. The word in Luke 2:13-14 is "saying" not "singing." One might draw the conclusion that the angles are singing because of the word "praising" but the words spoken in unison by the angles was more like a liturgical recitation than a hymn. 

The third complaint is its fuzzy liberal theology. The writer, Edmund Sears, who penned a five stanza poem, the title of which escapes me, served as a Unitarian Minister. He writes it in 1849. The Civil War is looming and the conflict with Mexico the annexation of Texas had just been diplomatically resolved. Slavery was an issue in each of these conflicts.

Edmund Sears'  originally published edition includes a third stanza that nearly all hymnals omit. This stanza reminds me of Longfellow's haunting Christmas song, "I Heard the Bells of Christmas Day." "Though sin be strong and mocks the song, of peace on earth, good will to men." Longfellow wrote his hymn (really a poem, later made into a hymn) in midst of the Civil War. Against his father's wishes, his oldest son became an office in the Union Army. It is also follows the untimely death of his wife when their home burns to the ground. Longfellow and Sears, both Unitarians, bring a refreshing realism to the incarnation. It is ironic that these men might not have regarded sin as a thing requiring the atoning act of a sinless Savior but they do understand the depths sin have take on this "weary world."

This hymn comes at a time when Sears was recovering from a bout of depression. He was considered by his Unitarian peers to be an "evangelical" Unitarian because Sears he describes our personal relationship with God is like the personal relationship between the Father and the Son. As he aged his theology became more and more in line with Transcendentalism. He affirmed the ways to God found in all religions and became more and more critical of orthodox Christianity. His politics was always way left of centered. Note a satirical poem he writes during the Mexican / American War. You will remember that this occurs under the Polk administration.

And does he make men shoot and kill? 
  Then let some pious folk, 
A gallows build at Washington, 
  And hang up Mr. Polk!

Here is Sears third stanza to his hymn, "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear," the one most publishers leave out.

Yet with the woes of sin and strife,
The world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel-strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not
The love-song which they bring;
O hush the noise, ye men of strife,
And hear the angels sing. 

While I love his poetry, his gentle heart, his passion for justice and even his realism, Sears and Longfellow miss the Savior who comes to redeem sinners - even those sinners trapped in a world gone mad with war.