It’s a miracle! It is, isn’t it? That helpless infant lying in the manger is God come to earth, God born as one of us, Love made flesh. The tiny squalling child, entirely dependent upon his mother, is the Creator of all things, the Alpha and the Omega, the Lord of all, yet somehow one of us, flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone?
It’s a miracle, but I’m not quite sure what to do with it.
I read somewhere that miracles are never answers to our questions; they are, at best, questions. Miracles are questions that set us seeking answers, in much the same way that the miraculous star sends the magi, the wise ones, far off into foreign lands in search of an answer. What does this mean? We must search for an answer.
The birth of the Christ child is a question: a “ Why?”; a “What is the point?”, a “What is the purpose?” inbreaking of the Divine into our human existence. And seeking the answer is our life work.
A week or so ago, I stumbled quite by chance upon a movie on TV. It was called “The girl in the café”. And I found the movie to be a kind of miracle; it was a question popped unsuspectingly into my life when I least expected it. (And isn’t that also one of the main criteria for miracles? We don’t expect them.)
The movie’s premise is quite an intriguing one: an aging career civil servant falls for a young girl he meets in a café. And he then takes her with him on his next trip, which just happens to be advising the British Chancellor of the Exchequer at the 2005 G8 Summit.
I don’t know how good your memories are, but the 2005 G8 Summit had on its agenda the Millennium Goals, the bold declaration made at the turn of the century to Make Poverty History. Now, the young woman turns out to be a bit of a problem for the civil servant because she keeps asking questions and she won’t stop asking questions, even when she’s in the presence of the Chancellor or the Prime Minister or even the heads of the other nations at the summit.
She asks, Why do 30,000 children die every day from preventable diseases?
Why are the major powers of this world spending obscene amounts of money each day on armaments and warfare when children are dying?
Why isn’t anyone doing anything when, for the first time in human history, we actually have the resources to halt poverty, to eradicate diseases like AIDS and cholera, and to provide education for all?
She even interrupts the Prime Minister’s speech at a special dinner, and this is what she says:
I don't know how much the rest of you … know about what's going on but my friend … tells me that while we are eating a hundred million children are nearly starving. There's just millions of kids who'd kill for the amount of food that fat old me left on the side of my plate, children who are then so weak they'll die if a mosquito bites them. And so they do die. One every three seconds.
[snaps fingers]
There they go.
[pauses, snap fingers again]
And another one. Anyone who has kids knows that every mother and father in Africa must love their children as much as they do, and to watch your kids die, to watch them die and then to die yourself in trying to protect them, that's not right. And tomorrow eight of the men sitting 'round this table actually have the ability to sort this out by making a few great decisions. And if they don't, some day someone else will. And they'll look back on us lot and say - people were actually dying in their millions unnecessarily, in front of you, on your TV screens. What were you thinking? You knew what to do to stop it happening and you didn't do those things. Shame on you. So that's what you have to do tomorrow. Be great instead of being ashamed. It can't be impossible. It must be possible.
The girl from the café keeps asking, “Why?”
“The girl from the café” is a miracle movie because it asks us questions just when we least expect it.
And the birth of the Christ child is a miracle for the same sort of reasons.
Why? Why does God bother entering into human existence? Why does the Almighty put on human flesh, identify with us? What is the purpose? What is the point?
And we cannot celebrate Christmas, truly celebrate Christ-mas, unless we are looking for answers, unless we are searching the Scriptures trying to work out why we have to have an incarnate God, why we have to have a baby for a Saviour, why can’t things just go along as they always have gone along without God having to get in the middle of it all. Why?
It’s a miracle all right – but it isn’t comfortable; it isn’t just a sweet story of a young mum and a beautiful infant and angels and wise men – always three, always men – and simple shepherds with woolly lambs.
It’s a miracle! The helpless infant lying in the manger: God come to earth, God born as one of us, Love made flesh, flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone.
It’s a miracle and it’s a question. It’s any number of questions.
How about, What does God coming mean for those millions of children who are hungry today? How about, Why do we need more presents when some folk don’t even have a roof over their heads? How about, If God thought the world was a good enough place to be, then why are we destroying it with our green house gases and our fossil fuels and our carbon emissions?
In just a moment we’re going to sing again. “Infant holy” is, I think, one of the sweetest and most poignant of the carols, but I wonder how we’re meant to respond to the last line. “Christ the babe was born for you.”
If Christ was born for me, then surely Christ was born for each one of those children the girl in the café was talking about too.
Christ the babe was born for you. (Click *)
Christ the babe was born for you. (Click *)
May this be a blessed Christmas for you all: one full of little miracles in the shape of questions, and full of searching. And may we be great in 2009. Amen.
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