There's Something About a Baby

Four times.  Four precious times in this life, I have screamed and cried and experienced the last grueling moments of pregnancy.  And then a nurse or doctor has placed a brand-new baby onto my chest, and I have felt a love like no other.  Four times I have stared at this tiny new creation and felt the immense responsibility of caring for and guiding this child.  And everything was changed forever.  There’s something about a baby that changes things.  A difficult day is made brighter by the smile on a baby’s face.  The smell of a baby’s hair can calm an anxious heart.  When we welcome a baby into the world, there is great celebration.  Something new is afoot.  There is possibility and hope.  When we watch someone die, we feel the sense of release and completion of their journey.  When we watch someone be born, we feel the sense of excitement and anticipation of what is to come in their life.  They have zero mistakes, zero heartbreaks.  No one has told them that they have limits.  There is a concept called “tabula rasa,” a belief that a baby is born with a “blank slate” and that everything about that person is determined by events after birth.  I don’t completely buy into this psychological theory.  I think that babies are born with plenty of predetermined characteristics.  Just ask any parent of multiple children.  But certainly, a large part of who a child will become will be connected to their experiences. 

An unhealthy parent will look at this tiny new creation and make a (usually unconscious) decision to mold it into his or her own image.  This tiny baby that God created in his image with unique gifts and talents and personality and purpose will be required to grow into the image of his earthly parents, to think like they think, talk like they talk, vote like they vote, you get the idea.  Unhealthy parents seek personal validation from their children instead of seeking to support them as they grow into their own unique selves.  Healthy parents support and guide their children as they become who God created them to be. 

This week we will celebrate the birth of a baby.  This baby’s birth brought forth the ultimate hope.  This baby came with great excitement.  This baby’s name was Jesus.  And this Christmas as I look down into the manger and stare at this baby, this new creation full of possibility, I have one question for him.  “Who are you?”  You see, I fear that we have grown this baby up into our own image.  We don’t look at the baby and see the new beginning and the possibility so much as we look at the adult version of Jesus we have created or embraced.  And I’m afraid that we have some things wrong about him.  At least I have had. 

You don’t go through a life crisis like I have experienced the past couple of years without tearing down some things and rebuilding them.  You gain perspective and experience that make you see blind spots you had before.  You pay a painful price to get there.  And it’s hard in the middle of your life to rework major things about your belief system.  But this year I’m starting with the baby.  I’m looking at the baby, and I’m rebuilding my ideas of who he is to become.  You see, in America, we seem to have created a Jesus that is white, Christian, republican, waves an American flag and carries a pistol.  But the problem with that is that Jesus was actually a Jewish, middle eastern man who rebelled against the Roman empire and non-violently laid down his life on a cross.  I fear that what large segments of the American church have done to baby Jesus is to form him in our own image.  That is not healthy behavior.  We could start to understand Jesus better by learning about Jewish faith and Jewish culture.  He was a real person living in a real time period.  We would be wise to take that into account.  

Another image we portray of Jesus is one of the holy vending machine.  Allow me to explain.  We tell people that if they pray hard enough, have enough faith, live righteously enough - that Jesus will give them whatever they want.  The only problem with this is that if that were true, no devout father would ever bury his child, no devout woman would watch her marriage implode, no devout child in a third world country would die of starvation today or drown trying to get to a safer place.  You see when we try to sell the vending machine Jesus, we say to those who didn’t get what they wanted, “It’s not Jesus, it’s you.”  And in the most painful moments of life, when you feel like you are in quicksand, being told to pray harder or live better feels like someone pouring more sand over your head and tying your arms behind your back.  To support these “pep talks,” we use the verse in Matthew 22, “And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.”  But we don’t talk about the fact that Jesus said this right after cursing a fig tree because he was angry that it had no figs for him to eat.  I think this is one of the moments in scripture where we really see his humanity.  His disciples are so impressed that he can wither a fig tree on command for disappointing him, and he tells them that they too can do miracles like this if they have faith.  Does this also mean that we can have whatever we want in this life if we just believe it will happen?  Some may question my faith, but I don’t think that’s how Jesus works.

One more image I have had of Jesus at various times in my life is that of a pious and judgmental Jesus.  Maybe you have seen an image of Jesus pointing his finger at you and asking you a guilt-inducing question.  Maybe you have read a passage where he addresses sinful behavior, and you wanted to crawl under a rock because you know that one all too well.  But looking down in this manger today, I just ask anew, “Who is this King of glory?”  Who is this God that in all his holiness, in all his splendor, instead of expecting us to ascend to his level – chose to descend to ours?  What kind of God steps down from heaven and lays in a manger surrounded  by the stench of manure?  What kind of God takes on a human body with all its aches and pains and submits to living inside it?  What kind of God becomes one of us?

When my oldest child was one year old, he came down with a bad case of croup.  After his going from fairly healthy to barely able to breathe and a temp of 103 in a matter of a few hours, we were sent to the hospital.  We spent the night in the ER that night with him.  No rooms were available in the hospital.  So, they rolled in a crib for him to sleep in.  And I remember that he needed so badly to lay down and sleep, but he wanted his mommy.  So, I did what most mothers would do.  I climbed over the side of that crib, curled my body around his, and stayed with him.  And when I think back to that night, I think it is a tiny glimpse of what God did and continues to do for us.  He came down.  He climbed into the manger.  He met us in our illness, in our despair, in our inadequacy.  He met us in our pain.  He had it all.  And he stepped down into our misery because he loves us.  And he still curls around us in our pain.  Emmanuel, God with us.  He laid his hands on people and healed them.  He wept with Mary.  He walked on water with Peter.  He hung out with Zacchaeus.  He defended the woman the people wanted to stone.  No one was off-limits for him.  He embraced people from every walk of life.  No crib was too dirty to crawl into.  In Luke 4, he told the people in his hometown why he came:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
  because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
    and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,

to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.”

            Has there ever been such a beautiful mission?  That baby in the manger would grow into a man that wanted to right the wrongs in the world.  He had brought a kingdom to earth that would change everything.  So, as I look at him today and ask him “Who are you?”, I trust that this year he’s going to continue to tell me.  I’m starting with the baby.  Because there is something about a baby.  God could have come as a full-grown human, but he came as a baby - full of hope, full of possibility.  I am throwing out my preconceived notions of who he will become and asking him who he truly is.  Because much more beautiful than my making him into my image is my being formed into his.