Monday, December 21, 2009
Just a Baby
Why a Baby?
The Old Testament prophets spoke frequently of the coming of the Messiah. Here's one such promise, from Isaiah 61:
1 The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound;
2 To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD, and the day of vengeance of our God...
Like many of the passages that speak of the coming of the Messiah, this one associates God's vengeance with the coming of the Messiah. The one who is sent by God will bring vengeance on God's enemies.
God makes these kinds of promises very often in the Old Testament, promising that He will save His people from their enemies, and keep them safe when the Messiah comes. He promises that He will vindicate His good name and destroy God's enemies, who are also the enemies of the people of God. And it was for this reason that Christ came into the world, according to Mary's song of thankfulness to God recorded in Luke 1:46-55.
Now at the time that Jesus was born, the Roman Empire held sway over the Mediterranean world. The Roman Empire was probably the most powerful empire that had existed up to that point. And considering the technology that they had to work with, you might make a case that they were the most powerful empire that has ever existed. They were proud and cruel. They had destroyed many nations, and put many other nations under tribute. They were the uncontested masters of the Mediterranean world for over four centuries.
And besides the Romans, there were many other groups that hated God and His people. There were the Syrian kings who ruled Palestine in the name of the Romans, of whom Herod is the best known. There were also the Jewish religious rulers of the day, the Pharisees and the Saduccees, who would so often come into conflict with Jesus during His ministry.
The nations of the world were under the sway of Satan, and many of Israel's own people were under Satan's sway as well.
But God is God, and of course He will vindicate His good name. He has the power to flood the earth, send fire from heaven, strike men dead of disease or send His mighty angels to earth. One angel was sent against the Assyrian king Sennacherib, and in one night killed 185,000 of his men (2 Kings 19). He could send whole battalions of angels with shoulder-fired rocket launchers against His enemies if He so chose. But what did He do?
He sent a baby.
You are perhaps familiar with the expression, “I'll beat you with one hand tied behind my back.” Competitive people sometimes seek to prove their superiority by winning even while handicapped in some way. When God seeks to demonstrate His awesome power, He decided to destroy the nations of the world with only a baby.
There's nothing more helpless than a baby. The infants of the animal world are very often able to fend for themselves from the moment of birth. But a human baby will die in just a few hours without constant attention. It takes years before a baby is able to do the simplest things for itself.
And this particular baby was born to a poor couple away from home, in the territory of a king who so desperately wanted to hold onto his own power that he ordered all the babies from that region killed.
At Christmas time, we often focus on the nostalgia of childhood, the cute images of baby Jesus, the trappings of a sentimental religiosity. But God did not send Christ into the world to give us an appealing target for our nostalgia. He sent Christ into the world to save His people and destroy His enemies. And to demonstrate God's awesome power, He did all of this with the weakest of things, an infant.
Even when Christ grew, with all of His incredible power, He never used it for His own benefit. He never used it to strike down His enemies, as I very often want Him to do when I read the gospels. When conspired against by numerous powerful enemies, when betrayed and abandoned by His friends, He did nothing to defend Himself, but went as a lamb to the slaughter, looking to all the world as the weakest and most despised of men. And it was in this moment, of His greatest apparent weakness, that He struck the shattering death blow against the powers of all the world and Satan together.
People so often boast against God, if not in words then by our actions. We so often believe we can escape judgment, that we can defy God's laws and create our own kingdoms on earth free of His rule. When God moved to demonstrate the utter foolishness of trusting anyone or anything other than Him, He showed His immense power by laying in the dust all of the glories of earth. And He did it with the weakest of all things. No chariots, no horses, no armies. No lightning bolts, or fire and brimstone. No huge marketing campaigns, grand taxpayer-funded schemes, or well-funded lobbyists.
Just a baby.
The Old Testament prophets spoke frequently of the coming of the Messiah. Here's one such promise, from Isaiah 61:
1 The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound;
2 To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD, and the day of vengeance of our God...
Like many of the passages that speak of the coming of the Messiah, this one associates God's vengeance with the coming of the Messiah. The one who is sent by God will bring vengeance on God's enemies.
God makes these kinds of promises very often in the Old Testament, promising that He will save His people from their enemies, and keep them safe when the Messiah comes. He promises that He will vindicate His good name and destroy God's enemies, who are also the enemies of the people of God. And it was for this reason that Christ came into the world, according to Mary's song of thankfulness to God recorded in Luke 1:46-55.
Now at the time that Jesus was born, the Roman Empire held sway over the Mediterranean world. The Roman Empire was probably the most powerful empire that had existed up to that point. And considering the technology that they had to work with, you might make a case that they were the most powerful empire that has ever existed. They were proud and cruel. They had destroyed many nations, and put many other nations under tribute. They were the uncontested masters of the Mediterranean world for over four centuries.
And besides the Romans, there were many other groups that hated God and His people. There were the Syrian kings who ruled Palestine in the name of the Romans, of whom Herod is the best known. There were also the Jewish religious rulers of the day, the Pharisees and the Saduccees, who would so often come into conflict with Jesus during His ministry.
The nations of the world were under the sway of Satan, and many of Israel's own people were under Satan's sway as well.
But God is God, and of course He will vindicate His good name. He has the power to flood the earth, send fire from heaven, strike men dead of disease or send His mighty angels to earth. One angel was sent against the Assyrian king Sennacherib, and in one night killed 185,000 of his men (2 Kings 19). He could send whole battalions of angels with shoulder-fired rocket launchers against His enemies if He so chose. But what did He do?
He sent a baby.
You are perhaps familiar with the expression, “I'll beat you with one hand tied behind my back.” Competitive people sometimes seek to prove their superiority by winning even while handicapped in some way. When God seeks to demonstrate His awesome power, He decided to destroy the nations of the world with only a baby.
There's nothing more helpless than a baby. The infants of the animal world are very often able to fend for themselves from the moment of birth. But a human baby will die in just a few hours without constant attention. It takes years before a baby is able to do the simplest things for itself.
And this particular baby was born to a poor couple away from home, in the territory of a king who so desperately wanted to hold onto his own power that he ordered all the babies from that region killed.
At Christmas time, we often focus on the nostalgia of childhood, the cute images of baby Jesus, the trappings of a sentimental religiosity. But God did not send Christ into the world to give us an appealing target for our nostalgia. He sent Christ into the world to save His people and destroy His enemies. And to demonstrate God's awesome power, He did all of this with the weakest of things, an infant.
Even when Christ grew, with all of His incredible power, He never used it for His own benefit. He never used it to strike down His enemies, as I very often want Him to do when I read the gospels. When conspired against by numerous powerful enemies, when betrayed and abandoned by His friends, He did nothing to defend Himself, but went as a lamb to the slaughter, looking to all the world as the weakest and most despised of men. And it was in this moment, of His greatest apparent weakness, that He struck the shattering death blow against the powers of all the world and Satan together.
People so often boast against God, if not in words then by our actions. We so often believe we can escape judgment, that we can defy God's laws and create our own kingdoms on earth free of His rule. When God moved to demonstrate the utter foolishness of trusting anyone or anything other than Him, He showed His immense power by laying in the dust all of the glories of earth. And He did it with the weakest of all things. No chariots, no horses, no armies. No lightning bolts, or fire and brimstone. No huge marketing campaigns, grand taxpayer-funded schemes, or well-funded lobbyists.
Just a baby.
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
Motherhood
From Charles Dickens, _A Tale of Two Cities_, remarking on the unreality of French upper-class society:
A lot of similarities to our own upper-class society, I feel. Women have few babies, if any, and are obsessed with looking as if they never had any. Career women too often relegate their children to the care of others, and feel it more important to pursue the fashions of the day than to raise their own children. "Breeder" is a term of contempt in large swaths of our society. Women of sixty are desperate to look and act like women of twenty.
But God told us that women will be saved by childbirth. There is no justification to be found in the act of childbearing, but there is justification in faith. Part of faith is embracing, not rebelling against, what God has made us, whether men or women, whether young or old. It is Biblically defensible to not have children. But it is not Biblically defensible to not have children, or to have very few children, in order to be able the more freely to pursue our own lusts.
Such homes had these various notabilities left behind them in the fine world of Paris, that the spies among the assembled devotees of Monseigneur- forming a goodly half of the polite company- would have found it hard to discover among the angels of that sphere one solitary wife, who, in her manners and appearance, owned to being a mother. Indeed, except for the mere act of bringing a troublesome creature into this world- which does not go far towards the realisation of the name of mother- there was no such thing known to the fashion. Peasant women kept the unfashionable babies close, and brought them up, and charming grandmammas of sixty dressed and supped as at twenty.
A lot of similarities to our own upper-class society, I feel. Women have few babies, if any, and are obsessed with looking as if they never had any. Career women too often relegate their children to the care of others, and feel it more important to pursue the fashions of the day than to raise their own children. "Breeder" is a term of contempt in large swaths of our society. Women of sixty are desperate to look and act like women of twenty.
But God told us that women will be saved by childbirth. There is no justification to be found in the act of childbearing, but there is justification in faith. Part of faith is embracing, not rebelling against, what God has made us, whether men or women, whether young or old. It is Biblically defensible to not have children. But it is not Biblically defensible to not have children, or to have very few children, in order to be able the more freely to pursue our own lusts.
