Christmas morning
Martin Sullivan
Poetry and music describe Christ's birth and the bleak manger is the centre of devotion with apocryphal ass and ox to add to the figures of mother and child and wise men on bended knee. But the story is pierced by the note of realism and staggering challenge. "Unto you is born this day in the City of David, a Saviour which is Christ the Lord." The babe is a Man to be reckoned with, and angelic choruses at His birth were to be drowned by the demonic shouts of a lynching crowd. It took just over thirty years to turn the crib into a cross. In church on Christmas morning I listen to two passages of scripture which cause me to contemplate Christ, not as the babe of Bethlehem but as the eternal Son of the eternal• Father, the brightness of God's glory and the express image of His Person through whom He made the world. I listen to a description of Him as the Word, "The rational principle behind the. Universe" and as the Light, which no darkness can quench, who became flesh and dwelt in our very midst. And yet there is a link between the holly and the ivy and the tree of Calvary. This of course is the life of Christ, the incarnation, if you will, of the noblest teaching ever given to man. The Christmas scene is simply His identification with His human family, born as the very humblest member of it, in a hurry just where His mother could lay Him down. The empty cross which now dominates every Christian assembly and building bears witness to His willingness to love His family to the end and to give His life for its sake. No body hangs there now. His spirit is let loose in all the world to guide us that we may interpret aright the purpose of His coming and celebrate it properly. Christmas is a high festival, but it is primarily an accessory to the faith. What is that faith? In stark terms it runs something like this: "In Himself as a man Christ is what God would be in all men, and would have all men to be in Him. He was as man, holy with the same holiness and made holy by the same means with us." He is not, however, merely an example, He is much more. He can give us power to be conformed to His likeness. Once again the passages of scripture read in church on Christmas morning spell out this message. "As many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God." What does this mean? We are called to re-enact in our own experience the whole process of the Incarnation — the new birth, the spiritual death, and resurrection. We need the objective incarnati0n. however, if we are to rise above. ourselves in love and wonder ail.O awe. It is Christ who fills us Witri, the desire to put off the old man an Spectator December 21, 1974 Put on the new. He is the image of the invisible God,"the stamp of His very being," the pattern of deity for US to admire and imitate. So as St 1,)aul puts it, 'We are transfigured Into His likeness from splendour to Splendour' I interpret the Irtgarria-1 tion to mean that for me, a sinful Mortal man, God has given Himself the work He began when He created me in His image, and redeeming me from the tragic consequences of my sin and folly. Christmas bids me not to separate Christ too far from myself, for fear that I may be presumptuous. The neglected words of the Athanasian Creed cheer us all at this point When it reminds us that Christ as. God and Man is best understood .not by conversion of Godhead into flesh, but by taking manhood into God."
The gaiety of Christmas, the love, he laughter, the gifts and the u„aPpiness are ours only because He whose birth we celebrate brings use these tidings of great joy.
Martin Sullivan is Dean of St Paul's.
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