The Measure of Human Worth
It is a natural human impulse to want to share good things with those we love. We want those for whom we care to feel good, to be well, and to experience joy. When we receive good news or a special gift, our inclination is to share it with the people who matter to us. We want to include them in our celebrations first and increase everyone's joy in so doing. The Christmas story is one of great joy and the way in which that joy is shared tells us something important about God.
Christmas is also a time of upside-down expectations. God fulfills many promises at Christmas, but, as is often the case with God, does not fulfill them in the ways that anyone was expecting. Hearing the prophecies, people imagined a great military victory led by a powerful warrior or a charismatic king. What they received was a tiny baby born to unremarkable parents in thoroughly unimpressive circumstances.
This fulfilling of promises with actions that turn our expectations upside-down has given rise to many Christmastide traditions around the world that mirror the strangeness. In some places a choirboy is made bishop for the day; in others it is the lord of the land who serves the servants Christmas dinner; in others Christmastide is a time for telling ghost stories through the long nights setting up fright against the joy of the season; there are the costumed mummers of Ireland and Newfoundland; Lords of misrule who oversee Christmas merriment and pranks; and so many more. All of these meant to remind us that God's ways are not our ways.
With this in mind, it should be no surprise that, when God chooses to demonstrate the boundless divine love for humanity by taking on our nature, that God wants to share this joyous moment first with those that nobody else would expect. Unwed parents far from home, in a stable, surrounded not by aunt and uncle but ox and ass, in a place of profound political unrest. Shepherds, poorly thought of in their society; boys too young for a trade and girls too young to be married off. Those with little value in the eyes of most.
We are told that all of this happens in the midst of a Roman census. A census is a great thing for a growing empire. The recently conquered and occupied peoples of the world need to be counted so that the emperor knows what he now controls. People in this system are, after all, a resource to be exploited. Labour and taxes make the wheels of empire turn and that great machine is always hungry for more fuel.
When God decides the time is right for earth and heaven to meet, the upside-down theme continues. God might have appeared among humanity as a great general, a powerful politician, or even something fantastical like an enormous warrior angel, set to rout the Romans with a taste of their own violent medicine. But not so. God chooses to enter the world as the vulnerable, cold, hungry child of a frightened mother and confused adoptive father. While Rome is counting bodies so they could calculate what might be extracted from them, God took on a body among the least of us and filled it with divinity so that humanity would know its true worth.
This is one of the miracles of Christmas. The reminder that we, so often, have it upside-down. This reminder, bright as the greatest star: We are not trying to prove our worth to God in the hopes that we might slip in to heaven one day, but that God has chosen to bring heaven to us. When the powers of this world say there is no room for you in the inn, Jesus reminds us that God's house contains more than enough rooms for all.
Christmas is not a time of proving our worth. We do not need to demonstrate our value by working harder than others, decorating bigger, sending more cards, or spending more conspicuously than everyone else. Christmas is a time of God reminding us that our worth is not in what we can produce, but in the way that God made us. It is not about layering on guilt, shame, and fear about whether or not we belong here, at the manger with the angels, shepherds, and animals. It is about remembering that God wants to share the joy of love with us so much that God would appear right in the middle of guilt, shame, and love to do it.
The joy of heaven come to earth in the stable is for you. The splendour of this night is for you. The love of the Christ-child that turns everything upside-down is for you. May you know much love this Christmastide.
