Swadled Baby Jesus SmilesMost of us are familiar with the traditional Christmas story, if at least because we’ve watched the Charlie Brown special since childhood. We know this story: a young woman (more likely a young teenager) is greeted by an angel who says she will have a baby even though she’s not married and has never been with a man. “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you,” the angel announces. “So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:35, NIV).

She and her husband-to-be travel to Bethlehem, the ancestral home of Joseph’s family, because the Romans are conducting a census. Mary goes into labor, but they can’t find a room, so they end up in a stable, more likely a grotto, where she gives birth to a son. Angels announce the birth to shepherds who visit baby Jesus. Three wise men from the east, known as magi, follow a star to the place where the little family is staying.

Herod pretends interest in the baby only to destroy him and tells the magi to report his location. An angel intervenes, telling the magi to go home by a different route. Another angel warns Joseph that Herod is sending men to find and kill Jesus and urging him to escape. Joseph heeds the warning and takes his family to Egypt till Herod is dead.

This is the Christmas story we know so well. Supernatural, hopeful, dangerous, wonderful. While Luke and Matthew do a splendid job of narrating the wonder and the peril of Jesus’ birth, two other versions of the Christmas story put in grander relief the cost and the risk.

The New Testament book of Philippians started as a letter written to a church in northern Greece. In chapter 2, Paul is addressing the behavioral code that ought to guide their thinking as they interact with each other. That code is simple to state and difficult to live: follow the example of Christ. As he explains what this looks like, Paul refers to the costly love of Christ, but in doing so he has to pulls the lens way back from the cross all the way to before the dawn of time:

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
      did not consider equality with God something to be grasped (i.e. held onto),
but made himself nothing,
      taking the very nature of a servant,
      being made in human likeness. (Philippians 2:5-7, NIV)

I asked a group of junior high kids if any of them would want to become babies again. One kid said, “Yes, because of the freedom” to which the other kids responded, “What freedom? When you’re a baby you go wherever your parents want you to go!” All the rest said, “No way.” Here they were, 12 and 13 years old, and none of them really wanted to return to infancy, even though they had all been infants at one time. At age 47, as much as I sometimes want to curl up in a fetal position, I really would not choose a return to babyhood.  

Imagine then that you’re God, endowed with infinite power, living in a perfect environment of love, good health and no danger, possessing a fullness of life and glory we can’t imagine. And He chooses to take on our form, which, as for all of us, started out dependent on his parents, unable to sit up or speak, naked. He chose to limit the use of his own powers as a man, so he didn’t turn himself invisible when Herod’s thugs appeared. He counted on Joseph and Mary to get him out of Bethlehem. How costly and risky was this move by God to come down here that first Christmas.

Then there’s one other telling of the story, in Revelation 12:

A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads. His tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment it was born. She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter. (v.1-5a)

In general, scholars don’t really believe the woman in this passage is Mary, but that she represents the people of God, who in the Old Testament were the Jews, and in our day is the church, which is made up of people from all kinds of ethnic backgrounds. But the occasion is the same: from his people, God brings forth a son, an event we celebrate as Christmas. But immediately, the fate of this child is endangered by the dragon. It sheds new light on the action of Herod, who was plenty paranoid and hungry for power anyway, but who was also influenced by the enemy of God to attack Jesus. Later in Rev. 12, John identifies the dragon as the devil or Satan, the one who leads the whole world astray.

This is a frightful picture. Why would God, who created Satan in the first place, put himself in the line of fire like this? Satan hates God. Satan didn’t start out bad but he chose arrogance and pride over following the Lord. But God, because of his great love for us, made himself vulnerable to his greatest enemy. There’s nothing more vulnerable than a baby, and this is the way God chose. On Christmas day. There is a mystery to this, and I must be honest, I don’t fully comprehend that level of love. It’s hard for me to make myself vulnerable for the sake of those I know and love well, let alone my biggest adversary.

I pray these other perspectives on the Christmas story inspire you this season to reflect on the astonishing generosity and sacrifice of Jesus to join us in our humanity. One more reason to join with the angels, who broke out in uncontrolled praise, saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests” (Luke 2:14, NIV). Peace to you and Merry Christmas.