“What's In A Name: Babe”
God's decision to become vulnerable in coming as a child - and the responsibility given us
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, December 14, 2003
Text: Luke 2:12-20
I begin my message with a couple of disclaimers in light of this morning's sermon title, and they refer to what I will not be talking about. The term “Babe” has nothing to do with those icons of fashion and poor music from the 1960s, Sonny and Cher, who were always looking at each other and singing, “I Got You, Babe.” Nor am I talking about “Babe,” that great, charismatic porcine actor who graced so many movie screens, that delightful little creature who wanted so desperately to be a dog and came into the midst of sheepdogs and tried to carry out the farmer's will. I'm not talking about either of those “Babe's” this morning.
Although the more I think about it, if you were to replace the name “Babe” with the name “Jesus,” there might be a message there. “I Got You, Jesus” would be nice to sing at Christmas, and maybe even to stretch it, there's the fact that Christ came and dwelt among us, who was like us but not completely as we are, who was a human being who dwelt among us trying to do the Father's will. There might be some correlation with the movie, but I wouldn't want to take it too far.
The “Babe” of whom I speak this morning is of course the Babe of Bethlehem, the Babe whom the angels informed the shepherds would be found, in a sign of a powerful presence. For indeed, those shepherds who heard the word in our text this morning must have been overwhelmed to have the angels tell them that what they were going to find was nothing more and less than a child - a baby.
John Calvin made the point in his commentary on this text that God very often uses signs that we do not recognize, and tells us things He's going to do that may be contrary to our expectations. Calvin said: “The angel met the prejudice which might naturally hinder the faith of the shepherds. For what a mockery it is that he, whom God sent to be the King and only Saviour, is seen lying in a manger.”
In other words, I am sure those shepherds would never have imagined in their wildest dreams going and finding a child, had a sign not given them the direction. We often do not read the signs properly or understand their power.
I read not long ago of a sign outside an optometrist's office: “If you don't see what you're looking for, you're in the right place.” Well, I'm sure that the shepherds had no idea what they were looking for and the sign itself only became clear when they went to the manger and saw the Babe of Bethlehem, and realized who He was. Indeed, in many ways God sends us signs that, if we do not understand the full meaning, might seem absurd.
Think about it for a moment: One of the signs of our participation in the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, of the grace God has given us is the sprinkling of water - it is baptism. That symbol, that sign means nothing unless you appreciate in whose memory it is given. Without Christ, the sign has no meaning.
When we symbolically break bread and share it with one another, when we symbolically drink wine together, without Christ it means nothing. To someone who does not know or believe in Christ it seems absurd to break bread and drink wine to celebrate the salvation of Christ. But to those who know Christ, it is a sign that points the way to what we truly believe.
And so, the Babe of Bethlehem was a sign to the shepherds, a sign that they probably could not comprehend until they actually went and visited Him. To those shepherds on the hillside who were told, “Ye shall find the babe...,” it must have seemed absurd, it must have seemed the strangest of signs. But indeed, this was to be the sign of all the things that deep down they had hoped and waited for. The babe was nothing more and nothing less than the sign of God's salvation. He was nothing more and nothing less than the fulfilment of all their hopes and dreams. The babe was nothing more and nothing less than the Saviour long expected. The sign was the ultimate symbol of God doing something great in their midst, and the sign was a babe.
This morning I want us to ask ourselves: What does the power of that sign - that babe - really mean? What does it tell us about God? What does it tell us about the way we should live, the way we should structure our society and how we should care?
Well, it's very simple, because first of all the sign is evidence of the vulnerability of God. Now, do not misunderstand me I am not saying that God is vulnerable to all the things that humanity can do and say - God is sovereign and God will always be sovereign - but here is the powerful point: God made the decision to be vulnerable. God made the decision to become incarnate in His Son. God decided to expose Himself through His Son in the world, in the midst of the turmoil and danger.
Frederick Buechner, who is one of the great writers of our time, talks about how God surprises us and comes to us in unexpected ways. In his book, The Hungering Dark, he wrote:
Those who believe in God can never in a way be sure of him again. Once they have seen him in a stable, they can never be sure where he will appear or to what lengths he will go, to what ludicrous depths of self-humiliation he will descend in his wild pursuit of man. If holiness and the awful power and majesty of God were present in this least auspicious of all events, this birth of a peasant's child, then there is no place or time so lowly or earth-bound but that holiness can be present there, too. And this means that we are never safe, that there is no place that we can hide from God. No place where we are safe from God's power to break us and re-create the human heart, because it is just where he seems most helpless that he is most strong. And just where we least expect him, that he comes most fully.
How right Frederick Buechner is, that God comes to us in a lowly state when we least expect Him. But this is the way God acts. Think back to the Old Testament story of Moses in the bullrushes. The story in Exodus 2 is very simple: Pharoah had decided to kill the Hebrew children so Moses' mother places her new-born son in a basket and puts the basket in amongst the bullrushes, in the hope that he will be safe. The story goes that someone from Pharoah's household finds the child, and Pharoah's daughter adopts him and takes him into Pharoah's court. So begins God's activity, His work to set Israel free. So begins the whole story of Exodus - with a child in the bullrushes, by a river, under the threat of persecution.
You see, God will use even the most humble of means, even the most vulnerable of places do good and glorious and gracious things. So, too, in the story of Christmas. God comes into the midst of vulnerability to poor Mary, the peasant woman, to Bethlehem, a place of little or no repute, in a nation of little of no importance in the grand scheme of things. Not at the centre of the empire but on the fringes of the empire and under the oppression of a king, who, like Pharoah in Moses' day, wanted to eradicate and obliterate the children. God comes then, in person this time, into the midst of that world and in vulnerability offers Himself.
I think back to a few months ago, when a mother gave birth to a child whom she left in a doorway at City Hall. I only found out this morning that the mother was charged formally and convicted, but put on probation. She is mentally ill. Many times I've thought of that child and how vulnerable she was, this child who had no mother for awhile, out in the cold on her own - fragile - and of the community that adopted her.
There is nothing more fragile than a child without a home. There is nothing more vulnerable than a child without a parent. My friends, there is nothing more vulnerable than a Christ who comes into the midst of the world and offers Himself for the sake of the world - as a babe. Oh, I sometimes hear that the Christmas story is not really that important, that it really doesn't matter much whether Christ came and was born as a child. It does matter! Because it is a sign, it is the symbol of all symbols of God's identification with us. And further: Is it not also a sign that we who believe in Him should not similarly humble ourselves before Him, the Babe?
There is something more: The sign is also a signal of our profound responsibility - that by coming and dwelling among us in the form of a child, God has told us that we should show the same love and affection and care to the children of the world.
I've never thought it a coincidence that when Adolf Hitler came to power he decided to change some of the images and the traditions surrounding Christmas. For example, he changed the date of Christmas Day (which was never specified in the Bible but was chosen by the early church) to December 21st and he changed the name “Christmas” to “Yuletide.” Here was a man who decided that it was offensive to sing Christmas carols in public places, so he banned the singing of carols. Why? Why would someone like Hitler find the story of Christmas to be antithetical to his views?
I'll tell you why: Because the story of Christmas turns the power of the world on its head. The dictators, the people who want to assert their own power, who want to be lords and create their own kingdoms, cannot stand the fact that God's way of establishing a kingdom is as a child - in humility, in vulnerability and in self-giving love. That God chose to come as a Christ Child is an offence to those who want to assert their own power and create their own kingdom.
The same thing happens even today. Last week, when I was visiting a university in the United States, they were telling me that they have a problem. The university, which was founded as a Methodist school, and is a Christian university, decided to put up a banner as part of its fundraising. The banner for the Advent period said: “From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required.” A direct quote from the Bible (Luke 12:42). Someone from the government heard about this, there was a complaint, and state funding for that university is now in fact going to be in question: because it - a Christian university - used a religious quote in its fundraising. How silly the world has become!
My friends, in many ways the person of Jesus Christ is an affront. It is an affront to those who want to assert their own power. I understand that we live in a world that is religiously pluralistic. I know that not everyone shares the same belief we do in the presence of Jesus Christ. And, Lord knows we need tolerance and acceptance and understanding. But, as Christians we believe there is something unique about how God acts in our midst. He acts as a child and He comes and dwells among us and gives Himself to us and for us.
Maria Montessori, who was the founder of the Montessori school system, said (and I do not agree with her completely but I understand what she was saying): “If help and salvation are to come to the world, they must come from children, for children are the saviours of men.”
Now, I do not necessarily subscribe to the fact that all children are our saviours - I believe that one child is. I also don't believe that all children are perfect and that we should emulate childhood as somehow being perfection. In fact, I read something from The Times of London some months ago about two brothers. They were eight and 10 years old and they were absolutely, without doubt, the naughtiest boys in the whole of their community. If anything ever went wrong at the school these two brothers were singled out for punishment - and it was usually just. These two boys were seen as the pariahs of the community. Parents would always point to these boys as the source of all evil and conflict in the neighbourhood.
The mother, realizing the problem, tried to do something to reform these boys. She decided it was time for them to meet their priest, and she thought she'd start with the younger boy. She took him down to the rectory and he went in and sat down with the priest. The priest, sitting back in his chair, looked at the boy across the desk for a couple of minutes and then said: “Where is God?”
The little boy thought about this for a while, shook his head and didn't know how to answer, so the priest, with an even more aggressive voice, leaned over the desk and cried into his ear, “Boy, where is God?”
The little boy looked frightened. There was a long, pregnant pause, and still no answer. The priest got up and stood right next to the little boy and shouted, “Where is God?”
Terrified, the little boy got up and ran outside and home as quickly as he could. He went upstairs into his brother's bedroom, grabbed his older brother by the neck, dragged him into the closet, slammed the closet door shut and said: “Boy, are we in trouble! God is missing and they think we did it!”
No, children aren't perfect. But they are important.
Outside of our home, down the road from where I lived in Cape Town there was a strip-mall. Outside the strip-mall there was a man who came in on the weekends from his community in the Transkei. To make money this Xhosa gentleman would do wood engravings. You would see after the slight engraving in the wood the most beautiful picture. (In fact, I have one of these pictures in my office if you ever want to see it. They are masterpieces, incredible. I wish I'd bought more.) This man spoke little or no English and I spoke little or no Xhosa, so we didn't have an opportunity to talk about what he did. One day he showed me the most incredible engraving I have ever seen. It was the engraving of a baby, with an open and smiling face - a beautiful face. But the baby was being crucified.
I did not buy it at the time. I never knew where I could ever put it or show it. I couldn't even ask him what it meant, for we couldn't communicate. But the symbol has always stayed in my mind and I think it's clear that there is no gap between the Babe of Bethlehem and the crucified Christ. There is no difference between the God who came and offered Himself in vulnerability as a child in a manger and the God who offered Himself on the cross for the salvation of the world. It is the same God, in the same vulnerability, but come as a child.
My friends, I believe that there is no difference, then, between us as human beings as children and as adults. All are precious and valuable in the eyes of God. I've often thought it is absurd when we talk about our ethics and morality and we say that we must make sure that when we do something wrong children don't see it, so they're not corrupted. We adults can be corrupt and do our corrupt things, but just make sure children don't see us doing them. We want to protect them somehow from being what they might become - namely, us!
How absurd our morality is! Do we not think that children see what we do? Do we not understand that children see us for what we are? Do we not realize that who we are in the presence of children and who we are when we're not is exactly the same? Who are we fooling? No, my friends, children are valuable and precious and the example that we set and what we do for them and in front of them and what we do when they're not around matters, for children are vulnerable.
When you look at the state of the world, are not children the ones in the greatest danger if there is violence? Are not the children who have been used by military forces in Sierra Leone the most vulnerable? Are not the children on the streets of Bogota, Columbia the most easily eradicated? Are not the children dying of AIDS in South Africa the most vulnerable? Are not the children in our own community, growing up in this world, the most fragile members of our society? Surely if we understand that God came as a child and dwelt among us and shared in our humanity as a child, we, too, should have the same passion and concern and love for the children of the world.
I've always loved the work of Garrison Keillor, and I understand that he is now on the radio at 11 o'clock on Sunday mornings. (I'll be honest with you, I think I would rather listen to Garrison Kiellor than myself!) He has some great messages and tells some good stories. He once voiced this splendid thought: “Nothing you do for children is ever wasted. They seem not to notice us hovering, averting our eyes and they seldom offer thanks. But what we do for them is never wasted.”
And so, my friends, this Advent and this Christmas time, we recognize the sign that the shepherds were given. The sign is that the babe they would find was God incarnate - God in our midst, God the vulnerable - and that we see in that Christ Child the responsibility that we all have from this day forward for all children and all babes for whom the Christ Child came. Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.