MERRY CHRISTMAS

On Christmas day what headline might we write to announce the most momentous events in all history? Messiah born in a Manger, Saviour of all national born in Bethlehem, or a homeless family found in a stable.
When God the Son was born, at a particular place, at a particular time, of a particular woman, a new start was given to humanity.  All its long history of sin, its long cavorting escapade of persistent foolishness, all this was generously cancelled out.  It’s as if the Divine Artist looked down on the blurred canvas which He had seen defaced for so many generations, and said, “Enough! This ruined world, this tragic farce, has gone on quite long enough.  Let us begin again.  But this time, this time, I myself will go down among them. I shall visit my people.  I shall walk among them, as one of them, in their littleness.  I shall be like them, and in their flesh I shall teach them my ways.  I will unite myself with the dust of their little world, and I shall make that dust glorious for ever.”

The nativity scene at Bethlehem draws our mind to the fact that, Jesus fulfills the dreams and hopes of all Israel as is the Son of David, the Son of God in a way no one anticipates. This earth changing events can also be given another headline as depicts in John’s gospel; Word made flesh dwells among us. God has entered our world, embraced our humanity and totally committed to dwell among us.
The manger scene depicts the love of the Father and the Son seen in human form. In the manger, we see God’s plan from all eternity. There all of creation converges. It is the intersection of prophecy and promise. To gaze at the manger is to grasp something profound about God and to understand something about ourselves. When Christ appeared the soul felt its worth. We cannot fully grasp and realise our worth if not for Christ who has come into this world.

This is why we are celebrating Our Lord’s birthday with such solemnity, pomp, and joy.  The birth of the Eternal in time and place was the start of a new era of creation, the start of a new human race, a new progeny of which the Lord Jesus is the prototype, the first model, the Genesis.  With the birth of Christ, God does something radical and new.  He initiates the process of creation, all over again.  In the first Genesis, God made Adam, and what a lot of problems that produced.  The human race has been living ever since with the difficulties caused by Adam, and handed down to his posterity.  Adam’s race is a species bound for annihilation, a race contaminated by the deadly curse of original sin.  But now, with the birth of Jesus, the Creator restarts the whole process, in a new and better way.  Christ is the new beginning for humanity. A new and flawless Adam, the Eternal Word of God, has replaced the old Adam, and opened-up for all His descendants a new future, a new destiny.  Christ the new Adam inaugurates a new era, an era not of curse but of blessing, not of wrath, annihilation, damnation, but a new era of grace and truth.

In order to understand something of the immensity of God’s plans, we have to concentrate on the smallness, the poverty, the helplessness of God the Son, the Babe of Bethlehem.  We have to go with the shepherds to see this thing which has come to pass.  With them, we have to stoop, in order to enter the lowly stable- more probably a rough cave – we have to bend the knee in order to glimpse the brightness of the Light of all nations, shining out through the eyes of a defenceless baby, reflected in the pure eyes of His Mother.  Could the Omnipotent have made Himself any smaller? Could the all-Powerful have made Himself weaker?  Could Love have made itself any more vulnerable?  To the weak, He became weak, that they might reclaim their birthright, so that humanity might set out, once again, on the long road which, with His grace, will lead us back to paradise.  A new day has come no more delaying!  The Bridegroom comes in sight, Lord Jesus, light of light!  Sweet Infant King, we Thee adore, O make us love Thee, more and more!

Let us be the change we want to see in the world.

Merry Christmas

Fr Joseph Osho