God stoops down to raise us up
Readings: Luke 2. 1-14
Christmas is a time for giving isn’t it. Later I’m sure in gestures, cards, or gifts, big or small, we’ll show our love for one another, our affection toward one another. Giving is wonderful, but perhaps there’s part of us which feels under pressure at this time of year. Pressure to get bigger or better gifts, pressure to get things right. Many at this time of year feel the pressure to spend lots, perhaps more than they have, to ensure everything is as perfect as it can be.
Giving is wonderful, but it can easily become burdensome.
And yet at Christmas it is God who gives, who gives of himself. The wonder of Christmas is that God has given us the greatest gift of all, the gift of his Son. And as he does so we find out just how much God will give for our sake, and just how richly blessed we might be should we respond.
We know the picture well don’t we. The little baby laid in a manger surrounded by animals as strange visitors arrive and mum looks on adoringly. As Joseph stands by her side ready to help raise this child, this miracle baby of whom he is to be the adoptive father. It’s a strange sight to be sure, but stranger still is what is going on under the surface. This baby, this Jesus, is God himself, this is God in the flesh, come in person into our world. Why? To be with us, to be near us, to stoop down to where we are and meet us. The God of the universe, the all powerful, comes as a tiny helpless baby.
It’s astonishing. God the Son, steps from his throne and out of compassion for us meets us where we are. Comes in humility, care and love, to meet us in our need.
So what does this mean? This stooping? This stepping down to us?
Well he’ll stoop from the highest heaven to the dust of our world.
In coming to us God steps from the glory and perfection of heaven, leaves behind his glory. He who was set highest over all, is born into an average family, born surrounded by animals, in a small town in a backwater province of a massive empire. He stoops from the greatest of heights down into the dust and mess of our world. And he’s not done stooping, for he will go to even greater depths for us, even down to death.
Now as an act of solidarity with his creation, with his people, that’s great, but it doesn’t achieve much. But God doesn’t just stoop to where we are, he does so to raise us to where he is. To lift us from the darkness, pain and suffering of our world into a new creation. A new world which he is bringing about where all is at last as it should be. He comes to the darkest, most damaged, least cared for parts of us and our world, so that we need not stay there, so that we can at last be brought into the light, given a hope and future.
In this stooping the one who has all power becomes powerless.
The one who angels swiftly act at the word of his command, who sustains the universe, and without whom nothing would exist is born fragile and helpless. When you think of an all powerful being, you don’t think of a baby. And yet God in coming to earth chooses not to come in power and might, but fragile and helpless.
He who has all power surrenders it, becomes powerless. Because what he wants is a people who choose him, rather than to demand and enforce compliance. God steps down from the throne to walk amongst his people, so that he can raise up the powerless, so that he can come alongside those who are abused, forsaken and forgotten and make them inheritors of a Kingdom where those who are last are first, where the least are the greatest. The King comes so that we can enter his Kingdom.
In this stooping the one who is rich beyond measure has become poor.
The entire universe is his, every spec, every person, atom, animal and galaxy. And yet when God comes to earth he chooses not a wealthy family, not to be born in a palace or mansion, but to be born to those who are poor. In his life he chooses not comfort and luxury, but to be amongst those who have nothing. He himself says that he has nowhere to call home, nowhere to lay his head.
And he does so because he sees our lack. Our unmet desires, our longings for that which we cannot get, our needs unsatisfied. He becomes poor, that in him we might be rich. Find those longings met in him, find our hunger fed and our thirst quenched. In all our need and lack, God has come to ensure that we lack nothing needful, and at the last inherit all things with him.
And finally, in this stooping the one who is immortal becomes mortal.
And that’s no accident. Because Jesus hasn’t just come to be near us, he has come to bring us home. He has come to be the Saviour, to rescue us from all that is wrong with our world. And to do so he has come to die. The one born this night has come so that he might die, so that he who is life himself might surrender it for our sake.
And he does so so that we might live. God will stoop even down into death itself, to raise us to life in him. He will carry upon himself all that is wrong, all the pain and suffering we make, all the selfishness and greed, he will carry it all down into death, carry it away from us so that we can go free. The one who lives forever comes to die, so that we who are headed for death might live forever with him.
At Christmas we celebrate the fact that the one who is highest over all stoops to our depths that he might raise us to his heights. That the one who is all powerful becomes powerless so that we might be brought into his Kingdom. That the one who is rich beyond measure becomes poor so that we might lack nothing. That the one who is life itself has come to die, so that we might live forever with him. That’s what God has got you for Christmas, there in the birth of Jesus. What did you get him?
The reality of course is that he doesn’t ask that question, what did you get me. He doesn’t lack for anything. Instead what he asks is will you have me? Because in all of this he is not giving us stuff so much as offering us himself. Will you have me? That’s the wonder of Christmas, God offers us his very self.
I have come to give you everything that is mine if you’ll have me. All we can do is respond. Yes, yes I’ll have you. To respond in love to the one who has given the greatest gesture of love in history.
As the carol puts it ‘what can I give him, poor as I am? Give my heart’.
Amen.