Danger, Incy Wincy, danger!
I found some scary spider pictures, but I respect arachnophobes too much to use them.
It's a fun way of thinking about what God does at Christmas. He's created this human race whom he (a) loves (b) wants the best for and (c) has a good idea about the best way to live as human, how to keep oneself from running into danger and falling into sin. How does he communicate?
Well, there were commandments, but they really only go so far.
There were prophets, but - amazing fact, fact fans - there's really only one "successful" Old Testament prophet whose words lead to repentance and change of life… and I'll tell you who that was at the end. Have a think about it.
So God decides to come on down himself. God the Son arrives here in human form. God shrinks himself down to human size - better still, to the size of a cell, an embryo, a foetus, and then an air-breathing baby.
Anything like this? Discuss.
And he does it not only so there's a proper sinless God-human who can die on the cross and make peace between humans and God.
He does it not only so he can speak to us on a level, and be clear about what God loves and hates, what God stands for ad what God most definitely doesn't stand for.
He does it so that he can know from the inside out what human beings go through. Pain and pleasure, splinters and sexuality, joy and jokes and jealousy, hunger and happiness (make up some more Jane Austen titles if you like).
By the time he's lived and died and been raised and ascended, Jesus really is our brother. Forged in fire and faith, proved in pain and power, knowing not just about us, but knowing our human condition. Jesus alone is qualified to save us, and he saves us not a patronising Lord Bountiful who's been above the penury and poverty and bunions and blisters, but as someone who has lived our lives, walked our earth, sneezed and snored and stubbed his toe. Someone who's grieved and groaned, walked and wept, shed the blood, sweat and tears that are as much part of us as DNA.
Rejected? Check. Spat upon? Check. Loved? Check. Misunderstood by family and friends? Check check. Jesus has a full house in humanity. Tempted and tested and tried. It means whatever I suffer, I can go to him, tai to him, run to him, crawl to him, cry out to him, and he'll know about it. God with us, God in us, God like us.
Are you spotting yet that this is my chief - possibly one and only - Christmas sermon… and possibly the one you'll hear from me more than once, in different cloth, through the year? Life can be really shitty, but in Jesus there is so much grace that we can make it through. Not without pain, not without questions, but make it through nonetheless.
Jesus is there for me. For you. For everyone who finds Christmas - or life - tough. All hail the great shrinking God, and the way that somehow his heart might have gotten even bigger by shrinking down to talk to us, live with us, die for us. Amen?
Oh yes. The only successful prophet was Jonah. Inauspicious start, running in the wrong direction. His experiences were stormy, fishy and hard to swallow, but when he told the bad bad Ninevites to change their lives, they did. Ninevites! There's not much record of God's actual people, the Israelites, responding well to prophets. Jesus seems to think they did away with the whole gamut of them from A to Z…
You'll never believe who I had in the back of my throat last week...
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