"I would bring a lamb" "I would bring a lamb" Our synod moderator shares a Christmas reflection
We speak of the ‘Christmas Story’ and yet like all stories it grows with telling. Snow, robins and reindeer make appearances. Additions like these normally have roots; even if some contemporary ones seem only commercial. Matthew and Luke offer very different stories in their gospels that merge with later additions, sometimes uncomfortably, in our present day nativity scenes. Matthew offers gift giving and Luke shepherds praising. In Luke there is something powerful about stories coming together so that a shepherd offers the gift of a lamb to the Lamb of God who comes as a gift to the world.
Imagery surrounding sheep and shepherds runs through the Old Testament alongside family and kingship. These themes flow into the New Testament where Jesus takes a gleeful pleasure in mixing the images. We meet kings forgiving huge debts and waxing furious at petty injustice. We see venerable fathers hitching up their skirts and running down hills to welcome sons who have dishonoured the family. We find shepherds deserting their flocks to seek single lost sheep.
We also encounter alongside the paradox of the king wearing a crown of thorns that of a shepherd more helpless than any sheep. A new born lamb vulnerable as it is can stand almost immediately and days after birth follow the flock. Not so a human baby. There is no power here. Nor in a small child pursued by the soldiers of a paranoid king. Nor in a wandering preacher who has abandoned the security of family and trade. Nor in a naked man nailed to a cross in the sun. How do we find the wise and powerful shepherd in this helpless baby and the person he grew into?
The impact of the incarnation is just this inversion of power. When all is said and done the shepherd is in charge and the sheep are heading for mint sauce. The God who coerces goodness gains puppets not independent creatures capable of love. The God who comes to us in vulnerable helplessness calls out our compassion and involves us in our own transformation and that of the whole world.
This is a challenge to a church so often concerned with regaining a remembered power and influence. Dare we accept our own weakness and vulnerability and offer it like a lamb to the Christ child. Dare we trust the God who says “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” [2 Cor 12: 9]
Rowena Francis