A Christmas message from the Reverend Canon Sam Corley: Is it me or can you hear a baby crying?

We were sorting out all the tinsel and tea towels, getting ready for this year’s school nativity play when Mary announced with great pride that ‘my baby Jesus is a very good baby ‘cos he never, ever cries’. I wanted to say, ‘Mary, that’s because Jesus is made of plastic’, but I could just imagine the kids going home telling their parents that the Rector says: ‘God isn’t real; he’s made out of plastic’. And at that point, as if things couldn’t get any more confusing, a very excited donkey comes over and asks me: ‘Canon Sam, is it true that Jesus never needed his nappy changed because he was the Son of God?’ I wonder what you would have said?

I blame Christmas carols! We sing things like ‘sleep in heavenly peace’ and ‘the little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes’ when the whole point of the Christmas story is that God chooses to leave behind the peace of heaven in order to come to earth, into all its mess and chaos.

After all, when you think about it, there was nothing peaceful about the circumstances of his birth. And that’s the point. This isn’t some tale of an otherworldly visitation by God. The story of the first Christmas is all about how God chooses to come into this world as it really is; as one of us as we really are.

So, of course Jesus cried. Of course, Jesus needed his nappy changed. Of course, Jesus did that Olympic-style projectile vomiting thing that babies sometimes do. God didn’t just dress up and play a part in some kind of very realistic nativity play. The point is that God himself came into the world as a real baby to make things different from the inside. Which is why King Herod was so worried. If Jesus had just been a baby who stayed asleep in a manger then there would have been no problem. There would have been no threat. It wouldn’t have changed a thing. People could go on twisting truth and cheating others without a worry in the world. But Herod knew the baby would grow and that then the trouble would start: the Kingdom he brought with him would grow. With this baby would come the justice, the peace, the truth, the light that people had spoken about quietly for centuries. Suddenly, what people were yearning for would suddenly burst into life and it would mean that the world would never be the same again.

I guess that lots of people today are pretty comfortable with the idea of Jesus asleep in a cattle trough. But what about the idea of the baby growing up? Of God being among us and at work in the world? Of God and his people transforming the world, making earth a bit more like heaven?

Maybe that challenges you a bit. Hopefully it gives you some kind of comfort too. A sense of hope. Maybe, like the shepherds and the wise men, a rumour of justice and truth is just what you need to hear.

Maybe a message of peace and love is exactly what you think the world needs more than ever at the moment. Well. wherever you find yourself this Christmas, my prayer for each of us is that, somehow, we will find ourselves caught up anew in this story of God coming among us and that the news of Jesus’ birth will bring us, and all those whom we love, the gifts of light and life afresh.

Now, is it just me, or can you hear a baby crying…?

Have a very merry Christmas!

The Reverend Canon Sam Corley is the Rector of Leeds.