Unrecognizable

Perhaps you have been to a college or high school reunion and heard the line, regarding someone in the room, “Wow, I would never have recognized him.” Obviously, this could be a compliment or a slam, depending on whether “the look” has improved or degraded. I do not think I would be recognized at a high school reunion, because I really never wear bell-bottom pants anymore. (Or did I more typically wear Levi 501 jeans?)

Wouldn’t you agree that Episcopal hymnals have been known for having entries nobody recognizes? Our current hymnal, The Hymnal 1982, like those before it, helpfully groups hymns in categories. The Christmas category starts with Hymn 77 and ends with Hymn 115. The latter you would recognize, the former, not so much. Neither text nor tune would help you place Hymn 77. Both of them carry theology of the Holy Incarnation, the blessed Nativity of our Lord, the heart of the Christmas message.

Let’s see what comes of looking at lines from both of them, perhaps to absorb the beauty of the Christmas Mystery. Before we do, remember tomorrow is Christmas Eve, so today is the last full day of Advent. The season of Advent is ponderous, because in the unfolding of these weeks we hold together two pictures of Christ. We anticipate his coming in power and glorious majesty and we anticipate celebrating how he came to us in meekness in Bethlehem.

Recall with me two figures in paintings from the Italian Renaissance. The more familiar is the Christ figure in Michelangelo’s Last Judgement: the art that covers the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel. The face of Jesus in this judgement scene is calm not angry. Still, the full muscular figure is imposing, with right hand and arm raised, as he looks in the direction of the contemned on his left. His mother, Mary, is to his right in a demure pose, leaning toward Christ, with her face turned away toward the blessed souls, the redeemed. It is the picture of Christ the just. Here, Christ visually reveals strength.

Now visualize the infant with his mother in Botticelli’s The Mystical Nativity, which hangs in the National Gallery in London. The baby looks up at his mother from the cloth-draped manger. His right arm is raised affectionately toward her. Mary, standing, looks down toward him, her hands held together in a reverent pose.  It seems to be a picture of the love between God and humanity depicted as powerful tenderness.

I am hoping we can visualize Christ in these two ways of Advent: in imposing power, and in the paradox of true God as vulnerable infant. This prepares us beautifully to look into the stunning paradoxical revelation of God almighty incarnated as a helpless human newborn. So now we turn to lines of the generally unfamiliar Hymn 77, “From east to west, from shore to shore”:

Behold, the world’s creator wears the form and fashion of a slave;
our very flesh our Maker shares, his fallen creatures all to save.

For this how wondrously he wrought! A maid in lowly human place
became, in ways beyond all thought, the chosen vessel of his grace.

And while the angels in the sky, sang praise above the silent field,
to shepherds’ poor, the Lord Most High, the one great Shepherd, was revealed.

As with many Christmas sermons, anthems and hymns, here is proclaimed the wonder, the Almighty comes to us meek and mild, indeed, helpless. As a way of saving us fallen creatures, the merciful Creator comes and takes our very flesh. A humble peasant maiden becomes the channel through which God’s grace brings about our healing. It is, to be sure, as the song says, “beyond all thought”.

Taking up the same theme, Hymn 115, What Child is This, the last hymn in the Christmas section, presents the same marvel. It challenges us to see int the helplessness of the son of Mary, the ominous power of Christ the King. Contemplate this, the hymn’s second verse:

Why lies he in such mean estate where ox and ass are feeding?
Good Christian fear: for sinners here the silent Word is pleading.
This, this is Christ the King, whom shepherds guard and angels sing;
Haste, haste to bring him laud, the babe, the son of Mary.

The hymn-writer/poet, William Chatterton Dix (1837-1898), presents gems here. We can almost see a new baby, finishing his crying, now momentarily silent. He is so fully human. Yet we are moved to see the baby also as the eternal, divine Word. Look at the paradoxical rendering: “the silent Word is pleading”. First, how can pleading be silent? And completely amazing: for whom is the Word in silence pleading? The Word made flesh, here silently pleads for sinners. Such wonder prompts “good Christian fear.” You and I become reverent worshipers, rapt in awe, considering what child this is sleeping on Mary’s lap. In ordinary thinking, this child is unrecognizable as the Savior powerful enough to heal our sin, conquer death, and bring us to loving ways. Nevertheless, what if we peer through the lens of faith?

Both hymns urge the same thing:” Marvel this baby is God!” Think of it: he cannot talk; with his involuntary movements, he requires swaddling to keep him from scratching his own face. Yet he is God. Do I have the spiritual receptivity and depth to marvel at this? Impossible as it is, this babe of whom angels of heaven sing and whom shepherds of earth guard is the King of all. This baby is the Anointed of God, the Christ. Can we get hold of this mystery—not cognitively to analyze it—but to hold it in joyous wonder? If so, we will be, in the language of the second hymn, one of those whose “loving hearts enthrone him.”