St John's Point Is Not That A Baby Was Born In ...

St John’s point is not that a baby was born in Bethlehem and laid in a manger but that God became a person and that person was Jesus

Sometimes we can get really hung up on this. If God was person, who did every-one pray to during Jesus life time, who did all the God-stuff while Jesus was on earth? how could God be both outside of time and yet in it at the same time? Why is Ruth I asking such difficult questions so late at night?

Alfred Hitchcock, the producer and director of films such as Psycho, rear window and Rebecca, liked to take small cameo parts in his films. In Psycho he’s a man in cowboy hat, In rear windows a man winding a clock, in Marnie a man leaving his office. There he was creating this film and then he steps into it and becomes part of it.

It is quite possible for him to direct, and produce - do all the creating, yet at the same time take a role - become part of the creation. We might think that at Christmas God became a character in the human drama, whilst still being director, producer, writer.

But of course, like all parallels we make it is flawed. When God became a person it wasn’t to play a Cameo role. Jesus role was on such a Cosmic scale that it divided history two - AD and BC. Jesus’s role is the most important in the whole of history.

So the Creator of the world becomes part of his creation.