If the message of the Incarnation, the coming of Jesus into human experience, had to be condensed into a single sentence it couldn’t be bettered than the words of John: "He came to his own home and his own people received him not" (1:11). In the opening verses of his Gospel, John had already written that Jesus was the Light that shines in the darkness of the world and yet, unbelievably, "the world knew Him not."
The Christmas story, if it could be portrayed on a great canvas across the front of the church, would be full of contrasts. There would be the blinding light of the angelic hosts filling the night sky over the Bethlehem fields; there would be the focused light of that strange moving star that led the Wise Men to Jerusalem and on to Bethlehem. And yet woven into this wonderful story of the Incarnation there’s a darker side of poverty, suspicion and murder.
As we obey the Lord’s command to partake of the Communion this Christmas we rejoice in what the Lord Jesus did for us at Calvary. We should also remember that Calvary is foreshadowed in the Incarnation. It’s true to say that the shadow of the Cross darkened the stable in which Jesus was born, and fell across the manger in which he was cradled. The darker side of Christmas doesn’t sit too comfortably with the popular image but, of course, neither does the Cross. The Incarnation foreshadows the Cross and to understate this aspect is to distort the truth, to detract from the full meaning. To be a true Christian is to know the truth of the Gospel; to absorb it into our understanding and to work it out in our daily living and lifestyle and to share it with others.
For a picture to be true it must be composed of light and shade, the bright and also the dark colours. The joyful news of the advent of the Redeemer, Emmanuel, God with us, must be balanced by his virtual rejection apart from a few shepherds and the neglect of the religious establishment and the outright hostility of the government. Things haven’t changed much today. Public opinion polls report that very few regard Christmas as a Christian festival; most people think it is an excuse for a knees up!
The way of the world is to portray Christmas as a great sentimental occasion, vastly overdone as a festival, so that its real meaning is so encrusted with tradition, wrapped up in half- truths of peace and goodwill. The result is that the truth of the gospel, is lost. The Incarnation is reduced to a "sugary" Christmas, just a season of the year to have a good time and be generous. It’s a perfect opportunity for the marketing men to have a field day in making money by persuading people to spend money on what they can’t afford and to over indulge on what they don’t need. What a travesty of the truth! It’s to the first Christmas that we have to go to find the real meaning.
Let’s try to forget the tinsel and colour lights, the canned music of the carols in the High Street, and get back to the reality of the Biblical account, to some of the neglected aspects. Some of it isn’t very nice because it focuses on suffering and death itself, and it points to the Cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, but it’s what the Christians of the early Church would have recognised as the truth.
I’m told there’s a picture painted of the boy Jesus greeting the dawn. He is shown with his arms open but the rising sun throws a shadow behind him - the shadow has the shape of a cross. The artist must have been a discerning person for he recognises a real truth - that the road to the Cross begins at Bethlehem. This will be apparent as we explore the significance of some of the lesser-mentioned incidents of the Christmas story. First, we consider:
THE SIGN OF A SWORD
When Jesus was being presented as a baby in the temple at Jerusalem, the devout and aged Simeon was inspired to say to Mary: "This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against … the thoughts of many will be revealed and a sword will pierce your own heart too" (Luke 2:34,35).
Jesus, the Word made flesh, had to enter human life at a particular point in history and as a member of a particular race and nation. Preparation for his coming had been going on for centuries. The Old Testament prophets had anticipated his coming in very direct prophecy. You would have thought that when the Word eventually became incarnate among that people in fulfilment of the promises made, he would have been welcomed as one who was entering his home. Sadly, that was not to be. Israel was in a very special sense God’s own possession but listen to this complaint that Isaiah lays against her: "Hear, 0 heavens, and give ear, 0 earth; for the Lord has spoken, Sons I have reared and brought up, but they have rebelled against me. The ox knows its master, and the ass its master’s crib; but Israel does not know, my people does not understand" (1:2,3).
That’s the dark side of Christmas. Let’s pick out some of the detail to illustrate the rejection of Jesus by the world and of how he was utterly disowned except by a very small remnant of the faithful. The Incarnation is centred on Bethlehem. This little town, a bus ride from Jerusalem, had a long history. The prophet Micah said: "But you, Bethlehem … out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel" (5:2). It was in Bethlehem, David’s city, which the Jews expected great David’s greater son to be born. It was there that they expected God’s anointed one to come into the world, and to Bethlehem he came. But this expectation of the Messiah was largely theoretical as far as the Jews were concerned.
When Jesus was born in Bethlehem were the chief citizens of the land waiting to greet him? Were there great crowds pressing the railings of the hospital awaiting the medical bulletin? Oh, no, it wasn’t like that at all. Instead, it was left to some foreigners to greet him. It’s in that story we see:
THE SYMBOL OF MYRRH
The description in the Gospels of the visitors to the infant Jesus is "Wise men from the East". Who were these mystical figures? It’s likely that they were Persian astrologers who believed that they could foretell the future from the stars and that a man’s destiny was settled by the star under which he was born. The many pages in the tabloid newspapers of the 21st century devoted to "Your Stars" indicate that civilisation hasn’t progressed much in two thousand years. But at least these wise men had a pure motive.
What a sad reflection on the spiritual state of the world that the initiative in welcoming the Messiah was taken by heathen men whilst those who had known the revelation from God had their eyes blinded. "He came to his own home and his own people received Him not." Let’s think for a moment of how the religious experts of the day reacted. The reaction of the chief priests and scribes was complete indifference. It didn’t make the slightest difference to them. They were so engrossed in their temple ritual and their legal discussions that they simply completely ignored Jesus. He meant nothing to them. There are still those who were so interested in their own affairs that Jesus Christ means nothing to them.
The religious aristocrats and theologians were sent scrambling back to their scrolls to find out where the "anointed one" of God should be born. They found the reference in Micah but when and to whom, they couldn’t say. The religious experts had missed the star. Oh, they may have seen the star in the sky but it didn’t mean anything to them. It was just another little light. They weren’t expecting anything to happen. They weren’t watching for a miracle of God’s intervention into human society. They weren’t looking for God in the midst of their trouble and need. They weren’t looking for God to fill the desperate void in their lives. No, they missed out on the star and it was to the wise men that Herod asked the question, "When did the star appear?"
The religious leaders may have been spiritually dull but that’s only a minor fault when compared to the gross wickedness of Herod. He was half Jew and when it came to his ears that the wise men had come from the East, and that they were searching for the little child who had been born to be king of the Jews, he was worried. Herod had one terrible flaw in his character. He was almost insanely suspicious. If he suspected anyone as a rival to his power, that person was promptly eliminated. He had assassinated several members of his family. It’s clear how such a man would feel when the news reached him that a child was born who was destined to be king. Herod was troubled, and those around him knew that Herod would do all he could to eliminate this child.
Herod sent for the wise men, and dispatched them to make diligent search for the little child under the pretence that he, too, wished to come and worship the child. But really his one desire was to murder the child born to be king. Herod’s reaction was that of hatred and hostility. He was afraid that this little child was going to interfere with his life, his power and his influence and therefore he had to be destroyed. There are still those who would gladly destroy Jesus Christ because they see in him the one who interferes with their lives. They wish to do what they like, and Christ won’t let them do what they like, and so they would kill him. The person whose one desire is to do what he likes has never any use for Jesus Christ.
What a contrast there was in the reaction of the wise men. Theirs was that of adoring worship. Their desire was to lay at the feet of Jesus the noblest gifts that they could bring. This must be the reaction of any person who realises the love of God in Jesus Christ and to be lost in wonder, love and praise. The gifts they brought have a particular fitness, as each of them matches some characteristic of Jesus and his work. But it was the gift of myrrh that must receive comment as we are pondering over the serious side of the Christmas message. Myrrh was one of the ingredients of Israel’s holy anointing oil. It was used to anoint the prophets, priests and kings of Israel. The name "Christ" is from the Greek word meaning the "anointed one" and, of course, Jesus is the greatest of all the prophets, priests and kings.
Myrrh has a bitter taste and smell, and we see this symbolised by his dying on the Cross of Calvary where he drank to the full of the bitter pain and suffering so that we should receive our wonderful salvation. When you drink the communion wine, its taste is sweet, yet at Calvary, Christ drank the bitter cup of pain and suffering. At the beginning and the end of his earthly life, myrrh was offered to Jesus. When Jesus was on the Cross he was offered "wine mingled with myrrh; but he did not take it" (Matt 27:34). He wanted to make full atonement for our sins.
Myrrh is the gift for one who is to die. It was used to embalm the bodies of the dead and it reminds us again of the dark side of Christmas, that Jesus came into the world to die. The association of myrrh with death is symbolic of his destiny. He came for this purpose; to give his life a ransom for many. The gift of myrrh indicated that his step from the throne to the manger was a step along the road to the Cross. The symbolism of myrrh with death was soon to be made a terrible reality as we see another part of the story of the Incarnation. It was:
THE SORROW OF RACHAEL
The wise men in obedience to divine warning not to return to Herod after finding the baby Jesus, returned home by another route. This aroused Herod’s anger to greater proportions and he sent out his death squads to massacre all the young children in Bethlehem and the surrounding district. Here is a terrible illustration of what men will do to get rid of Jesus Christ. If a man is set in his own way; if he sees in Christ someone who is liable to interfere with his ambitions and rebuke his ways, then his one desire is to eliminate Christ. How many innocent babies were killed, we can only guess - it might have been anything from 30 to 100. But what appalling suffering and anguish for the parents.
Matthew sees this travail as a fulfilment of a prophecy by Jeremiah: "A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and much lamenting. Rachael weeping for her children, and she refused to be comforted, for they were no more" (31:15). What happened in Jeremiah’s day was that after Jerusalem had been destroyed, the prisoners had been brought to Ramah to be disposed of, by the sword or in captivity. The cries of the oppressed were also heard in Bethlehem.
Ramah was the place where Rachael was buried. The prophet pictures Rachael weeping even in her tomb, for the fate that had befallen the people. It has been repeated down the centuries in man’s inhumanity to man. Even in our lifetime there were the Nazi extermination camps for the Jews and very recently in the ethnic cleansing of minority groups in the Balkan states and in Indonesia. Doesn’t this reveal the sinfulness of sin? Satan has no pity for his victims, innocent or not. He is a hard taskmaster.
The infant Jesus could easily have been a victim and although it was a foreshadowing of the horror of the Cross, his hour had not yet come and God prevented it from happening. Satan could do his worst but God was working his purposes out. An angel warned Joseph to flee the country with the young child and to travel to Egypt. It wasn’t going to be a holiday! It was a long dangerous journey to Egypt, to say nothing of leaving the security of his home and business. Yes, Jesus knows all about the troubles of the refugees of today.
Jesus is the way to God if he is received as Saviour, but if not, he is an offence. It isn’t so much God who judges mankind; we judge ourselves by our reaction to the Lord Jesus Christ. The Incarnation was but the opening scene of the drama of salvation. If we see it in any other way we lose its real meaning, we detract from the full revelation of God to man. The dark scenes of the Incarnation are there for a purpose - they are to point us to the salvation that was only brought about by the suffering of the Cross. In the fullness of time the power of the Incarnation, Emmanuel, God with us, would be known through the Cross and then the full glory of the light of the coming of Jesus would be revealed. May we come into a deeper understanding the Incarnation.
