Humility.
Meekness.
Tenderness.
There is glory, angelic might, omnipotent God, and three magi, but there would be no Nativity if there were not humility, meekness, and tenderness. The light, life, and wisdom are easy to desire, but embracing humility, meekness, and tenderness reveal if we wish true light, genuine life, and Holy Wisdom, and not just a seems-like product sold to us by the world, our own desires, and devils.
Humility was Jesus being willing to go even to the Cross.
When Christ came, He was a servant and He accepted the possibility that this service would include the Cross. We may hear the truth so often that we forget: God did not come to the Emperor in Rome or to the King in Jerusalem. He came to the woman who consented to become the Mother of God. God chose Mary and she gloried that this choice and her consent inverted every social expectation. The humble, those who serve in virtue, are exalted and the proud, mighty, the winners as the world counts winning are cast down.
This is remarkable, a revolution and one that always is a possibility in Christ’s Kingdom. Those who rule must do so humbly or those rulers will be cast down. Humility is deferring a victory that would destroy the weak in order to bring more universal justice.
Humility cannot be demanded of others by anyone other than God, the only being who is self-sufficient and wise enough to know how to act in all places at all times. Humility, especially if we would lead, is a demand we makes on ourselves.
Why?
The calculus of Christmas is that the meek will inherit the Earth. There is no final victory if any injustice is part of that triumph, but we are so broken, uncertain, that no act in which we are involved can be perfectly just. Until the reign of King Jesus, begun at creation, made manifest to us at Bethlehem, and perfectly manifest at the end of time, there can be no ruler, no government, no constitution, that fully reflects God’s perfect justice. This means that the meek, those who are tender hearted and will not crush those who are hurting, are the only ones fit to rule. Moses was meek, because when his people deserved Divine Wrath, Moses would have preferred that wrath to fall on himself if that would save. Moses was strong, capable, but he directed that strength to salvation.
For a Christian, this meekness is a great image of God’s work in the Nativity. God came in the person of Jesus to save us, for those of us who do not know how lonely we are. As a result, in any governmental form, the Christian has (at our best) been humble. Nothing, even political orders that are very good, is perfect. The seeds of destruction are there. The rulers or those who serve do so doing as little harm as possible: justice with mercy.
The shepherds become an image of Christmas, because God comes with glory tenderly. Power comes in tenderness: the Mother of God holds God made man. The image of those with authority as shepherds is meant to invoke this tenderness. The gentle shepherd will fight to defend the sheep, heal the sheep, carry the sheep when they are tired. He will not be content to lose one of his flock. Jesus often is called the Good Shepherd, an image with many meanings, but one that includes tenderness. There is wrath coming, built into the very fabric of the cosmos, for all our failures. The tender Savior came to protect, heal, give rest to all of us.
He came to defeat injustice without doing injustice. There was not just evil in the world, there was great good. The injustice of Rome stood with the justice of Rome, the first undercutting the second, the second giving a reason to love the Romans. The beauty of classical art, literature, philosophy, poetry was brilliant, but shone fitfully since the light was dimmed by tyranny and oppression. No work was so good that evil could not be found. Jesus came to tenderly save the good while utterly destroying the bad. He made the crooked straight instead of obliterating the road.
The work of Christmas was to cast down our pride, our hardness of heart, and our harshness. The King of Christmas is the humble, meek, and tender ruler: the good Shepherd, the wiseman, the bright Star.
May we become more like He is.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In