Born of the Virgin Mary...

One of my favourite carols has the verse:
Angels and archangels
may have gathered there,
cherubim and seraphim
thronged the air,
but his mother Mary
in her maiden bliss
worshipped the Beloved
with a kiss.

There was a glory, a mystery, about the birth of Jesus - the Creator of the universe in a little baby. The poet Studdert Kennedy uses the striking phrase 'the five little fingers of God'. Paintings portray angels gathered around the stable. Of course they were invisible, or visible only to the imagination, but that humble stable (or wherever it was) shone with the glory of God.

Yet isn't this true of every birth? I have never had the experience myself, but to hold your own new-born child in your arms, especially in the company of the one you love, must be the nearest human beings get to heavenly bliss. Surely the magic of the Christmas story is that it says something significant and wonderful about the birth of a child - any child.

I believe that Jesus was the Son of God in the sense that in him human nature was most completely in tune with the nature of God. In that sense Jesus is 'His only Son, our Lord', but what it really says to me is that God is like Jesus - loving, giving, vulnerable and in the end indestructible because whatever happens love keeps bouncing back.

'In her maiden bliss': I don't believe in the Virgin Birth as a fact. It is the kind of myth that often in the ancient world attached itself to significant people. But birth itself, any birth, is a miracle. And I like to think of Mary, whether married or not, as a young innocent girl knowing for the first time the fearful joy of bringing a new life into the world from her own body.

God came into the world through the womb of Mary, yes. But God constantly comes into the world, not only when a child is born but whenever a human being is attuned to the loving nature of God. God can be born in you and me, men or women, young or old, and the loving, healing, challenging Christ walks the earth again.