Fr John says this reflection was first published in Perth's "The Record" about fifteen years ago and drew passionate responses both in favour of what he wrote and others wanting to haul him over hot coals. Today he says he's not quite as angry as he was then with the institution but the thrust of what he wrote still holds. Rounding out his reflection from last Saturday, he argues we need to find the Christ-child within ourselves. It's an argument inviting us to view Jesus as the model for our lives.

What do we see looking at a newborn baby...

Christmas is about babies, looking at and listening to babies, any baby, every baby.

What is it that mothers and fathers see when they look at a newborn baby? Do they gaze at it with wonder and awe, aware somehow of the revelation of a mystery that is far beyond their comprehension? Do they see the baby as revealing to them something of God, as well as some truth about themselves? To do that is truly to celebrate Christmas in a Christian way.

It is the revelation of that mystery, and of what is basic to humanity, that is at the heart of the Bethlehem story. In the midst of the sights, smells and sounds of the animals whose winter home this stable was, in the midst of the pain, the blood, sweat and tears of childbirth, Mary and Joseph looked at their child and heard the revelation of God. So did the shepherds, who then went back out to their ordinary lives, praising the God who revealed himself to them in the person of a baby, the God who revealed to them something of their own greatness, of their divinity.

Throwing out the baby with the bathwater…

Some time ago, as we spoke of some changes I thought necessary in the Church, a friend said that I was trying to throw out the baby with the bathwater. "The baby and the bathwater" is an old analogy, of course, and used in all kinds of contexts, but in this context it seemed particularly apt. It is my contention that, in the early church, when the story of the human baby at Bethlehem was most important, they threw out the baby and kept the bathwater, and it is bathwater that has consumed all our time and attention ever since. Some people came to the baby and they saw and heard the revelation of God; others saw the baby as a threat and determined to kill it. What Herod failed to do, the church managed easily enough, and modern society with its rampant adultism is doing it too in a much more brutal way as it threatens the life of the unborn, the poor, the weak and the powerless; as it demeans and brutalises women; as it connives at war and firearms with which men play their games, games which mainly victimise women and children.

The baby at Bethlehem is all-important, not just for what it tells us about Jesus, but for what it says about God and about us, each one of us. It tells us that the uncreated God poured out all his creative energy into human flesh, that each one of us shares in both the "isness" of God and in God's divinity and creativity. That is the essence of God's message spoken through the baby in Bethlehem; it is the essence of God's message that God speaks through each and every baby. It is the message that God wants to speak through each and every person, but can only do so if we preserve the childlikeness that is apparent in a baby. "Unless you become like a little child..."

Saving "the baby"…

That reality is something that Christians have never been really able to cope with, so they threw out the human baby and all it meant. They put a halo around the child in Bethlehem; they said that this child, and this child only, was God made flesh; they gave this child divine knowledge and divine powers to put him apart from other human beings; and today they lock up this person in tabernacles and in heaven and in dogmas so that he is apart from all human experience. Is it this understanding that has given rise to doctrines such as the Trinity, the virgin birth, the immaculate conception, and original sin; none of which has any biblical foundation, and all of which have caused a great deal of guilt and pain among ordinary people, and have put Mary, the mother of Jesus, in a position where ordinary women cannot relate to her. Has it not put Jesus in a position where he is no earthly use to anyone? All of these things are the bathwater in which the baby of Bethlehem was washed, but it was the human baby that was thrown out. All of these are the evidence of the way the church has practised adultism. In effect, have we not got rid of the human baby that Jesus was, and substituted something that we can never be.

The truth about Jesus, God's Word made flesh, is this: ALL THAT JESUS WAS, WE CAN BE! If Jesus was the Word made flesh, God's creative energy for the life of the world, then we can be; if Jesus was the Christ, then we can be; if Jesus was the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, then we too are called to be that; we too are called to be saviours of the world. There is absolutely no truth about Jesus that should not be truth about us too, if we really want it to be so.

But to be the saviours of the world and life givers to the world we must get rid of the bathwater and resurrect the baby.

Couldn't we, this year at least, put away all the good and holy thoughts we might have about the Christmas story, and spend our time looking at and listening to all that God wants to teach us in a baby, every baby!

IMAGE SOURCE: The image of the Christmas child used in the head and tail banners wsa sourced from stock.xchng. The photograph was taken by Meral Akbulut, Istanbul, Turkey.

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©2007 John O'Keefe

[Index of Commentaries by Fr John O'Keefe]