I think that deep down, the fact that Jesus is human scares us a little bit. The magically nostalgic scenes of a beautiful, shining infant in a stable with some sheep and cows is a safer image, but this Babe we celebrate this time of year didn’t stay a baby; He grew up.
He toddled to His mother and father, taking His first steps. He climbed trees, and skinned His knees. He was a teenager with acne and emotions. He helped His father in his carpenter shop. He ate meals with His family; did chores around the house, kissed His mother goodnight and laboured in His father’s carpenter’s business for nearly thirty years to provide for His mother and siblings. All this before He once multiplied bread and fish or opened the eyes of a man born blind.
Why does this scare us? I think the fact that Jesus is a man has implications for those of us who believe in Him. If He is human, then we have to be. If we are “little Christs” as the name Christian literally means, then, like Him, we must be lowly and vulnerable and willing to serve others.The one who scrubs toilets at home or flips burgers on the weekend to provide for their family is doing work just as sacred as the one preaching on the streets or serving up meals at a soup kitchen for the homeless.
Jesus demonstrates for us that all of life is sacred, and we can and should reflect His glory in all of our every-day activities and endeavors.
This has hit home for me in the past year as my husband and I and our two girls are in ministry transition. Yes – this is a nice way of saying that ministry in our church didn’t end like we planned, and, suddenly, one day my husband wasn’t a pastor anymore; nor was I a pastor’s wife.
I found myself during this time asking the question: “Am I really serving God now?” I am not doing music for services or hosting church people in our home or helping my husband sort out thoughts for his sermons. All this was gone. Was I really no longer in ministry?
For too long our North American evangelical culture has established an almost godlike status for those in full-time ministry; and, I confess, that God has had to work that mindset out of me. When I was in Bible school, I dreamed about all the things I wanted to do for God. After all, the quote by William Carey, the father of modern missions, was frequently quoted there: “Expect great things of God; attempt great things for God.”
Now, don’t get me wrong. Desiring to see God do God-sized things through us, is a good ambition. But…we dare not forget that our God became man and sanctified every lowly, messy, human vulnerability that we spend most of our waking moments trying to hide from others, especially when we are in vocational Christian ministry.
I hesitate to even use that phrase because of its very implications that those of us whom God has called to give our to lives full-time to serve the church are somehow above the Christian plumber who loves God and his wife and children and does his messy work faithfully for God’s glory every day. Reality check, pastor’s wife! You’re not above him.
Being away from full-time church work for a season has taught me that I must rejoice in my humanity and the every-moment glory I can give God by worshiping Him in whatever task or interaction with others is before me.
It has taught me that I have no more worth or value to my Heavenly Father when I am crazy-busy as a pastor’s wife with my day full of community outreach, church activities, and discipleship and event-planning meetings, than when I am simply caring for my husband and children and working at whatever task God has put before me for each day.
Consider, did the Father love the Son any less during the thirty years he hammered and planed and sanded and built than when he was feeding the five thousand or healing the sick? Of course not.
This Christmas season, as we ponder the Living Word who dwelt among us so we could behold His glory, don’t be afraid to be human like He was. This was the glory—for Him to be God in human form among us. We can rejoice in our weaknesses and in the beauty of His love for us in our most vulnerable nakedness of soul.
As an infant comes into the world completely helpless before those in it, so our Saviour was humbled, and so can we be humbled. If we allow God to minister to us as needy humans, He will shape us into little jars of clay in which He will place His glory (see II Corinthians 4:6-7). In this way, we, too, can dwell among those around us so that all will behold His glory in us.
