I am fully aware that today is the 20th of January and not the 20th of December, but I refuse to let a calendar completely affect my thinking about Jesus.
I went to Christmas Eve service at the Springville Library. During the service we sang hymns and listened to Scripture readings and lit candles before I had to leave the service with an angry baby. The service was completely ordinary, not in a bad way, but it was the sort of Christmas Eve service I have attended year after year. It was during this ordinary service that my mind was drawn to an extraordinary, ordinary point of the story.
Swaddling cloths.
Throughout the reading of Luke's version of the Christmas story the detail of swaddling cloths is mentioned.
"And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped Him in swaddling cloths and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn." Luke 2:7
And the angel proclaimed:
"And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger." Luke 2:12
Until I became a father I had very little idea what swaddling cloths were. Now I know very well about swaddling. We swaddled our children snuggly when they were infants, and we are by no means the only ones. I don't know a parent who doesn't swaddle. Swaddling is the norm and has been for centuries.
So, I had to ask: Why does Luke tell us Mary swaddled Jesus and why on earth does the angel tell the shepherds that Jesus was swaddled?
I had never asked myself those questions when reading or hearing this passage, but on Christmas Eve this time it leapt out at me. The question was begged. I mean, the Bible makes no mention of whether the Christ-child had a pacifier or if Mary nursed Him, but it tells us this detail. Why? Why did the angel mention that baby Jesus was in swaddling cloths and in a manger? Surely He was the only kid in town lying in a feeding trough. Animal feeding trough sleeping certainly was sign enough for searching shepherds, why mention the ordinary when an out of the ordinary was occurring?
As I pondered those questions with my own crying son it occurred to me that ordinariness is extraordinary when it comes to the very Son of God. It's hard to imagine God as a baby, but when we do we tend to imagine Him as a very unbaby baby. How could God be anything close to ordinary in any respect? Isn't He completely holy; completely other?
I remember when my own first born son came into this world. We wrapped him in a swaddle and laid him in a bassinet... in the Waverly Health Center without a domesticated animal in sight. Little Joshua was so weak and frail and his little head was bruised from the trauma of birth. He was easily startled and would lift his arms above his head at the slightest sound and so he needed the comfort of being wrapped tightly in a cotton swaddle. For months his swaddle helped him sleep peacefully.
The God of all comfort needed comfort (2 Corinthians 1:3-4).
Jesus is 100% God and 100% man. He lowered Himself so much that the God of all comfort needed the comfort of strips of linen wrapped tightly around His little frame. Jesus knows how we need to be comforted because He needed comfort from His first moments on.
The Omniscient God had a startle reflex (Psalm 139:4)
Jesus has always known everything, and has even known it before it comes to be for He ordains and is sovereign over all. Yet, as a human baby He had a startle reflex. Jesus humbled Himself so far as to be freaked out a bit by a sudden noise coming near the manger.
The God who will wipe away all tears cried (Revelation 21:4)
Jesus was a normal baby. Jesus needed to be swaddled. One of the reasons we swaddled our kids tightly was so they wouldn't cry. The song "Away in a Manger" has a silly line in the second verse that says, "But little Lord Jesus no crying He makes." I sing "some" instead of "no" in that verse because Jesus was supernatural and all natural at the same time. My Lord Jesus knows weeping first hand (John 11:35). Jesus' mom swaddled Him to comfort Him. Mary most certainly wiped her holy little one's tears, too.
"Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men." Philippians 2:5-7
Just because the tree is gone and the lights are put away doesn't mean we can't continue to ponder the wonderful humanity of Jesus. We should keep in our minds that "we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need" (Hebrews 4:15-16) today.
