Hold the Baby
For a child has been born for us, a son given to us.
You’ll forgive me if I say this has been an extraordinary year for me. As many of you know, the joy and the shock began exactly a year ago, less just a very few hours. There I was, on Christmas morning last year, struggling to get out of bed, wake up properly, and make myself coherent enough to take a morning service at St Michael’s, when all of a sudden, with a tone in her voice that I’ve never heard before, Alison makes me sit down, and tells me she’s pregnant. And thus began a journey of joys and worries the like of which I could never, remotely, have understood before.
The prospect and subsequent reality of being a parent is, of course, enormous to anyone to whom it happens; when, like Alison and me, you have waited a very long time, and almost given up hope, it feels even more enormous. And ever since Christmas Day last year, we have been on a journey of discovery, and on a roller-coaster of anxiety and happiness that has a far greater intensity than I would ever have guessed.
And of all the amazing moments in this last twelve months, one of the most powerful for me came about an hour after little Benedict was born. Birth, however and whenever it happens, is a serious business. Benedict, as it happens, ended up being born by C Section at the end of a long day, and that, in itself, was profound enough. But, you know, the moment which really did it for me - the moment when I realized I was changed, utterly and totally, changed whether I liked it and wanted it (which I did), or not - that moment came about an hour later, when all the urgency and excitement of the operating theatre was over, and Alison and Benedict had been transferred up to the Maternity Ward, with me in tow.
We all arrived in the dead of night in a side-room up in KGH, and in came a midwife to look after Benedict and Alison. She quickly and deftly unwrapped Benedict from the towel in which he had been swaddled after his birth, and within seconds had popped his first nappy on him and then his first clothes. And then she turned her attention to Alison, to make sure she was comfortable. And as she did so, I looked down at this beautiful little baby, in his hospital crib, and, instinctively, I knew I wanted to pick him up and cuddle him. And I was about to say to the midwife, "May I hold the baby?", when I suddenly realized that I was his father, and I didn’t need anyone’s permission to hold him or cuddle him - he was my child.
That was a moment of realization that will never leave me, silly though it may sound. I’m 45, and I’d pretty much given up realistic hope of being a dad, and I’d always felt awkward with or around small children or babies. I’d always been on the receiving end of kind parents looking at me, and asking - probably with their heart in their mouth - "would you like to hold the baby?" And finally - here was my own baby to hold, without question or permission.
For a child has been born for us, a son given to us.
Up and down the country, preachers are standing in pulpits at the moment, and they are making the point that in the Christmas story, we see that God makes himself vulnerable. God takes flesh as a baby, helpless, tiny and totally dependent on others. Many preachers over the years - myself included - have focussed in on God the Son, the Word made Flesh, seen at Christmas as this precious, vulnerable human, totally dependent on the love and support of others. And when you add to that the particular bizarre and unfortunate circumstances of his birth - born to unmarried parents, a long way from home, in a manger not a proper dwelling place, visited first by dirty shepherds who have run in from the fields, sought out by astrologers from Iraq or thereabouts who seem more interested in his death than his birth, hounded out of his native country by an evil tyrant of a king - when preachers make you think about all that, we hope you sit there in your place, and you really appreciate just how vulnerable God the Son really was, doing Incarnation, and becoming truly human. But have you ever stopped to think just how vulnerable God the Father felt?
Those first moments of paternity are extraordinarily precious and extraordinarily scary. In all the years I waited for a Benedict or a little girl to be born to me and Alison - during all those times when other friends who had become parents were brave enough to say to me, "Would you like to hold the baby?" - I was really nervous. To be honest, I often declined, which didn’t surprise a lot of people, who thought that babies and children weren’t really my thing. It was only with truly close friends that I felt brave enough to hold their babies.
And I’m not God - I’m merely a vicar. And tonight’s great celebration isn’t just a reminder about the perils that babies face. If you like, it is also a reminder of how vulnerable parents are.
For tonight is the night when we remember that God said to the world, to all of his creation, "Hey, people - would you like to hold the baby?" God the Father entrusted the world to look after his Son. That precious being that was in the beginning with God, that being that was God, that being that was the life that was the light of all people. That being that was the Word made Flesh that was full of grace and truth. God the Father took all that - all that creativity, and joy, and grace, and truth, and light, and life - God the Father took his only son, and said to Mary, and Joseph, and the shepherds, and the magi, and the disciples, and the apostles, and Herod, and Pilate, and the Centurion, and Mary Magdalene, and St Peter and St Paul, and you, and me, and even my own little baby Benedict - God the Father took his only son, and said to each one of us, "Would you like to hold the baby?"
The Incarnation, that great mystery which we celebrate on this holy night, the Incarnation is not just about God being human, it is about God trusting humans. God loving us and trusting us so much that he can say about the most precious thing in all of creation, he can say to us, "Do you want to hold the baby?"
And he says it to us, knowing that the world contains not just Marys and Josephs and shepherds and wise men - he says it knowing full well that the world contains King Herods and Pontius Pilates, let alone Hitlers or Saddam Husseins - or even you and me... He just says it on trust - "Here - hold the baby".
I know I couldn’t do it. I’m not brave enough. My little Benedict is too precious, and too special. I don’t think I’m brave enough, or big enough, or mad enough, or loving enough. I can ask my friends what they used to ask me, but that’s about it. But God goes one step beyond that, and he says to us all - "Would you like to hold the baby?"
And look what happened when he did. Jesus only just survives his childhood by a dream-inspired flight to Egypt to escape a murderous king, and some thirty years later he is betrayed, deserted, and executed like a common criminal. Instead of holding the baby, his long-suffering mother is left cradling his broken, bloody corpse.
"Would you like to hold the baby?"
In this last year I’ve learned more about trust and love - especially about unconditional trust and love - than I would ever have guessed. And I know how hard it is for me to say, "Would you like to hold the baby?"
And yet tonight, God the Father is speaking to you and me and to all of his creation. He is saying something bizarre, extraordinary, and amazing - for he knows what you and I can be like. But he loves us so much and he trusts us so much that he is prepared to say, even to us, even to you and me - "Would you like to hold the baby?"
For a child has been born for us, a son given to us.
And if that isn’t love, then I don’t know what is. Amen.
Dominic Barrington, Christmas 2007
