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‘They came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger.’
Luk_2:16
I. Jesus lying in the manger.—What is the first and central revelation of the Incarnation? It is the dignity of utter, boundless dependence upon God. You cannot, cannot be too dependent upon God. The secret of all sin is to be independent of God; the secret of all real rectification of our human nature is to put it back into God’s hand in utter dependence upon God and His law. And if you will be utterly dependent upon God and His law, then you will be full of that majestic dignity wherewith Jesus of Nazareth marched through human life. Why was He so utterly free? Because He was so utterly dependent, obedient; because every stage of His human life was only one more stage in which He learned something more of the secret of the mysterious word—to obey.
II. What is the secret of Mary?—It is, after all, the same thing in another form. Eve’s disobedience, what did it mean? She would be as God, independent of God. Mary reverses the disobedience of Eve. Look at it—‘Be it unto me according to Thy word.’ That is just the summing up of all the true attitude of human life expressed in that supreme act—‘Be it unto me according to Thy word?’ Whatever it is that God asks of us, that it is which makes possible our self-surrender, our correspondence with God. It was only because Mary would correspond to the Divine claim that God could use her for His transcendent purposes, only because she would correspond to His claim. God needs us, God has things for us to do, work for us to do, and His power to do it through us depends on that will.
III. The glory of Joseph.—We do not think enough about the glory of Joseph, that he yielded himself so obediently, with such dignity, with quiet dignity, with the strange claim of God upon his wife. He was to be protector and foster-father, the protector of Mary and her Divine Child. So it was that he becomes typically the protector of the supernatural interests of religion, even though they make a great claim upon him. It does not come upon ordinary fathers to exercise that altogether supernatural self-abnegation which was required of Joseph, but there is work for all of us, an ordinary thing which does lay upon men something of the same sort as was laid upon Joseph. The supernatural is only, as it were, the extension and deepening of the natural. So there is laid upon all of us men that which was laid upon Joseph—the requirement that we should be the protectors of religion, even though it costs us much.
—
Bishop Gore.
THE SHEPHERDS’ VISIT
I. Never despise small things in religion.—Never despise small beginnings only because they look small, either in ourselves or among other people. In that cradle lay the beginnings of Christianity, the beginning of God’s work for the redemption of the world.
II. It is never too soon to begin to be good, and holy, and Christlike. Among men of the world there is nothing more common than to despise the very idea of religion in childhood. Men sneer at it as if it was an absurdity. They can imagine grown-up persons being religious, but not children. But here you see an infant Who yet was God.
III. We learn humility.—Beginners must begin at the beginning, whatever they have to do, and we all our lives are but beginners, ever learning, ever beginning. And beginners, if they are ever to succeed, must be teachable and humble. Remember that this Babe was God.