Sermons from St Faith's
Baby Talk!
Fr Dennis
Smith, December 18th, 2011
‘You are going to
have a baby.’ When a young woman hears those words spoken to her by
a doctor, it’s usually a cue for joy, excitement and intense
satisfaction. Perhaps she and her partner have been trying for some
time to start a family, or to add a baby brother or sister to the
family, so it’s a cause for celebration.
But not always. For it may be an unexpected pregnancy. She may be a
young girl whose schooling will be disrupted and whose life is to be
changed for ever, and whose family will be angry and disappointed.
Or she may be a woman who cannot afford to have another child, or a
woman approaching middle age who will have to cope with all the
physical changes and emotional upheavals and who says in
bewilderment, ‘Fancy having a baby at my time of life!’
‘You are going to have a baby!’ When the teenage Mary was told these
words, St Luke writes that she was ‘greatly troubled’, and even
after the angel had given her detailed instructions about what the
child was to be called and an explanation of how she was to become
pregnant and a declaration that all this was to be the work of God,
Mary replied with the words, ‘May it be to me as you have said’ –
which can be taken either as words of affirmation or an expression
of resignation – ‘Oh, all right then. Whatever!’
We don’t know which explanation is true, but Mary must surely be the
patron saint of all women who have to face unplanned pregnancies!
For, from then on, Mary’s life will be turned upside down, and full
of surprises.
But we have to face some surprises too, and perhaps the biggest
surprise of all is to be called on to see something of God in the
form of a baby. For when we hear that familiar story, as we do at
this time every year, it calls out of us a reaction of sheer love,
because we adore babies. We feel a tenderness and a protectiveness
towards them. And at Christmas we’re invited to join ion what has
been called ‘the universal conspiracy of baby-worship’. God becomes
‘the little Lord Jesus asleep in the hay’. So we keep him passive
and docile. When we see him represented for us in the crib or in the
nativity scene, we almost feel that we have to ‘shush!’ so that we
don’t wake him up, for then he might make demands, he might
interfere in what we want to do.
But that’s not what babies are like. They do wake up. And they make
demands. And when we describe the infant Jesus, it’s easy to forget
that this is a real human child that we are talking about. ‘The
cattle are lowing, the baby awakes, but little Lord Jesus, no crying
he makes.’ As if!
For, if that were true, the miracles of an angel talking to Mary and
a virgin bearing a child would be nothing compared to the miracle of
a healthy baby who never cries! For babies may be helpless and
dependent, but they’re certainly not silent. Babies make their
presence felt. They change lives. Babies mean angry howls, sleepless
nights, hungry mouths. They need to be cared for and taught and
amused. They need to be introduced to our familiar worlds of
listening, knowing and understanding.
If God is with us as a baby, He’s not with us as a silently sleeping
one. He may call out from us the qualities of love and devotion and
compassion. But he does so by his insistent demanding cries. And
when a baby cries, it can be alarming if we don’t understand what
the baby wants. Is he hurting? Is he tired? Is he hungry? (in my
case the answer was probably ‘Yes!’) Is he lonely? Does he want his
nappy changing? Is he too hot? Too cold? What does he want...? He
can only tell us by crying, and we have to wait while we try one
thing after another before finding out what he does want. And we
have to wait much longer before the time comes when we and the baby
can actually speak to each other. Until then, we’ve got little to go
on other than a scarlet face and a screaming voice.
So, if we think of God as being in some way present with us in the
form of a baby, we’re confronted with our inability to understand
the alarming and insistent demands of God. A baby teaches us the
need to employ time and patience in order to learn to communicate
with him. And time and patience are needed to enable us to learn to
communicate with God. He will not give us immediate answers to the
questions we want to ask.
He won’t tell us instantly why people suffer, or how to cope with
death, or how to overcome loneliness or pain or poverty, or any of
the many things that may afflict us. He won’t immediately help us to
solve the problems of international conflict or global warming or
the poverty of the developing world. For he is a God who gives
us no ready-made answers. Instead, He offers us a human life begun
as an infant. And if we want to find an answer, it means learning to
be patient and attentive, and learning over time how to talk to him,
and listen to him, and to understand what it is that he’s trying to
say.
‘You are having a baby!’ said the angel to Mary. So are we all, as
we prepare to celebrate Christmas. The persistent crying and
sometimes incomprehensible laughter of a baby can awaken us from our
sleep, and then we have to learn what these things mean in order to
respond. Sometimes there are no easy answers, and so we have to
begin a time of patient and loving attention. We have to learn what
makes him cry, so that we can share his view of the world. And we
have to learn what delights hi, so that we can share his joy.
A lot of learning needs to be done when a newly-born baby comes into
our lives. And a lot of learning needs to be done when the
Christ-child is born among us. For then we must try to understand
more fully what it is that he wishes to say to us and to our world,
and then strive to do all we can to ensure that his insistent
demands are met.
So may he be born once more among us all this Christmastide.
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