Happy Monday!
Christmas week approaches, and many of try to brush off news stories that Jesus was born in April or November, according to studies; and we also try to cut through the crowded shops and the gift-sale e-mails… hoping that, by focusing on the simple truths and modest imagery of Jesus’s birth, we can connect with the profundity of the Incarnation — God living amongst us. Coming first as a helpless baby.
I have always wondered about Joseph and Mary’s problems that week in Jerusalem. Ancient scripture tells us clearly enough that the city was crowded: there was a census being conducted. But the Bible only hints at what I figure to have been a major challenge to the young couple: the “push-backs” they received because Mary was a single woman, in fact a young teen, and pregnant.
This was a major disgrace in that culture, to both the woman and the man. I have always wondered whether “No room in the inn” meant “No Vacancy” as often as it meant, “We have no rooms for people like you” — likely with some more insulting words.
Two thousand years later, Hallmark has us thinking that to be born in a manger was some sort of Green bonus, the happy family surrounded by squeaky-clean animal friends and shiny angels. More the truth was that the stable was a step up from a dung-heap. Swaddling clothes were essential, else the baby would have been delivered and lain on musty straw, animal spittle, and bugs.
Think of it: Jesus came into this world rejected and despised, and that is how, as a man, He left it.
Isaiah knew it would happen this way. Eight hundred years earlier, the prophet wrote:
“Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid, as it were, our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.”
The rest of Chapter 53, of course, foretells the Easter story. But I think it is significant, too (otherwise God would not have ordered its occurrence and recording) that we remember the challenges to Joseph, the abuse Mary endured, the difficulties of Jesus’s birth… and His entire life. “Despised and rejected of men.”
Yet this “undesirable” was also THE JOY OF MANKIND’S DESIRING. As sinners today, we still esteem Him not sometimes… yet we desire Him, our souls are only complete when He lives within us!
Here is a performance of that ethereally beautiful movement from Bach’s Cantata Number 147, “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.” It is sung by the group Celtic Women, in an arrangement that is both touching and revealing of how adaptable Bach’s music is. Here are the words the ensemble sings:
Jesu, joy of man’s desiring,
Holy wisdom, love most bright.
Drawn by Thee, our souls? aspiring,
Soar to uncreated light.
Word of God, our flesh that fashioned
With the fire of life impassioned,
Striving still to Truth unknown,
Soaring, dying, ’round Thy throne.
Click:
Jesus, Joy of Man’s Desiring
Have a great week!
Rick Marschall
Christmas week approaches, and many of try to brush off news stories that Jesus was born in April or November, according to studies; and we also try to cut through the crowded shops and the gift-sale e-mails… hoping that, by focusing on the simple truths and modest imagery of Jesus’s birth, we can connect with the profundity of the Incarnation — God living amongst us. Coming first as a helpless baby.
Two thousand years later, Hallmark has us thinking that to be born in a manger was some sort of Green bonus, the happy family surrounded by squeaky-clean animal friends and shiny angels. More the truth was that the stable was a step up from a dung-heap. Swaddling clothes were essential, else the baby would have been delivered and lain on musty straw, animal spittle, and bugs.
Think of it: Jesus came into this world rejected and despised, and that is how, as a man, He left it.
Isaiah knew it would happen this way. Eight hundred years earlier, the prophet wrote:
“Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid, as it were, our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.”
The rest of Chapter 53, of course, foretells the Easter story. But I think it is significant, too (otherwise God would not have ordered its occurrence and recording) that we remember the challenges to Joseph, the abuse Mary endured, the difficulties of Jesus’s birth… and His entire life. “Despised and rejected of men.”
Yet this “undesirable” was also THE JOY OF MANKIND’S DESIRING. As sinners today, we still esteem Him not sometimes… yet we desire Him, our souls are only complete when He lives within us!
Here is a performance of that ethereally beautiful movement from Bach’s Cantata Number 147, “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.” It is sung by the group Celtic Women, in an arrangement that is both touching and revealing of how adaptable Bach’s music is. Here are the words the ensemble sings:
Jesu, joy of man’s desiring,
Holy wisdom, love most bright.
Drawn by Thee, our souls? aspiring,
Soar to uncreated light.
Word of God, our flesh that fashioned
With the fire of life impassioned,
Striving still to Truth unknown,
Soaring, dying, ’round Thy throne.
Click: Jesus, Joy of Man’s Desiring
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