What Child is This? (N27-D2)

This week’s snapshots:

Happy Saturday, nerds!

This week has been grueling, but I am content, because it is beautiful. This church gets to kick off their first service in their new building on the first Sunday of the liturgical new year: Advent!

Not that you forgot or didn’t know - but that’s tomorrow!

Part of the reason Christmas feels magical when you’re a kid is because all of the celebration is unfamiliar. You’re still learning the story of Jesus’ birth, what words like hope, peace, joy, and love mean, and making associations with snowfall, Christmas lights, and gift-giving. It’s all new!

Part of the gift of wisdom is reminding yourself about each of those realities in light of your years of experience - and in light of who God promises to be. So for the little bit of Advent that we get to share together in these letters, I’m going to re-introduce you to four of the Christmas carols you’re not paying enough attention to so that, whether it’s your first or your six-hundredth time hearing the song, you’re reminded of the world-changing reality of Christ.

I’m listening to Phil Wickham’s version of “What Child is This?” for today. After finding Jesus during a bout of depression caused by sickness, Scotsman William Chatterton Dix took the tune of a popular folk song and rewrote the lyrics into his own words. This is your friendly reminder that even if you’re a financial manager, songwriting is available to you too!

Advent is four weeks of preparation for the coming of Christ: the promised solution to our separation from God. Dix’s carol asks us to consider seriously who this Christ is - after all, in his coming that we remember, he’s a baby. What kind of a solution is a baby? What kind of a Christ is the son of Mary?

What child is this who laid to rest / on Mary’s lap is sleeping?

Whom angels greet with anthems sweet / while shepherds watch are keeping?

Why lies He in such mean estate / where ox and ass are feeding?

Good Christians, fear: for sinners here / the silent Word is pleading

I don’t imagine Jesus was a silent, perfect firstborn baby. I imagine he screamed and cried when he was tired and hungry and made his parents panic that they were going to accidentally over feed/underfeed/fail to bond with/shake/otherwise fail the Christ. And yet shepherds come stumbling into the cave telling of a host of angels singing about this baby, and wizards from the Orient showed up with incense, gold, and myrrh - peasants and kings to honor him. Who is this baby?

This! This is Christ the King / whom shepherds guard and angels sing

Haste! Haste to bring him laud / the babe, the son of Mary

Okay - but why is he here? Dix would suggest to plead for sinners, to bring salvation, to be enthroned in our hearts - but what would you say? Why was God’s answer to sin a baby?

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Don’t just read on to the next part, open a note(book) and tell me why God’s answer to sin is a baby!

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You don’t have to send me your note: but maybe you’ll want to listen to the carol and think about it for a bit. What child is this? Who is Christ the King - and what’s up with our obsession with the time he was a baby?

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Christ the King’s name is Emmanuel - God with us. And I don’t think you can really believe this Other kind of Divine being is with you until you imagine him choosing to come helpless and totally dependent on first-time parents. He’s not just “with us” like a visiting pastor who wears your football team’s colors to build rapport - he’s totally committed to the whole experience: going through a decade of K-12, applying to go to the school, suffering through the academia, practicing on and off the field so he owns the colors.

(Am I doing the football analogy right? XD)

This, this is Christ the King. A baby. A toddler. A goofy teenager. An awkward uncle. A brilliant teacher. Moved constantly by compassion. The hope of the world, who had endless places to go, things to see, cosmos to make, decided he wants to Be. With. You and me.

That seems like a birthday worth celebrating.

So next time you hear this “Weird Al” carol on the radio or in your church service, may you be moved with hope and reminded that God’s answer to sin is, mysteriously, to be with us.

Enjoy your first Sunday of Advent and send me that note you wrote answering Dix’s questions,

—Beth