THE “WHY” OF CHRISTMAS

Uncle Remus tells us something to the effect that we don't have to stand directly behind a mule to discover just how powerful its hind legs are. But sometimes we do. Some­times we do have to touch that hot pan not only to discover that we should listen to our elders when they say we shouldn't, but also just to discover exactly what "hot" feels like and means.

Sometimes we have to walk a mile in another's shoes otherwise we will have little or no idea what he is going through. All the books on hunger, all the tales of misery and woe, will never do nearly as much as our being really hungry ourself and not knowing from where our next meal will come. Sometimes experience, deep, personally involved experience, is the only teacher. Sometimes we just have to get kicked by that mule, no matter how painful the experience.

And sometimes I think that that's one of the reasons why there is a Christmas, why Jesus, the Son of God, became man and, as one of the Bible translations has it, "pitched his tent" among us. God really had to see how the rest of us live. There is no way in the world, God being God, that God would know what it is like to be human – someone who is not God, unless God actually became one of us.

To say that God had to become one of us to know what we're going through here on earth, to say that may not be sound theology. But it sure makes sense to me. God as God is not tempted. God doesn't get sick. God doesn't catch cold or have headaches. God’s God. And so it's rather difficult, if not impossible, for God to know what it's like to come home from a hard day at work, head pounding, feet aching, the kids wanting your total attention, husband oblivious to it all, all the while trying to get supper ready—God doesn't know how difficult it is to smile and be living in that situation.

Or at least God didn't until God sent God’s Son to become one of us and find out. Jesus' birth, in a barn no less, immediately gave God a new perspective on life in this world. God's education didn't stop in Bethlehem either. It stopped at Calvary. Now God knows what you and I are talking about when we cry out to him in pain and hurt and sorrow. Jesus went through it all.

There are other reasons why God became human, other sound, theological reasons. But sometimes I don't want theology. I want practicality. And so sometimes it helps me to know, to realize, that God really does know what I am going through in this life – both the joys and the sorrows, the good days and the bad. For God did walk a mile in my – in our – shoes, much more than a mile.

And God was kicked by that mule. God knows. That's why Christmas is so meaningful to me. I know why God became human: to get to know you and me a lot better, to be, if that were possible, an even better God. Christmas is much more than the celebration of the birth of a very special person. It's the celebration of God's saying to us "I know what you're talking about, what you're going through."