A pastor who has been at it for a while knows that the main event every December is the Christmas Eve Service of Worship. In that service, Isaiah 9:2-7 is stirringly read; and Luke 2:1-20, on the birth of Jesus, joyfully declared. Then the Word is preached. And Holy Communion celebrated. Finally, candles are lit in the sanctuary and carried bravely out into a cold, dark world.

Toward the end of my pastoral ministry, I added a wrinkle to the Christmas Eve service. After the organ prelude had concluded, while the larger-than-usual congregation was still humming with small talk and anticipation, I would solemnly walk down the center aisle with arms extended and slightly raised, holding a figurine of the Christ Child. Upon reaching the front of the sanctuary, I stopped and turned to face the assembly. Then, with both hands cradling the figurine, I displayed the Christ Child to all. This was done dramatically, deliberately. I wanted everyone in the sanctuary—those on the left, in the center, and on the right—to see Him.*

After showing the Christ-Child to the people, with hands cupped and arms straight, I raised the figurine as high as I could, while looking upward as if to engage God. Then I slowly lowered my hands and arms and, at the end of the downward motion, carefully laid the figurine in the empty manger of the Nativity tableau set up below the pulpit. At that point in the service, the Christ Candle was lit.

Why engage in this simple liturgical theater at the beginning of a Christmas Eve worship service? Because it re-presents the divine action of Christmas: The Son of God somehow mysteriously leaves His Father’s heavenly presence and is born of Mary in this earthly world. As The Nicene Creed declares: “For us and for our salvation/he [the Son of God, Jesus Christ] came down from heaven,/was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary/and became truly human.” Again, God does this “for us and for our salvation.”

Christmas is the busiest time of the year, involving many activities and routines. However, if and when all the December hustle and bustle is kept in its place, Christmas is truly about one thing: divinity becoming humanity, God becoming baby. In that baby—God born of Mary—is the salvation of this world, mankind’s deliverance from the totalitarianism of sin.

We can speculate that God could have done things differently in saving the world. God could have entered history as a divine ghost. Or, bypassing the first three decades of human life, He could have just appeared one day as a thirty-something Savior. God could have adopted a good man or woman and worked through him or her to save the world. Or simply zapped the world into deliverance. However, God did not take any of these routes to salvation. Instead, God the Father sent God the Son into this world through Mary—whose bold faith (trust) made possible the miracle of the virginal conception and birth of the God-baby Jesus, who is altogether divine and altogether human at once. In baby Jesus, God came to save us from our sins. This mystery is what Christmas is about.

Countless people faithfully remember and celebrate the birth of the Savior, who is both God and man, at Christmas. They know that only through a baby does God move the world toward salvation. Therefore, every baby they await, encounter, see, hear, or touch reminds them that salvation comes through a baby. A baby.

For them, the welcome of a child simply makes sense. For them, the intentional refusal of a child is unthinkable.

May the Christ Child, who brings God’s salvation, bring deliverance to many children (in womb and in hand) this Christmas season.

* Consider this liturgical background at Whiteville United Methodist Church in Whiteville, NC, my last pastoral appointment. On Christmas Eve, the Christ-Child figurine, you should know, had not yet been placed in the Nativity tableau. All the other Nativity characters and animals were there—Mary and Joseph and shepherds, sheep and cattle. Only the Christ Child (and the Wise Men and their camels) were missing. Why? Because this United Methodist pastor believes that “liturgical realism” should be observed in worship services. Since the Bible readings on the four Sundays of Advent had not yet spoken about Baby Jesus and the Wise Men, those figurines had not been placed in the sanctuary’s Nativity tableau, which had become more populated as Advent wore on.