The classic hymn “What Child is This” opens with a series of questions:
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?
These questions reflect something of the utter audacity of the Christmas story. What is so special about this child, that angels proclaim his arrival, and shepherds bow in worship? Who is he that foreign kings journey from afar to greet, and who invokes such a jealousy that kings are ready to kill him?
It’s hard to imagine a baby, born in a manger, to a teen mother and a carpenter could alone evoke such a response. Yet the claim of the Christmas story is that this child is not only a king, but that his birth is the climax of human history. We would be forgiven if we treated this claim with a bit of skepticism. How can a baby, powerless and dependent, be the one on whom all history turns?
The Christian claim is actually far more radical than anyone could have dared imagine. This child is and isn’t an ordinary child. He is ordinary in that he is born like us, crying, hungry, and needing all the tender care of his mother. Yet, paradoxically, this child is also far more, he is the Messiah, the promised King, the Son of God.
What child is this?
In this child, the creator of all things appeared in the lap of his own creation. All that power, all that weakness, existing alongside. God and man, coexisting. It’s no wonder, then, why we ask, “What child is this?” This child is somehow the source of all our hope, the consummation of all our longing, the fulfillment of all our joy.
How can this be?
It’s what Mary asks the angel. It’s what we ask ourselves.
It’s in this child we glimpse something of the heart of God, who longs to be near his creation, who desires to sanctify and redeem it, to bring all of it into his loving embrace. Who does not despise our condition but instead sees in us his image, sees our potential for his likeness. It’s only in joining us in our humanity that we can join him in his divinity. It’s in this child we know our destiny and hope, that we will be united to God, destined for a life in his glorious light.
What child is this?
This is the one who has rescued us from darkness, who has pulled us out of the muck and the mire, who bore our sins on his shoulders, who calls us friends. He has done all this by becoming a child and then a man. Despised, rejected, acquainted with grief. He took on himself the brokenness of the world and, in a gross miscarriage of justice, died a traitor’s death. In dying, he did the unthinkable, he conquered death, and he offers us life.
What child is this?
This, this is Christ the King
Whom shepherds guard and angels sing
haste, haste to bring him laud
the babe, the son of Mary
This is easier said than believed. The world grows dark, the nights get cold, and we forget that this child is more than a mere story. More than a helpful fiction designed to stave off the long winter nights. But life is hard and our memories cloudy at best, and when all the pressures of life crescendo, a hope like the Christ-child seems all too tame, far removed from the pressures and horrors of the human experience.
And that’s sort of the point. This child confounds all our notions of hope, of justice, of peace, love and joy. He is unlikely and sudden, and as preposterous as Christmas itself. How dare we believe that one day is enough to take us through winter? That the cold and blistering nights are somehow worth it, that we can endure till spring. How dare we believe in a child, who is all our hopes bound together in a feeble body, who is like us and unlike us, vulnerable and powerful?
What child is this?
He is the paradox at the heart of the human story. The one who in weakness makes men strong, who by suffering heals, and in the dark depths of death reveals light and life. This is the Christmas story, the Christmas hope: an unlikely child and the saviour of the world dwelling in our midst, overlooked, hunted, longing to be known.
This child is your hope and my hope and the world’s hope. He became what we are so that we might become what he is: children of God.
What child is this?
He is the silent Word pleading.
Nails and spear shall pierce him through,
his cross borne for me, for you.
Hail, hail the Word made flesh,
The babe, the son of Mary.
