In the nineteenth century a compassionate Belgian priest served for sixteen years amongst lepers in the Pacific region. One Sunday he shocked them all by beginning his sermon, 'we lepers'. He had contracted their disease and died eighteen months later.
In Charles Wesley's famous carol, Hark the Herald, we sing, 'Veiled in flesh the God-head see, hail eternal deity.' God the Son, came from heaven, to the womb of a virgin, taking on flesh. Remaining God, but being made fully human. Now he sits at the Father's side, bearing scars on his hands and side, inhabiting the sort of human resurrection body which will be the inheritance of all his people. God the Son can look at us and say, 'we humans.'
As one preacher explains, 'that force that unleashed a million stars; that power that set the planets in motion; that immensity that hand-carved every atom in in existence and set them spinning - all of that was contained in a real flesh and blood human body that got tired, and tempted, and hungry; that wept, and bleed, and died.'
This Christmas may such wonderful, mysterious and revealed truth cause us to be lost in wonder, love and praise.
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