New Is Not Always Better
Okay, I know because of my degrees
and seminary training that I am supposed to be supportive of the newer
translations of the bible but quite frankly there are moments when new is not
always better because something gets lost.
A good example is the famous Christmas story from Luke.
I grew up on swaddling clothes instead of “bands of cloth.” I also remember the line in
those church Christmas pageants that I often participated in as a child when we
heard that the shepherds were sore afraid
rather than “terrified.” So let me
share with you why new is not always better.
First of all to hear the words “bands
of cloth” sounds rather mundane but if you look up the practice of swaddling it
was done because the people in Mary and Joseph’s day believed that to not wrap
the child tightly form head to toe after bathing the infant in salt would mean
that the baby might just have crooked legs.
Now let’s just stop a minute and see the power of this practice.
I mean Mary earlier had been visited
by an angel and told that this child of hers was to be the Son of God. There was to be
no honeymoon fun to create the child.
This kid was coming without a middle-man. Why wrap
the child in the same package as other infants?
We need to hear swaddling because it
is a different word; an old word for an old ordinary practice that mother’s
used to help babies grow straight. Jesus
was real.
We are in danger in our new age of being desensitized by those
smiling wooden or plastic manger figures looking up at us from a neat tiny
manger. Jesus becomes “a figure” that is
“nice.” It becomes too easy to forget
that he was the product of a woman’s labor.
I just witnessed my daughter’s labor as she birthed “her firstborn child
and laid him in a…well…something new.”
Labor is for sure real.
Mary may have had some help when it
came to the conception but she received little when it came to the birth. The birthing suite was not available and the
mid-wife was off for the Christmas Eve holiday.
Mary might have whispered a prayer that night in the midst of smelly
animals, “O my angel, where are you now?”
And then Jesus was swaddled because after that birth and
where it happened, Mary knew for sure what we need to remember; this wondrous
child was one of us. He had no
wings. The Wise Men would bring no magic
wand. He would be swaddled again in the
not too distant future; this time by another Joseph of Arimathea who attempted
to help the family find a place to bury their crucified son.
He was swaddled. He needed swaddling
because he really was and is Emmanuel; God with us…really with us; then and
now.
And lastly; what about sore afraid? As an educated grown up I
now know that “sore” simply means “very.”
Well, since Christmas begins as a children’s story what I remember as a
child is that the shepherds were actually “sore;” you know as in muscle
pain. It all started out with people
being “really sore.” And here again the
manger baby would sure end up being sore for us. He would be “wounded for our transgressing…by
his stripes we would be healed.”
I like “sore” because everybody is
terrified these days about something. We
lose the power of it all.
Jesus was swaddled and the shepherds
were sore. It is a sweet, wonderful
story but it is more than the Christmas story.
It is the beginning of God becoming really real for us. Sometimes new is not always better. Thanks be to God.
So with all this in mind, here is a
poem about it all:
She Wrapped Him Tight
She wrapped him tight
but why?
Swaddling it was called
back then
So that legs would grow
strong and straight
But he was the child of
an angel’s
promise
Why go to the trouble
for he was
Surely straight from
the very start
But no, God meant to
make him real
So that finally a
very stubborn
People would realize
that God was real
Emmanuel…
God with us
Jody Seymour
Christmas 2016
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