Did You Know?
Read: Isaiah 9:2-7
Listen: “Mary, Did You Know” by Kathy Mattea
Listen: “Mary, Did You Know/Corelli Christmas” by The Piano Guys (Instrumental)
One of my favorite Christmas songs is “Mary, Did You Know,” and, like Mary, I wonder if we really know about whom we are singing.
Writers, artists, musicians, theologians, and laymen have all pondered this question from before Christ was incarnate. One early theologian had this to say about Christ:
“Man’s Maker was made man, that He, Ruler of the stars, might nurse at His mother’s breast; that the Bread might hunger, the Fountain might thirst, the Light sleep, the Way be tired on its journey; that the Truth might be accused of false witness, the Teacher be beaten with whips, the Foundation be suspended on wood; that Strength might grow weak; that the Healer might be wounded; that Life might die.” (Augustine, 71)
I found this quote in a liturgical devotional called O Come, O Come Emmanuel last year, and when I read it again this year on the first day of Advent, I was struck by it yet again. Augustine shows the duality of Christ’s nature as both God and Man. Our Creator, our Sovereign King, the Author and Perfector of our faith lowered Himself to become mere mortal man.
The final line of the quote is one I find both powerful and uncomfortable: “…that Life might die.” When the ancients envisioned the coming Messiah, they imagined one who would be a mighty king, who would come to free them from the oppression of those stronger than themselves. They imagined a majestic ruler, powerful in form and being, who would command respect and change the world. They did not realize for whom they were waiting.
They forgot a few things, like when Isaiah wrote, “For a child will be born for us…” (9:6a). They forgot when Isaiah also said, “He grew up before him like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground. He didn’t have an impressive form or majesty that we should look at him, no appearance that we should desire him” (53:2). When the Messiah came, He was born into a home in Bethlehem with a young woman for His mother and a poor carpenter as His human father. He was not born into power or wealth or prestige.
Those who knew the signs came calling, though, wise men from the east looking for the new King of the Jews. King Herod, Rome’s puppet king of Judea, felt no small amount of alarm at this, enough that he justified the killing of all the baby boys in Bethlehem two years old and younger (Matthew 2). Herod did not know for whom he was looking, but that didn’t really matter to him. The Life did not die that night, though.
Instead, the Christ-Child grew and matured and waited for the right time. 30 was the age at which rabbis were considered experienced and wise enough to begin ministry, so when Christ was of the proper age, He began to make waves in Judea. The One who could calm the storm with a word would be the One to turn everything around in His world.
“‘Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest’” (Matthew 28:11).
“‘For which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say ‘Get up and walk’? But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins’—then he told the paralytic, ‘Get up, take your stretcher, and go home’” (Matthew 9:5-6)
“‘Neither do I condemn you,’ said Jesus. ‘Go, and from now on do not sin anymore’” (John 8:11b).
“‘We are punished justly, because we’re getting back what we deserve for the things we did, but this man has done nothing wrong.’ Then he said, ‘Jesus, remember me[l] when you come into your kingdom.’ And [Jesus] said to him, ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise’” (Luke 23:41-43).
“Then Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, because they do not know what they are doing’” (Luke 23:34a).
“For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him” (John 3:16-17).
The weak and weary, the broken and hurting, the rebellious and arrogant, the lowest of humanity—Jesus loved them all (and loves them still). He broke bread with them, called them His friends, forgave them, and then, He died for them. The Jewish leaders did not know what to make of this Man, so like Herod, in their fear, they sought to destroy Him. And this time, the Life died.
When Jesus died, He was wrapped in burial cloths and placed in a cave-tomb enclosed by a large stone. It would have been pitch black inside the tomb, a darkness that would have been dense and close, suffocating even. Like the darkness that lives in our broken world, the darkness of the tomb is the darkness of Death—Death that humans invited into the world by the sins of rebellion and disobedience in the Garden of Eden. That darkness did not leave, it merely grew to the choking, clinging thing that envelopes us in brokenness still.
The crucifixion and death, though, was an act of obedience on Christ’s part. He had a role to play, a part to fulfill, and He did it perfectly. The Apostle Paul describes Christ:
“who, existing in the form of God,
did not consider equality with God
as something to be exploited.
Instead he emptied himself
by assuming the form of a servant,
taking on the likeness of humanity.
And when he had come as a man,
he humbled himself by becoming obedient
to the point of death—
even to death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:6-8)
What the leaders missed, like so many before, was the unexpected. Jesus was not the powerful monarch riding to their rescue. He was their Shepherd King looking out for His flock, willing to give His life for them, that they might have Life in return.
In the messianic prophecy found in Isaiah 9, Isaiah, as God’s mouthpiece, declares, “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; a light has dawned on those living in the land of darkness” (9:2). The darkness had been overwhelming, blinding the people to the truth of Jesus. The darkness fed their fear. But this was not the end of the story, because Jesus was not a mere man. According to the Apostle John, “In him was life, and that life was the light of men. That light shines in the darkness, and yet the darkness did not overcome it” (1:4-5). Darkness does not have the final say. The Light, which is Life itself, was not defeated by the dark. Life did not stay dead.
And because Life did not stay dead, He offers us Life, too. Will we know Christ when He appears before us, extending His hand of grace and love? Or will we, like the Jewish leaders of the first century, reject Him, because we did not know who He was?
