The Manger Exposed

To be vulnerable means to be exposed to the possibility of physical or emotional harm.

We see it everywhere, all the time.

I saw it as I walked past a little one sitting in his vest on the woman’s knee, his round cheeks flushed red, waiting for the medicinal effect of the Calpol to kick in.

He sucked pathetically on his dummy, crying half-heartedly, and clearly feeling very sorry for himself.

I saw it at home as I nursed an eight year old with a temperature. Off school and falling asleep on the sofa mid-afternoon. He doesn’t fit just as comfortably on my lap any longer but that’s where he was anyway as we too waited for the Calpol to kick in.

I saw it one Sunday morning at church when five or six teenage girls stood up at the front and shared a little of their faith story with us all, before taking communion for the first time. They were nervous. I don’t blame them. I would have been too. There were tears and maybe not just from the brave testimony sharers who we felt proud of that morning.

I saw it one evening, again at church. I was there listening as one woman after another stood before the rest of us and honestly shared their stories.

It’s not easy being eighteen; it’s not easy being single; it’s not easy being a parent, is what they said.

We were proud of them too and grateful.

I saw it in the space between the lines of an email from a friend.

I saw it in the eyes of a co-worker before she turned her face to look out the window.

I saw it at a family funeral. As we are directly faced by death, the stark reality of exposure to physical harm hits us the hardest. Our emotional defences weaken and we are pummelled by grief. Death - our greatest vulnerability.

In different ways, at different times, in different people… always vulnerability.

Our eyes are on the Christmas manger now and we see it there at its utmost. Immanuel, as human as you and I. Here we can see the extent to which God made himself vulnerable, out in the open, exposed and susceptible to all harm in the world east of Eden.

We all experience it. We try to avoid it or hide from it. We consider it a weakness. We fear it, and yet it is so often what draws us to others. It moves us to care for the ones who cannot care for themselves. It moves us to feel pride in the ones who courageously show it openly and honestly. It moves us to cry with the ones who are helpless in the face of it. It moves us to believe that God loves us and understands what it’s like to be us. He is the God of vulnerability. He unflinchingly embraces it himself. He overwhelmingly responds to it in us.

As we look at Jesus now, ‘we see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him.’ Romans 8:29 (Msg). We see a willingness to be vulnerable. A willingness to live exposed to the possibilities of every kind of harm, doing so with abandon because he loves and trusts his Father so absolutely and because he loves us so intensely.

The more we recognise this, the more the lie can be exposed and dispelled that there are strong ones and there are weak ones amongst us. We are all vulnerable. The longer we look at the baby in the manger, the more we can be reconciled with our own humanity. We are people who know what it is to be loved and so we love. We are people who, like Jesus, can love the vulnerable because we know what it is to be vulnerable.

‘To love at all is to be vulnerable.’

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves