Here’s my notes from yesterday evening’s Metro Christian Centre Carol Service (17th December 2023). May they bless you, and aid you in adoring the One who is worthy of all adoration.
You may be able to watch this, and the whole service, via our YouTube channel, depending if we can get the sound levels correct. Please give us time to get this video ready.
‘When the angels returned to heaven, the shepherds said to each other, “Come, let’s go to Bethlehem! Let’s see this wonderful thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.’
Luke 2:15 (NLT)
‘When the [magi] went into the house and saw the child with Mary, his mother, they knelt down and worshiped him. They took out their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh and gave them to him.’
Matt. 2:11 (CEV)
ADORING
I want to show you some pictures. It’s an experiment… I want to see, and want you to see, how you respond.
I apologise to the parents whose kids have just changed their Christmas list on the last minute. I’m not sure Santa is still excepting changes to Christmas lists with only a week to go, kids—but you never know!
I think we all noticed that most of you made some sounds when you saw those pictures. With the exception of one of the pictures, I’m going to guess that something within you stirred a warm feeling of fondness.
It may have only been an ‘aww’, but what you just did was adore.
To adore something is a strange thing to do, because it’s not something you do. It is something that happens to you, an instinctive response, really. When something is adorable it inspires affection, it moves us toward love, curiosity and wonder. It moves us to adoration.
We only adore what is adorable.
Adore is a word that we hear a lot in Christmas Carols. As one famous carol goes, ‘O Come, let us adore him…’
This is not a demand. Adoration can never be demanded, it has to be won.
Rather, ‘O come let us adore him’ is an invitation to look, knowing, that if we really stopped to look and consider, we would see how amazing all this is.
ADORE
As we celebrate Christmas, we retell the astonishing and marvellous story of the Incarnation, the wonder of all wonders, that God, in his desire, in his adoration of us, becomes one of us. That God sets into motion his plan to restore and rescue us by being with us.
It’s an adorable event, because God comes in a way none would expect.
How extraordinary, that God, the Creator of the whole, vast, incomprehensible universe, conceals himself within a womb. That God, the Giver of all life, chooses to become a cell, life’s smallest component; a cell that would then divide and multiply, developing into an embryo. The Sustainer of creation becomes sustained by an umbilical cord.
God resides inside a human body for nine months of gestation, culminating with the whole process of birth; God passes through a birth canal and into human society. Wailing, as the Giver of Breath’s lungs open to take his first breath of air.
God, the great Provider, as a baby, is wrapped is cloth, becoming entirely dependent upon human provision and care. The Almighty, nursed at a human breast. The Wonderful Counsellor and Everlasting Father, allowing himself to be cradled by human compassion and passed around relatives who would pull his cheeks whilst saying “Aww, isn’t he cute”.
God, the Word, in choosing to become flesh, also accepts becoming speechless and has to learn how to speak.
God would have to learn how to crawl on his hands and knees, eventually learning to walk through consistent attempts of rising and falling. God would learn to develop the motor skills of his hands and co-ordinate this with his peripheral vision. God, the Eternal One, who dwells outside of all space-time dimensions, learning how to navigate in a 3D environment.
God chooses to become a child–a human child. God becoming the least.
God chooses a normal and natural cycle of growth. God went through growing pains, tooth-aches, bruised knees (and the ancient equivalent of a wet paper towel), along with splinters in his fingers as he trained as a carpenter under Joseph’s tuition. Think of that, God, who knows all things, becomes a student, allowing himself to be taught by someone.
For thirty years, God with Us is just a face within a crowd, a villager milling around in the normal humdrum of Middle Eastern life.
And then, after thirty years of obscurity, after living an ordinary life with ordinary people, does Jesus finally begin his ministry.
In the same manner as his birth and growth, Jesus’ ministry is marked by humility; servanthood, peace, love, meekness, and grace. Instead of ‘Lording it over’ people, the Lord of Lords, Jesus, lays his life down; spending time with the weak, the broken, the hurt, the marginalised, the lost and last of this world.
It’s not some big, propaganda filled event. It’s obscure, short ranged …
… and short-lived.
After only three years of not being a face in the crowd, Jesus’ ministry appears to come to an abrupt end, with Jesus becoming a Humble King.
It’s not a crown of jewels that is placed on his head, but a crown of thorns; it’s not some grand throne that he is sat upon, but a cross; it’s not an orb and sceptre that are placed in his hands, but nails.
God allows himself to suffer for mankind, for you and me, and at the hands of mankind, as he surrenders his life to death in an act of self-emptying love. God chooses to pass through and experience real death, just like he did real birth. From vulnerability to vulnerability.
Yet, through this act of vulnerability and sacrifice, God crushes the power of death and brings to us life eternal.
What a strange way for God to be with us. What a strange way for God to rescue us.
I’ve found myself thinking of the way God decided to go about things. And the more I think on it, the more I love God’s approach. It’s beautiful. It’s adorable.
I would never adore a bully, or a tyrant. I would never adore someone who barged into our lives demanding to be worshipped, demanding submission, demanding that we bow before them. But God doesn’t approach us like this.
When the shepherds and Magi worshipped Jesus, it was not some response to fear or forceful manipulation. It was inspired adoration.
God doesn’t forcefully barge into human history or human hearts. God comes slowly, softly, humbly, vulnerably.
You see, God doesn’t demand our love. Instead, God seeks to win it, by showing us how great his love for us is.
God’s love is on display in the incarnation.
So come, this Christmas, come see this love; come and see Jesus, the Saviour of the World, and adore Him.
‘There is in the world only one figure of absolute beauty: Christ. That infinitely lovely figure is, as a matter of course, an infinite marvel.’
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Letter to niece Sofia Alexandrovna
TRISTAN SHERWIN 
Leave a comment