Christmas Perspective: No Crying He Makes?

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.

Comments are always welcomed.

If you find these thoughts helpful, please share.

No Crying He Makes?

The Word became flesh and blood,

and moved into the neighborhood.

We saw the glory with our own eyes,

the one-of-a-kind glory,

like Father, like Son,

Generous inside and out,

true from start to finish.

John 1:14 (MSG)

---

Jesus wept.

John 11:35 (KJV)

Jesus is our childhood's pattern

Day by day like us he grew

He was little, weak, and helpless

Tears and smiles like us he knew

And he feels for all our sadness

And he shares in all our gladness

From "Once in Royal David's City" by Cecil Frances Alexander

Mary had not expected to have her baby in Bethlehem, but, when the empire-wide census was announced, she had no choice but to accompany her fiancé Joseph to his family's hometown to register.  It mattered not that she was more than eight months pregnant.  By the time the couple reached Bethlehem, Mary had gone into labor.  Because they could find no one who would give them shelter in a guest room, they ended taking refuge in a stable.  Mary gave birth to her baby, a Son, and, without a proper crib, she placed Him in a feeding trough.¹

It is this scene in the stable that an anonymous poet sought to capture in the beloved Christmas carol "Away in a Manger."²  This song describes the newborn infant Jesus sweetly sleeping on a bed of hay, with the stars of the nighttime sky looking down upon him.  This song, which many of us learned as children, paints an idyllic picture of the Christmas story, not unlike the typical nativity scene which features a radiant infant, two prayerful parents, some well-groomed shepherds, and some well-behaved animals.

In my opinion, the song "Away in a Manger" does not pay proper respect to the complexity and messiness of the Christmas story.  I suppose that, when we teach little children about the Christmas story through such songs, we don't want to overwhelm them.  That said, the first half of the second verse is, I think, problematic.  The animals in the stable make noise, as barnyard animals often do, waking the Christ child from His slumber.  "But little Lord Jesus," the lyricist contends, "no crying He makes."  Why did the writer make it a point to state that the newborn Christ child did not cry?  Don't all babies cry?

At Christmas, we celebrate the Incarnation.  One early Christian hymn, which is quoted by St. John in his Gospel, teaches us that Christ, the Word of God who is one with God and was present in the creation of the universe, "became flesh and lived among us."³  Another early Christian hymn, which is quoted by St. Paul in one of his letters, describes the Incarnation as a downward journey.

[Christ], though he was in the form of God,

did not regard equality with God

as something to be exploited,

but emptied himself,

taking the form of a slave,

being born in human likeness.⁴

Christ left behind the glory and power of godhood to take on the frail flesh and blood of humanity.  Theologians sometimes refer to this self-emptying descent of Christ from the glory of heaven to the messiness of earth as Kenosis.⁵

It is important that, amid our Christmas celebration, we do not lose sight of what it means that Christ came to dwell among us as a human.  If Christ was truly born into this world as a human baby, then He must have done all of the adorable, annoying, and disgusting things that human babies do.  He talked in gibberish; He got more food on his clothes than He did in His mouth at feeding times; He cried when Mary and Joseph wanted to sleep; He became gassy and needed to be burped; He spat up; and He even needed to have His diapers changed multiple times a day.

Try to wrap your mind around the idea that the Son of God, almighty and eternal like His Father, at one time needed someone to feed Him and change His diapers.  That, dear reader, is what Kenosis looks like.

So why is it so important that the baby Jesus cried?

Regarding the song "Away in a Manger," professor of theology Cynthia L. Rigby writes,
No crying?  Why do we say he doesn't cry?  Perhaps because we know he is God, and God can't cry.  On some level, we tend to reason to ourselves that, if Jesus is God, the whole baby thing must be kind of a disguise.  He must have been not just an ordinary baby... he must have been a "superbaby."⁶

If Jesus didn't cry human tears, then He did not fully enter into the human experience, and, if He did not fully enter into the human experience, then He does not truly understand us.  Rigby continues,
We don't need a hero, we don't need a God who puts on a disguise and infiltrates our reality only to rescue us.  We need a God who is one of us, a God who understands us, a God who is with us, a God who has entered into relationship with us and who saves us because God is with us and for us.  And this is who God in Jesus Christ is.⁷

The sixteenth century Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross tells the story of the Incarnation through a series of poems.  John imagines a conversation between Christ and God the Father.  The Father tells the Son that a groom and his bride must be alike, meaning that the Son must be born as a human.  In the Hebrew Scriptures, the relationship between God and God's people is sometimes compared to a marriage, and early Christians appropriated this metaphor, describing the Church as the Bride of Christ.  Christ agrees with His Father, and the Father sends the archangel Gabriel to ask the Virgin Mary to give birth to the Son of God, thereby allowing Him to become human.⁸

When the time comes for Christ to leave His chamber and embrace His Bride, He is placed in a manger by His mother.  There the Bride and the Groom exchange wedding gifts.  Humanity receives the joy of heaven, and Christ receives the tears of humanity.⁹  Unlike the author of "Away in a Manger," St. John of the Cross envisions a Christ child who actually cries in the manger, having truly become like the humans He came to embrace.

Man gave forth a song of gladness,

God Himself a plaintive moan;

Both possessing that which never

Had been hitherto their own.¹⁰

At Christmas, we remember the story of the Incarnation.  We remember that Christ came into the world to save humanity, becoming like the very humans He came to save and immersing Himself fully into the messiness of the human experience.  We want our Christmas celebrations to be free of tears, but we would do well not to edit the tears out of the Christmas story, lest we forget that Christ, our Savior, actually understands us and empathizes with us.


Notes:

1. Luke 2:1-7
2. Wikipedia: "Away in a Manger"
3. John 1:1-3, 14 (NRSV)
4. Philippians 2:6-7 (NRSV)
5. Wikipedia: "Kenosis"
6. Cynthia L. Rigby.  "More Than a Hero: The Practical Implications of the Incarnation in Ministry with Youth."  The 1999 Princeton Lectures on Youth, Church, and Culture.
7. ibid.
8. See the poem "The Incarnation" and the following poem "The Same Subject" by St. John of the Cross.
9. See the poem "The Nativity" by St. John of the Cross.
10. Stanza VI of "The Nativity"

Adoration of the Shepherds was painted by Gerard van Honthorst in the early 1600s.