Our Homey Jesus

Real-life magic to ignite your Christmas spirit

I have never spent long thinking of Jesus as a baby. Theo (age 3) does—he marvels at how there was a baby Jesus and a ‘big’ Jesus, that he grew up through childhood much the same way Theo is right now. Viv loves baby Jesus, too—most days she requests to kiss his little porcelain [one-armed; sorry, Jesus] body displayed in the nativity scene on the mantel.

But me? I think of Jesus’ babyhood as a strange season in his life, a confusing juxtaposition of greatness and weakness. I can’t really see Jesus as a baby, needing to be held all through the night or cluster feeding or rolling choking hazards around in his mouth or opening all of his mother’s cupboards and clinging to her legs.

I once listened to a sermon on Jesus and the pastor proclaimed that, because Jesus never sinned, he never cried as a baby. But surely, I thought, Jesus wasn’t born speaking in parables? It struck me so funny, to take the humanity out of Jesus. As if communicating need is a sin in itself. Maybe that communication of need makes us uncomfortable, to think that Jesus—there at the beginning of the world and the right hand of God—would put himself in our hands as a weak little thing who could do nothing for himself at first.