Incarnation and the wonky goat

For several days now, the exterior of my parish church, and every available tree, gatepost and railing, has been festooned with lights, while magi gleam from a fence, and stars and angels shine through windows. Bright Christmas greetings adorn one wall, ensuring passers-by are left in no doubt as to the reason for all these illuminations. This is one of the parish's Christmas traditions: another is two outdoor cribs, with one as near to life-size as possible, in a cleared and welcoming corner garlanded with yet more lights.

I saw some of the crib figures as they waited to be assembled on Christmas Eve. The lambs looked cheerful enough, but it was immediately obvious that they were flecked with chips and scratches, and one had a hole in its back. Meanwhile, one of the goat's horns was broken, and hung, lopsided, giving him a forlornly wonky though stoical air. And I gazed at him in particular and thought... isn't this a perfect parable of what the Incarnation is all about?

Didn't Jesus come for the wounded and broken? Wasn't Love's preference not for the perfect and the pristine, but for the wonky and lopsided, the fragile, bruised and scarred? Weren't they the ones he especially reached out to, and invited to himself? And even more: in his immense, all-embracing love, didn't Jesus allow his own body to be wounded and broken, his Heart pierced - all for love? Didn't he become one with a humanity which is disfigured, blemished and broken, just as it is also gloriously, radiantly beautiful?

And having come for the broken 2,000 years ago, Jesus continues to come to us, every day, into our scars and our woundedness, our pain and darkness; coming as tenderness and love, offering healing and renewal and wholeness. Love continues to come, and continues to invite us to come, as intimately close as those animals which would have nestled and nuzzled up against him in that stable in Bethlehem. 

Several hours later I was back for the first Mass of Christmas. Even from a distance, the church lit up the surrounding darkness; close up, the area around the crib was luminous. The cracked and chipped lambs had pride of place beside the manger, their blemishes softened by the crib's radiance, while straw discreetly masked the cleft back. The goat was standing guard: still lopsided and wonky (nothing could ever hide that broken horn!); but... call me fanciful... but now he seemed quietly, proudly resolute where once he'd been long-suffering, and glowed, softly, in his own share of the light. Yes, all the chips and flaws and wonkiness were still there; but somehow faded, rather than heightened by the light... Somehow endearing, even, and of less consequence, because of the One at the centre of it all... 

And isn't that something of the transformation Jesus can bring about in each one of us, if we can only allow ourselves, with all our scars and messiness, to be drawn closer and closer to him, into his light, and the gentle, healing power of his love...?

May the light and love of Jesus shine in our hearts, and throughout our communities and our world, that we may all be transformed into his love, and his glory.