Hoping in a Baby: Strength in Vulnerability

A friend keeps quoting James Findlay at me recently, asserting that God does not promise to preserve us from anything, but promises to sustain us in everything. It brings to mind the one experience I’ve had of God as a feminine presence. I was in a big city and suddenly sensed arms enfolding me from behind in great comfort and presence. At the same time I was comforted, I was also very clear that as safe as I felt in this enfolding presence, it wouldn’t stop bullets or knives or buses. In Findlay’s words, it wasn’t preservation I was being offered, but comfort and love—and I’ll take his word sustenance.

This isn’t the God we want most of the time, is it? A God who is with us, the literal translation of Immanuel. We want a God who will fight our battles for us. The people of Jesus’ time expected a Messiah who would forcibly liberate them from Rome. Like them, we’d prefer a more muscular Jesus who will put on an angelic show of power and might and save us from the powers of empire. I have heard of pastors trying to distance themselves from the wimpy Jesus of the gospels, folks who don’t want any of this pacifism business! No wonder a lot of people prefer what we have traditionally called the Old Testament. While we certainly find a God of mercy and steadfast love there, there are certainly plenty of passages to interpret through a power and might lens.

There’s a poem from the 1500’s by Robert Southwell inviting us to lean into the power in vulnerability and weakness. Benjamin Britten set “This Little Babe” to music in his Ceremony of Carols (accompanied by harp, very much worth googling!), and I fell in love with it when we sang it in choir in college. It always haunts me this time of year.

As you read below, note the conventions of war of Southwell’s day being turned upside down. Pay attention to how God’s power—as we are promised—is made perfect in the weakness of an infant born far from the halls of palaces and throne rooms.

THIS LITTLE BABE

This little Babe so few days old,
Is come to rifle Satan’s fold;
All hell doth at his presence quake,
Though he himself for cold do shake;
For in this weak unarmed wise
The gates of hell he will surprise.

With tears he fights and wins the field,
His naked breast stands for a shield;
His battering shot are babish cries,
His arrows looks of weeping eyes,
His martial ensigns Cold and Need,
And feeble Flesh his warrior’s steed.

His camp is pitched in a stall,
His bulwark but a broken wall;
The crib his trench, haystalks his stakes;
Of shepherds he his muster makes;
And thus, as sure his foe to wound,
The angels’ trumps alarum sound.

My soul, with Christ join thou in fight,
Stick to the tents that he hath pight [pitched].
Within his crib is surest ward [protection];
This little Babe will be thy guard.
If thou wilt foil thy foes with joy,
Then flit not from this heavenly Boy.

This little weak vulnerable child is the hope of humankind. We cannot destroy the systems of domination, of power and might, with the tools of those systems. Only by “flitting not away from this heavenly boy,” whatever that might look like in our lives, will we “foil our foes with joy” and with Love.