[25] 98 Cradled In A Manger Meanly

‘Blessèd Saviour, Christ most holy,
In a manger thou didst rest;
Canst thou stoop again, yet lower,
And abide within my breast?’

I suppose the time has come for the dénouement of all things, for the wrapping up of ends, for the unmasking of this whole project. It turns out… I was Lady Gaga all along, mwahaha! No no, serious times now. I probably should have written this before Christmas dinner…

It always astounds me that God loves, well, me. Or anybody for that matter. And more than that, God sent his son to show us that he loves us. And more even than that, this son died so that we wouldn’t be to blame for our sins. And still more than that, this son died so that we might have life. God sacrificed himself for us. For me. For you. I was seriously tempted to italicise practically every other word in this paragraph; I can’t emphasise enough how strongly I’d like to phrase these ideas.

The title of this blog picks up on the notion of being saved by another’s death. Barabbas was a notorious prisoner (either a murderer or a robber or an insurgent, the Gospels differ) who was freed instead of Jesus before His crucifixion. In this way, he was the first person to be saved by Jesus’ impending death. This on its own makes him a pretty good symbol of everyone saved by Jesus (i.e. everybody…), but there’s more. In the etymology of Barabbas’ name we find a beautiful intensification of this idea. In Aramaic, ‘Bar’ means ‘son’ (as in ‘Bar-Mitzvah’, or ‘Son of the Laws’) and ‘abba’ means ‘father’ (as in ‘Abba, Father let me be…’). Greek-i-fied into Barabbas, this name means Son of the Father.

Now there are two meanings of this phrase. It refers to us all, as children of fathers, not to mention children of God. In another way, the Son of the Father could well be a name for Jesus himself. Part of the beauty is that this name refers to all of humanity, which includes Jesus.

I am Barabbas. You are Barabbas. We as a human collective entity are represented here by Barabbas. What then is our carol?

I have chosen the above four lines from a not particularly famous carol because they struck such a massive chord inside me when I first read them on 30th November, preparing for this project. I knew even then that here was Barabbas’ Carol, a song of penitence and unworthiness. By singing these words we prostrate ourselves to be lower than the slop bucket of stabled animals, and we wonder at how even in our lowly hearts Christ can stoop to rest.

I’m a sentimental fool. This is exactly the kind of thing I cry at, too. Be it Eponine in Les Misérables, Aslan in The Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe, or even Gurgi in The Black Cauldron, the sheer strength of such an action is humbling, and tear-jerking. Imagine now that the one being pardoned, the one being released, the one being saved is you. Well, I suppose you don’t really need to ‘imagine’. You just need to remember.

But enough of this paschal patter, why sir ‘tis Christmas Day! I do tend to get caught up in the mystical ties between the Nativity and the Passion. But maybe that’s the point. Merry Christmas to you all, and thanks be to God!