We remain deeply indebted to that magisterial Irish apologist for the Christian faith, C. S. Lewis, one of whose most brilliant essays is titled "The Grand Miracle". Some people make a virtue of stripping Christianity of its miraculous elements but Lewis stubbornly argues that "precisely the one religion in the world you cannot do that to is Christianity".
It is the story of one grand miracle from first to last, for it asserts that what is beyond space and time, uncreated and eternal, came into our world, into human nature, God descending into his universe and rising again. Take this away, and there is nothing specifically Christian left. A Lenten exercise that could prove very rewarding would be to borrow from St Anselm the title of his magnum opus and ask: "Why did God become man?"
The first part of any answer is that he came to show us what God is like. Our puny, finite minds cannot comprehend the greatness and transcendence of the Creator God. We need to know God in a way we can understand. When Philip, that eager disciple, asked Jesus at the Last Supper: "Show us the Father!", Jesus was able to reply, in effect: "Look at me, Philip". In Jesus we see not only the majesty, but the meekness; not only the authority, but the humility; not only the uncompromising righteousness, but the compassion, of Almighty God.
In second place, he came to show us what it means to be truly human. We are so used to defective humanity in us and around us that we have come to believe that "to sin is human". The reverse is true: to sin is to be subhuman. The person who swears, bullies, abuses alcohol and members of the opposite sex, who cheats and gossips, who falsifies tax returns, may be reckoned to be more of a lad or a girl, but they are less of a man or a woman. True humanity is seen in Jesus. It is his life and character that show us what it means to be fully human, and by the same token, set the benchmark to show just how far short we have fallen.
Then, undeniably, he came to die. You and I were born to live. Jesus came into the world for the express purpose of going to his death at Calvary. Why, year after year, do we celebrate Holy Communion on Christmas Day? It is surely very odd, though it makes the point unmistakably. What other person in history is celebrated and remembered on their birthday by deliberately recalling the day of their death?
It is humiliating to pride to admit that Jesus came to deal with our biggest problem, which still lies in the future - having to face the judgment of God. Our record is of rebellion against God and the only way that God's judgment could be set aside for us was by another taking it on our behalf. It is in this sense that Jesus is aptly titled the Lamb of God, for the lamb was the faultless, perfect substitute in Old Testament teaching. In another paradigm, Isaiah saw him as the Suffering Servant on whom our sins were laid. Scots preacher William Still, in Aberdeen, used to refer in hushed tones to Jesus as "God's dustbin".
So we journey through Lent, reflecting again on God's great rescue operation which was going to culminate in the death of his Son on that "green hill outside a city wall". We may well pray for ourselves, that we never allow familiarity to cloud a crystal-clear perception of what this grand miracle of Christmas, Passiontide and Easter proclaims.
G. F.