AP

Movies give us one picture of a hero. ChatGPT puts it like this: Heroes are strong, brave, confident, determined and inspiring. They wear capes.

If that’s the picture, Jesus is an anti-hero.

A baby!

That baby depended on others for everything. He was vulnerable to childhood illnesses and accidents. He needed to learn how to walk, talk, read, feed , bathe, dress and toilet himself. He would get tired, thirsty, lonely and feel emotions like anger and grief.

If we indulge our imagination, we can imagine the magi ending the long westward journey feeling a big letdown. They came looking for a king but found a baby. Eyes rolled. What was he going to do with the gold, myrrh and frankincense that were gifts fit for a king?

A hero in a diaper instead of a cape? A king in a cradle? A saviour in a stable? Surely this is some kind of divine comedy.

The birth of Jesus was just the start of a great reversal. The Jews looked for signs of power from their messianic idea of a hero – a kind of David on steroids. The Greeks looked for wisdom – someone more erudite than the trinity of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. To these eyes, Jesus represented weakness and folly.  His birth was a scandal matched only by his death.

However, our ways are not God’s ways. What is folly to fallen eyes is the wisdom of God. What is powerlessness to man was the power of God displayed. In weakness, power; in folly, wisdom. In the anti-hero, God’s saviour.

Seen through the divine lens, the circumstances of Jesus’ birth are God’s judgement on human fallenness. He came to upend life as we knew it and to open the way to the kingdom that is not of this world. He blesses what we despise and declares woes on what we treasure. Nothing about the birth, life, and death of Jesus fits the human idea of a hero.

However, the child in a cradle was God’s long promised and chosen saviour. In his life he reached into the crevices of sin to welcome the prodigal scraps of humanity. In his death he covered the worst of human sins in an overflow of atoning grace. In his resurrection he poured scorn on the last enemy – which is death. And in his return, that baby will be seen as the glorious Lord of lords and King of kings.

God’s anti-hero is truly the hero that we all need.

A baby!

– David Burke, the present Moderator-General of the PCA