God, in Jesus Christ came to save ”“ not to judge. He lived in our unloving world, exiled from its Creator, for as long as we allowed him to. In the end, it wasn’t that Jesus rejected us because of all our failings, faults and a refusal to change, but that we rejected him. He suffered and completed God’s work of making us his friends.
If we are tempted to pull out of our Church families because there is too much hurt and lack of love ”“ we should remember Jesus of Nazareth. He never pulled out of our human race. And God the Father is no mere spectator, approving the sacrifice and applauding the actor ”“ Jesus of Nazareth. God’s love was the root, Christ’s death the fruit of stickability and self-sacrifice.
We are celebrating the birth of the Child of Bethlehem, with universal godly credentials. His little family did not absorb him. He was not the Son of Mary and Joseph, he was the Son of humanity and of heaven: “the Word became flesh and lived among us, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Jesus royalised our humanity by crowning his human nature with the Divine nature.