A baby’s invitation to peace on earth

What did the angels mean by saying: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace”? The shepherds must have wondered when they heard it from a multitude of the heavenly host. It had begun with one angel, and that was bad enough, for they were “sore afraid” when he appeared, though the first thing the messenger of God said was: “Fear not.” Once they had swallowed down their fear they heard the news: that a saviour had been born that very day. As a sign that they had discovered the right newborn child, they would “find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger”. They hurried to Bethlehem and found it was so. 

This is the moment depicted by the Le Nain brothers in about 1640. The painting is in the National Gallery, London, not in a special Christmas exhibition, but free to view in the wonderful main collection. The picture was bought from the Duke of Norfolk in 1962. Parts of it look naturalistic to modern eyes: the hindquarters of the ox or the shepherd’s wrinkled ankles and dirty feet. He must have had a cold night of it in his ragged clothes. But, in the conventions of high Renaissance art, the stable is sheltered by grand if broken classical architecture. In a Baroque fancy, two little angels are shown as children really, not lofty messengers of God likely to make anyone sore afraid. 

Peace is here in an uneasy way: the peace of a chill rural morning with nowhere to live. The young shepherd in a hat and one of the angels glance to the left – at what? It is too early for the Magi, too soon to know of Herod’s murderous plan for the innocents. But danger may be drawing near. 

The Virgin Mary, the Child’s mother, kneels in calm contemplation. St Joseph, his face weather-beaten, looks down steadily too, hands folded on his staff. The baby lies there, looking to his mother. The question about peace on earth remains for the moment in the air. 

A contemporary of the Le Nain brothers, Henry Vaughan, began a poem on the Nativity in his condensed way: “Peace? and to all the world? Sure One, / And He the Prince of Peace, hath none!” Jesus’s mother had no peace even to bring him into the world at home, but had to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem. This infant Prince’s only courtiers are the beasts of the stable. At sunset, “How dark it is!” exclaims the poet. “Shed down one ray, / To guide us out of this dark night.” 

Yet no irresistible light from the Child transforms the earth. Things go on year by year, from bad to worse. Jesus is taken to Egypt to escape Herod. The martial Romans rule with iron strictness. Accused of being no friend of Caesar’s, Jesus is executed under the watch of a centurion. What could be a greater injustice than this man of peace violently done to death? A generation later Jerusalem and God’s Temple are a desolation. Only the grave seemed peaceful. 

Today, though, we are not on the brink of Good Friday but of Christmas. The doleful future did not on the first Christmas day expunge the joy of a child being born. It is a methodically optimistic aspect of human life: that a new life is reason to rejoice, though everyone born will one day die. 

What difference, then, did the name Emmanuel make, attached to the Child Jesus as the prophet Isaiah declared it would be? Emmanuel means God With Us. In the painting, the baby simply lies there. All babies do that, relying on the love and kindness of women and men around them for their very life each day. That is all the force they possess: the capacity to be loved. If, as Christmas claims, God is With Us, then it is as a real human baby that he comes. In one of the nation’s favourite carols, that true poet Christina Rossetti wrote: “Enough for Him, whom cherubim / Worship night and day, / A breastful of milk / And a mangerful of hay.” 

The Christian belief embodied by Christmas cannot be imposed on anyone. Everyone is free to find their own way. Any thoughtful person is moved by Greek tragedy or stirred by ancient myth. So it would be dim-witted to ignore the central cultural thread in Britain’s history, especially when it speaks to undeniably dreadful world events. 

As the occasion for Christmas cards and carols, of family dinner and wrapped-up presents, the birth of Jesus is good news to be celebrated. It is no crime to enjoy a family Christmas despite the wars and horrors in the world. The mission of the person called Emmanuel was not to establish a new world order but to bear witness to God being with us – in the happy task of raising a family, and through sorrows, pain and misery. He fights for peace by lying there as a baby.