The New Testament gives us two versions of the story of Jesus' birth, St Matthew's and St Luke's. We've listened to both of them tonight, during the Carol Service (St Matthew) and then in the Mass (St Luke).
Both Matthew and Luke, in common with so many of the hymns we sing and the prayers we use every year at Christmas time, describe Jesus as a king - the divine king, the Messiah, our Lord and Saviour, God Incarnate.
But Matthew and Luke are also careful to show that when God came to us in human form, he came without any of the pomp and ceremony, without any of the pride and majesty, that we might associate with worldly monarchs - especially the monarchs of Jesus' time.
In fact, Luke and Matthew highlight the contrast between the kings and emperors of the time - proud, self-serving, violent men, completely removed from the concerns of ordinary people - and the divine king, who enters human history as a weak and dependent child, in circumstances of poverty and precariousness.
Many of the great saints of Christian history, when they came to reflect and meditate on the mystery of the Incarnation, were overwhelmed with amazement at the humility involved in God's willingness to renounce his divine status and to take on the human condition, to rescue us and draw us into his own life.
But we don't have to be a great saint to share that sense of amazement. The more prayerful and spiritual people are - the more their lives revolve around Christ and his mission and message - the stronger their sense will be of the amazing humility which God was prepared to show in the way he carried out our salvation.
And the opposite is also true: the less spiritual and prayerful we happen to be, the less we'll be likely to be touched by any sense of wonder about God becoming human, in the child Jesus in the stable at Bethlehem.
In saying all that, nobody who's familiar with the picture of God that builds up in the pages of Scripture will be surprised by the fact that when God entered our human condition, he chose circumstances of poverty and weakness and precariousness.
All through Old Testament times God revealed his preference for poor, simple, humble people. He took sides with the victims of cruelty and exploitation. He also made it clear how far away he was from the rich and proud, even when they went about noisily advertising their great love and devotion towards him.
And there's great consistency in the way God acted in the Old Testament period and the circumstances he chose for himself when he became man. There's great consistency in the way that he started his incarnate life, in cold, comfortless conditions, and the teaching he gave at the end of his earthly life, when he told us that whenever we feed the hungry, clothe the naked, care for the sick, give shelter to the stranger and visit those in prison, we're ministering directly to God himself. That's the kind of worship he wants us to offer him.
So I would say that there are two reflections we can take away from our commemoration of Jesus' birth at Christmas time.
One is that, as Christ himself frequently said, God's ways are not our ways. God doesn't relish power, status, superiority over other people, the way human beings so often do. He chooses poverty and powerlessness. But that makes him more worthy of our adoration and worship, not less.
And the other reflection is that if we're searching for God, in the world around us today, he's shown us the places, and in what company, we're likely to find him. If we're anxious to serve God and to be united with him, he's shown us how to go about it - and he started showing us right from the moment of his birth, in the stable at Bethlehem.
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