One of my favorite scenes in Talladega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby is the scene at the dinner table where Ricky Bobby is saying grace to the "Bab'a Jesus." He spends most of the time, before he gets to his request list, talking about the characteristics of a baby. His fingers and toes, his hair, his cuteness. I laughed out loud at the absurdness of the prayer but also I have been at tables where I have wanted to laugh at similar things prayed, I am sure others have felt the same way about my praying.
Later as I reflected on that scene it occurred to me there was another reason for my laughter. It had to do with the human need to try to control God. From the Tower of Babel to our insistence that we control the limits of God's salvation and who God "Saves."
You see, it is easy to control a baby, particularly new borns. We can pick them up and take them where we want them to go. We can show them off and have people say how cute they are. We can put them to bed and go about life without a whole lot of inconvenience. We can determine if they live or die, if we decide to feed them or not.
The only thing they can really do to us is annoy us with crying and bodily emissions. Even those things, if we are cold hearted enough, can be ignored.
Jesus on the cross is hard for us to pick up and carry. The wounded Christ is not so cute. We can put Jesus in the tomb but we can not keep him there, he will get up and find us in our locked rooms.
The baby Jesus may appear easily controlled, but not the risen Christ.
2 comments:
Lovely post! Most of the parents I know, though, feel as if their newborns control them, not the other way around!
Fantastic photo for this post. Now that I've read it, does that mean I can sleep through your sermon on Sunday?
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