Christ the Infant King

Among the strictures against monarchy presented by the American Revolutionaries was the absurdity that a king can come to the throne at any age, and that, as Mr. Hamilton put it in one of the Federalist Papers, “a helpless infant or an unexperienced youth may wear the crown.”

Indeed he may, and it is a helpless infant wearing the Crown of Crowns that we go to adore on Christmas.

The very same paper had Mr. Hamilton assuring his readers that the American President “cannot be an idiot,” so we know his judgment in these matters is not infallible. And contrary to the claims of the Founding Fathers, a child king is exactly where kingship shines forth in its greatest purity. It does so precisely because the one in whose authority we stand and to whom we owe our service, obedience, and reverence is a helpless infant.

We have a warped idea of authority in our world, born of centuries of political squabbling. We tend to think of it as being either something we choose for ourselves and may justly throw off at the next opportunity if we get a better offer, or as something cruel and arbitrary, wherein we must blindly obey all that is asked of us without question.

The infant King of Kings shows what nonsense this is, for being an infant he has nothing but our service and our reverence. His authority stands bare before us, absent any power to command or compel, as a pure object of devotion. His claim to our service is simply that He is who He is, and our response can only be freely offered from our own hearts.

Authority is a channel of freedom, not a restriction on it. Through service and obedience our free initiative is removed from the clamour of self-will and set firmly outside of ourselves, on another.

It is thus in the Christ Child that God’s authority shines forth in its full purity. The child can do nothing to either entice or compel us to serve. There shall be no whips and overturned tables, no stern rebukes, no miracles of healing or declarations of forgiveness; only a bare call to love and service.

As Mr. Chesterton so wisely saw in the example of Mr. Pickwick and Sam Weller, it is innocence that ought to rule intelligence. It is not shrewd, calculating self-interest that ought to direct our loyalty, but love, reverence, and the wish to serve. We do not serve because of what someone can do for us but for what we can do for him.

Our Lord, it may be objected, does not need anything from us, and this is true, strictly speaking. All we have or could ever give comes first from Him, and so unlike an earthly king we can never place Him in our debt. But it is a part of His overflowing generosity and His unbounded love that He gives us the chance anyway. He wills to hold back, to make Himself, as it were, helpless that we might have something to offer Him. To truly love is to wish to serve, and to serve is the fuel of love. That we may love Him the more, He withholds His hand and allows us to help Him.

This Christmas, meditate a moment on what it means to hold a newborn king. Imagine being in the stable on that night of nights and taking the infant Jesus in your arms. Think how in your arms you hold your Creator, the King of King, He alone to Whom absolute obedience is required, He Whom you are to love with your whole heart and mind and being.

How do you show that love? How should you render obedience to the infant in your arms? How will you serve this helpless omnipotence?