The Grenfell Tower disaster clustered together what’s terrifyingly and horrifyingly amiss about our society and showed us so many kinds of wrong. But it also showed us the meaning of Christmas.
As the firefighters lined up rigged in breathing apparatus to enter the tower, crews hugged each other because few of them believed they were coming out again. It was Britain’s twin tower and was going to collapse on them. Some even wrote their names on their fire helmets (firefighters don’t have dog tags like the armed forces) so they could be identified when they were found as their air supply would not last them if going up to the upper floors. Yet not one firefighter refused to go in and many of them went in time after time.
It’s a picture to strain the imagination, but can you imagine the three persons of the Trinity hugging one another moments before the incarnation? Jesus was ‘going into the tower’ and no one supposed for a moment it was going to be a picnic.
Jesus faced death on the upper floors. That death was inherent in the logic of incarnation. Jesus went into the flames to be with us.
Thank God for those in whose courage we see today the meaning of incarnation. Thank God that we, on the upper floors, were considered worth coming to find. Thank God for Christmas.
