There is a lovely and true story of Edward of Windsor, when, as Prince of Wales, he went to India. He was the son of the Supreme power, the King of England, and to the outcaste people, almost divine. As he drew near the Delhi Gate on one of his journeys, 25,000 outcastes awaited his coming. They only expected to see a car flash past, and with luck, to catch a glimpse of him. But Edward, Prince of Wales, stopped the car, stepped out, and heard a spokesman for the sixty million outcastes beg that they might never be abandoned and left to the tyranny of those who despised them and would keep them slaves.

The Prince listened patiently and then did an unheard of thing: He stood up ... stood up for them, "the worse than dogs" ... spoke a few words of kindness, looked them all over slowly, gave them his radiant smile, and brought his hand up in a salute. Eyewitnesses said that a strange word was used about that deed which had never had precedent in the whole history of that ancient land, "Behold," they said, "The Light! The Light! Did you not see the light upon his face."

This is what Zachariah, the father of John the Baptizer, was anticipating in speaking of the coming of the Messiah which his son John would proclaim: "... the dayspring from on high hath visited us, to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death ..." Are any words more appropriate for our time or any truth more deeply needed for our day?

It is said that James the Fifth of Scotland sometimes put aside his royal robes and dressed as a peasant, moving among the common people. He assisted in their labor, heard their talk, entered into their common life, and shared their sorrows. He knew them intimately not as a monarch ruling from a distant throne, but as one who involved himself with his people where they lived and moved and had their being. It was only then that he could rule with understanding, concern, and compassion for all his subjects. And I suspect that only as the peasants learned the truth about their king, how he dwelt among them and shared their humble lot, could they truly rejoice, assured that he who ruled them had a heart of love. The incarnation, the coming of Christ, is our way of saying that God relates to us like that.

William James said it another way when he wrote: "The Prince of darkness may be a gentleman, as we are told he is, but whatever the God of earth and heaven is, he can surely be no gentleman. His menial services are needed in the dust of our human trials, even more than his dignity is needed in the highest heaven."

The metaphor that he uses here in describing God as no gentleman is not meaningful to our times and, therefore, might be misunderstood. James was writing against the backdrop of an era where the leisure class represented a kind of elegant snobbery and disdain for anything but their own excitement and pleasure.

To be a gentleman was to be part of such a class distinction. There were some things a gentleman did as decreed by the social mores of the times. But there were also fixed rules about what a gentleman did not do. He did not get his hands dirty (or his white gloves); he did not associate with others outside his own class; he drew a circle about himself, abandoning the world to its own fate. The lot of the common people was not his concern. He was an exclusive separatist in every sense of the word, and his total life evolved around his own small artificial world, detached and cut off from the realities of real life itself.

The metaphor infers that, if God were truly a gentleman of the old school, it would be assumed he could not care less about anything except himself. It would be inconceivable that he could ever stoop to another’s need and involve himself with someone’s sorry condition. But, said William James, "God is no gentleman. His menial services are needed in the dust of our human trials, even more than his dignity is needed in the highest heaven."

In Christ, he came to give light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death. In an obscure village at a wayside inn, without any of the refinements reserved for royalty, he permitted his Son, the Lord of all life, to be born as less than a peasant in a dirty and unsterile stable reeking with the stench and filled with sounds of stable life. The God of highest heaven came as the lowest of the low in order to show his identity with mankind. God is no gentleman. As George Buttrick said, "He had to cross the street and get his hands in the whole dirty business." This he did in Christ Jesus, to give light to those who sit in darkness. God cared and still cares. He cares in and through Christ who is at once Son of God and Savior, too.

This is not always what we seem to want ... a savior. Too often the world wants some kind of a gentleman image. It wants an adviser, an orator, a scholar, a philosopher, a scientist, a philanthropist, a big businessman, politician, or military messiah. But what the world really needs is the Savior. For sin is here and fear is here and sometimes the night is dark and there are no stars. And God said, "let the light shine out of darkness" and Jesus Christ was born. He came not to teach court graces, but to forgive sins.

And right from the beginning he was derided for his ungentlemanliness. A word most often said about Jesus was, "This man eats with sinners." It was true. This was the way that God, who is no gentleman, sought to redeem society, by getting his hands in the whole dirty business. "They that are whole need not a physician," said Jesus, "but they that are sick." To the sick of all kinds he became a ministering physician. He went out to seek them in their sad plight and commanded his disciples to do the same. He laid hands on malodorous lepers, touched the sightless eyes of the blind, dealt tenderly with condemned harlots, stabbed awake the self-righteous, forgave the sinful, instructed the ignorant, and identified himself as one who loved all men regardless of their lot or level in life.

Even at the cross he died as a common criminal ... the crown they gave him to mimic his royalty was made of thorns. And the inscription about the cross was a provincial mockery which read, "The King of the Jews." Condemned, reviled, and spat upon, he nevertheless took this least of royal occasions to mark it with a nobility and sublimity which cannot be paralleled for its glory, by the loving words of forgiveness for a benighted and bedeviled humanity.

And so the prophecy of Zechariah revealed the gospel of a compassionate God: "The dayspring on high hath visited us to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death." The cross once and for all proved that God is no gentleman, remote from the needs of his children. He is every place where there is a need. And there is no need, in any place, too small for his concern or no sin too great for his healing love. "The dayspring from on high hath visited us to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death." If there is any burden weighing on your soul, any grief gnawing at your heart, any sin gripping you in a relentless grasp ... if there is fear about the future, failure of the past, frustration about the present then let God in Christ speak as we gather round this common table.

God is no gentleman ... he enters into our needs, forgives our sins, and lets the light shine in the darkness of our misery. Holy Communion is the proof. It is the eternal symbol of a God who, in his brokenness, identifies with us in our brokenness. "This is my body broken for you, this is my blood shed for the remission of sins." In the shared moment of participation in the sacrament we find the divine healing of his loving care and we are made whole once again. Not only does he come to the whole world at Christmas ... he comes to each of us individually in Communion.