The Baby in the Manger and the Ladder We Can’t Climb. Christmas day 2025

The big event for the Church this year has been the 1700th anniversary of the Nicene creed. Those are the words we say when we begin ‘I believe’ in every communion service.

In 325 Emperor Constantine brought together all the bishops, the church leaders, many of whom had, until a few years earlier, been persecuted for their faith. He wanted them to come to an agreement on who Jesus really was. Was he human, or was he God-human?

It was a passionate debate. 

It was so passionate that even Santa Claus got locked up in a cell for the night. Nicholas the bishop of Myra, who later became St Nicholas, Santa Niklaus, was so impassioned that he punched his opponent in the face and was taken to the cell to cool off for the night. I guess that year he was on the naughty list.

But at the heart of it was a discussion about Christmas, and the baby lying in the manger. Who was he?

The people on the human side of the debate said that Jesus was born of a virgin, that he was the greatest and most God-filled human imaginable, but that the baby in the manger was still only part of creation, a human being. He led an amazing life. He showed us what it was to trust in God and love God. He pioneered the way to God.

So here is my visual aid. A ladder.

According to this version – Jesus, through his prayer and his good works and his obedience which took him to the cross, made his way up the ladder to God. And now that he is up there, he can give a hand to anyone who wants to make the effort to follow him up the ladder to get up to God – by their prayer, their reading the bible, their good works and their obedience.

So we follow Jesus in being good, and we hope that we are far enough up the ladder for God to accept us. God is at the top of the mountain and we are climbing up the mountain to meet God.

That makes a lot of sense, and it is – I suspect – what most of us believe.

And we are wrong.

There are lots of reasons why we are wrong. I’m just going to mention two.

1. We put our trust in ourselves. If I am a little bit better, then I can get up the next rung. It is about me, and if I am sitting here, then I can look down on you who is sitting here. It leads to pride at the top and despair at the bottom.

2. And secondly, perhaps we can climb to almost the top of the ladder – but how are we going to get up to God there. There is still a huge gap. Jesus was a man, part of creation, but he was a super-man. He may have been able to make that last jump himself from the top of the ladder to heaven, but we can’t – even with his help.

And the danger with this view is that we end up burdening people, telling them what they have to do to follow Jesus to get up the ladder. Do this, do that and you will get higher. And so often people are crushed. They think, ‘I can’t do that. I can’t become a monk or a nun or a mother Theresa or a hermit – because that is what it seems I have to be in order to go up the ladder’.

But the view that triumphed, that St Niklaus supported, that we say most weeks in the creed, was very different.

What happens at Christmas is that God does not wait for us to climb up the ladder to him but in his love comes down the ladder to us.

The baby born in the manger was fully human, but also fully God.

He was the God-human. He was fully human so he knows exactly what it is like to be a human, but he was also fully God. One of the Christmas titles he is given is Immanuel, ‘God with us’.

In the creed we say of Jesus: ‘God from God, light from light, very God from very God’. And we say, He was ‘incarnate (made flesh) of the Virgin Mary and the Holy Spirit’.

And John writes in his letter, ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God … The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We have seen his glory, the glory as of the only son of the Father. Noone has ever seen God. It is God the only Son who is close to the Father’s heart who has made him know’.

And that changes the picture dramatically.

So now if we want to get to God, we don’t have to follow Jesus up the ladder. And that is good news, because we cannot. However hard we try we will never get high enough. 

So we don’t meet God by climbing up the ladder, but by coming to him at the foot of the ladder. 

We recognise that we cannot climb the ladder, and instead we put our trust that Jesus is the Son of God, and we come to Jesus at the foot of the ladder.

The manger in the stable becomes the God-pad, where God touches earth, where the creator becomes part of the creation.

And while we can't climb the ladder, 

we can be like the shepherds who listen to the angels and come to see him and wonder.
We can be like the wise men who come to Jesus and kneel before him.
We can be like countless women and men who, even though they have never seen him have heard his word, come to him, and have put their trust in him.

This is the wonder of Christmas.

And because Jesus is God with us, he doesn’t just come down to meet us. When he goes back up the ladder he will take us with him. 

So if, in our hearts and minds, we come to him here in a stable, if we receive him, trust in him (that is what it is 'to believe' in him), if we allow his Spirit to come into our lives, he can transform us so that we can become like him.

As someone said, ‘The Son of God became a human being, so that the sons and daughters of human beings can become sons and daughters of God.’