Jesus didn’t offer salvation as an escape plan from our life’s travails but as a commitment to heal us from the habits of sin, the violence that cuts through each of us and the world. “For the evangelists Luke and Matthew, the childhood of Jesus, his birth in the stable of Bethlehem, were already under the sign of suffering,” Barth continued. “The whole life of Jesus comes under the heading ‘suffered,’” theologian Karl Barth commented. The story of the incarnation is the story of crucifixion.įor Stevens to sing such a hymn during this season reminds us that Jesus was born into an anguished world-an anguish that took hold in his life, an agony unto death. When the child in the manger grows into adulthood, our world kills him. Stevens sings: “For me, kind Jesus, was thine incarnation / thy mortal sorrow, and thy life’s oblation / thy death of anguish and thy bitter passion / for my salvation.” The cross on Golgotha casts a long shadow toward Bethlehem. ON SUFJAN STEVENS' 2012 Christmas album, Silver & Gold, he includes “Ah Holy Jesus,” a hymn about Christ’s crucifixion.
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