It’s been many years since Rev. Garth Thompson told a moving story about tenacious love, but it has stuck with us and this holiday season it seems worth re-telling. The story goes that a man of dubious character died. He hadn’t much to commend him to heaven’s precincts, and so he found himself locked securely behind hell’s gates. A delegation of his friends, acknowledging the fairness of his fate but moved by the man’s misery, made a trip to the gates of hell and shook and rattled those barriers. “Let him out!” the friends demanded. But sadly, the gates remained firmly locked and the man remained trapped within.
Prominent experts were called to argue the man’s case. Many learned and brilliant minds set to work on the matter. They examined the case from every angle and offered thoughtful reasons for commuting his sentence of eternal torment. “Let him out!” they pleaded. But the gates remained locked.
The man’s pastor was asked to stand before those stubborn gates and request the man’s release. He acknowledged that the man was not without some virtue. He had actually demonstrated some compassion a time or two, and had even contributed to the poor on one occasion. “Let him out!” the pastor insisted. But the gates didn’t budge.
Eventually all the man’s friends and supporters left the scene in discouragement. It was then that a stooped, elderly figure appeared alone at the gates of hell. It was the condemned man’s mother. In a quiet voice, full of maternal love, she whispered, “Let me in!” And at the sound of that prayer, the massive gates of hell swung wide open, setting the man free. Nothing, not even the gates of hell, could withstand a love so self-giving as that of a parent for a beloved child.
The Christmas story which churches around the globe celebrate begins with the acknowledgement that humanity’s prospects were dim. Left to our own devices, we humans were locked in darkness, prone to temptation, subject to suffering and to torment. God had sent prophet after prophet, messenger after messenger to guide us and to plead for us, that we might be let out of our terrible dilemma. But the wars, famine, heartache and hardship in which humanity was trapped were immovable.
And so God looked on us with tender and selfless parental love and said, “Let me in!” And God came to us. Not as a power-wielding force that burst our chains and released us from earth’s troubling entanglements. No, God came to us as one of us. God entered our world, fraught with uncertainty and danger, as a tiny, helpless baby. God came, empowered only with love. But nothing, not the gates of hell or the stoniness of human hearts, can ultimately withstand the power of love.
This season is one of wonderment and celebration. Be ready. Be expectant. Be openhearted. Let him in!
