The first sculpture in the project to use the empty plinth was Mark Wallinger’s “Ecce Homo” depicting a very naked Christ figure. This sculpture itself stirred up a deal of controversy. However the latest occupant is a sculpture by Mark Quinn entitled “Alison Lapper Pregnant” has stirred up even more. For it shows a woman who is naked and very pregnant but also is severely physically disabled. Alison Lapper the subject of the sculpture is herself an artist and was born with almost no arms and very foreshortened legs. Her story is distressing in itself. She was institutionalized from birth for the first nineteen years of her life and abandoned by her natural parents. She was treated as an outcast by society. Only by her sheer will power, courage and determination and by the help of some remarkable people was she able to break out of this restrictive, oppressive world and establish herself as a woman, an artist , a lover and eventually a mother. The critics of the sculpture rail against the inappropriateness of the subject matter in this public square with its national heroes. Others say that apart from Nelson people have forgotten what the other generals did. Others have criticized the political correctness of the piece; others its in your face quality. What is quite clear is that this new sculpture is being noticed and discussed in a quite remarkable way. It is a challenging piece and forces us to confront issues related to femininity, pregnancy, disability and to humanity itself.

But why do I raise this controversial sculpture on this day of all days. Surely something more attractive could equally well have made the point. But I have to admit to you that when I read an article in the Arts section of the New York Times some months ago and then read another article in the English Catholic journal, the Tablet, on the same subject, I knew this had to be the illustration for one of my Christmas sermons this year. For the heart of the truth of Christmas is John’s gospel amazing claim that in Jesus Christ “the Word was made flesh”. That is that this Jesus, this Christ Child, whose birth we celebrate today, is at one and the same time truly divine and truly human, one of us. John does not say that the Word became similar to or like our flesh but that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” In other words Jesus in his incarnation became as we are, fully human, in order that he might redeem our humanity. Irenaeus said what Christ took that he also redeemed. Christ was born not to redeem part of us, the nice bits as it were. No he took our flesh in order that he might redeem the totality of our humanity. This is good news indeed. For each of us probably feels that there are parts of us, our bodies or our minds, that could not possibly be included in God’s great redemptive or restorative project. But that is not what the good book says. Paul in one of the great New Testament passages in Colossians says: “For in him(that is Jesus)all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.”

It is this central truth which the artist, Marc Quinn, seems to capture in his controversial sculpture. By depicting humanity in all its fullness and complexity he celebrates that it is ultimately God’s, made and loved and desired by him. In the immediate impact the sculpture has important things to say to society and to each of us how we treat people who are different from us for whatever reason. It challenges us to look at our own humanity and to respect and nurture it.

Today we rejoice in the Word made Flesh, a proclamation of a fact that is the ground of our hope. That hope is that all of us, each of us, you and me, all matter in the eternal scheme of things. None of us is left out of this equation; no matter what our race, our religion or lack of it, our gender, our sexuality, our economic or social circumstances, our abilities or lack thereof, our physical or mental attributes, or whatever. We are all part of the human family into which Christ was born and for which he died and rose again. The Word was made flesh and we beheld his glory. Thanks be to God.   

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