In the name of the One who is Emmanuel, God with us. Amen

One of the most familiar images in Christian art is the Madonna and Child, Mary and the infant Jesus, an image which is deeply human and with which we easily identify. The love of mother for child and child for mother is at the heart of our humanity. And it is an image which we see all around us in everyday life: the Latino mother with her child on the bus or the subway; the new babies coming for baptism in this parish which delight us all; or the tragic images we see on television of mothers clutching pathetically thin babies in the Congo or Zimbabwe. The image does not need interpretation or unraveling: we know the relationship; we recognize the sentiments.

For many of us it is a relationship which is only broken in death and even then lives on in the heart. Over the past weeks as the Christmas cards have come in day by day the image has been replicated over and over again: famous art works from one Gallery shop or another; simple line drawings or commercial representations; sometimes an original art work like one of my Australian priest friends produced from his prison cell this year. It is this image which is at the heart of the Christmas story: Jesus, born of Mary his mother; Jesus who is Emmanuel, God with us.

One such image of the Madonna and Child was much in the news several years ago. It was an acquisition at the Metropolitan Museum by the great 14th Century Sienese master, Duccio. It made the headlines partly because of the price paid for it, 45 million dollars; it was the most expensive acquisition the Met has ever made. But it is also the first Duccio in the Met's collection and because there are no more ever likely to come up for sale the only one. And most importantly for the Met, it fills a major gap in the collection. It is a very important link in the history of art: the beginning of the great Renaissance period in Italian art. I visited it early on and often drop in to see it. At present it is part of an exhibition to honor the retiring director, Philippe de Montebello. It is small and needs to be looked at very close up. It is based on a typical Eastern icon with a gold background and the mother and child in slightly awkward pose.

But it is not simply a Western copy of an icon. Rather Duccio has taken a familiar form and begun to interpret it a new way; there is something wonderfully human in the form as the child Jesus playfully adjusts Mary's veil; the whole image is placed behind an architectural feature, an ornate parapet, thus locating the image in the contemporary world rather than in mystical time. But like all great art the more you look the more you see or perhaps the more you read into the image. So it is with the Duccio.

But this is not simply an image of a mother and child although it is certainly that. This is a holy image created for a church or chapel or some place of devotion. One of the interesting clues of course is the frame which has been burnt at some stage by devotional candles place before it. So it is that this image has clues not only of the humanity of the scene but also of the element of divinity. This is an image after all of Jesus and the Mother Mary, a holy image, an image of God at work among us.

The first thing that struck me was the element of touch, that most human and sensual dimension of life. In the case of the Duccio it is the Christ-child's hand reaching out toward his mother in love and affection and playfulness. It is a remarkably tender and beautiful moment. The other dimension of touch is the child's chubby foot resting on his mother's arm. Touch, the touch of child for parent and parent for child; the touch between spouses and friends and lovers; the touch of comfort and support and reassurance. The touch of one human being for another given in love and compassion is at the very heart of our humanness and here in this image we see the human touch of God at the center of the Christmas gospel: God who comes among us as a tiny child, reaching out to his mother in love. Christmas is God's touch of love; God's enlivening touch; Love enabling love in the recipient.

But as I reflected on this touch, this playful touch of child for parent, I found myself thinking of another touch in art, Michelangelo's image of God creating Adam in the Sistine Chapel, with God's outstretched arm and hand touching Adam's hand into life. Here Jesus, who is called the New Adam by St Paul, is touching into life his human mother Mary, who is representative of the whole human race. Christmas is the first act of the New Creation: It is Incarnation, the enfleshment of God which is the initiating act of the process of the new creation; it is the beginning of the Great Reversal of the Fall of Humankind. As I looked I could not help noticing that Mary's veil was so draped to form a circle around her face making it look like the globe of the Earth. Here was the Jesus, the Creator and Savior of the World beginning his great work of Recreation and Salvation. His mother Mary, the one who opened herself humbly and trustingly to the angelic announcement is the first to receive the Christmas gospel. Christmas is God's Creative touch.

As I looked at the Duccio I realized that Mary's countenance is not a particularly happy one: she looks sadly away from the viewer and the child. Like the mother in the Congo or Zimbabwe Mary is well aware of the world into which her child is being born. This child was not born in a maternity ward or in a comfortable house but in a manger, a place for animals; there is a dimension of poverty and precariousness and vulnerability in this child's birth. No wonder Mary looks distracted and worried.

But at a more devotional level Mary is all too aware of the Passion of Christ which is to come. "A sword shall pierce your own heart also" has been foretold of Mary. She anticipates the suffering of the Savior of the world. But this child is not dressed as a child at all: rather the child is royally robed in scarlet and purple with gold decoration, because he is a King and he will reign from the throne of the Cross. This great work of God will only be accomplished through the Cross and Passion and Resurrection of his Christ.

It is very interesting in studying Nativities in art that so often they include references to the suffering, the passion and the death of Christ: altar like cradles; swaddling bands like the winding clothes of the dead; sacrificial lambs laid before the cradle; the gift of Myrrh, used for anointing the dead, offered by one of the Magi. The artists did this deliberately because they knew the whole story.

T.S. Eliot is his poem, Journey of the Magi, understood that insight: "Were we led all that way for Birth or Death? There was a birth certainly, We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death, But had thought they were different; this Birth was Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death". Christmas is about God's Redemption of the World through the life, death and resurrection of his Christ.