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Are you ready for Christmas? During the season of Advent – which annually begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas and leads up to December 25 – followers of Jesus traditionally look for ways to prepare themselves for the coming of God’s own Son into the world. Throughout December we’ll ponder ways that we can ready ourselves to receive Jesus, once again, into our own hearts.
Moviegoers who crowded into theaters last century to experience an Alfred Hitchcock film typically had two tasks.
The first was to follow the storyline that the director would weave into one of his crime dramas or psychological thrillers.
The second was to spot Hitchcock himself.
The British director made cameo appearances in 39 of his 52 feature films. He never spoke a word of dialogue. He never fired a gun, kissed a leading lady, or drove a car in a daring chase sequence.
Instead, Hitchcock typically inserted himself into a crowd scene or passed briefly in front of the camera for some innocuous reason. He might be a passenger on a bus. Or a man in the distance smoking a cigarette. Or a photographer struggling with a camera. He once even disguised himself as a woman.
In the movie Lifeboat, he appears as the side-by-side Before and After models in a newspaper advertisement for a weight loss product called Reduco Obesity Slayer. Hitchcock was playfully alluding to his own famous girth. Through much of his life he weighed in the neighborhood of 300-350 pounds.
Hitchcock was no musician, but one of his ongoing jokes was to appear carrying a musical instrument. His ultimate expression of that gag (as seen in the image above) was trying to lug a double bass up the steps in the 1951 movie Strangers on a Train, while lead actor Farley Granger descends from the same car.
Hitchcock’s fans became so obsessed with spotting him on the big screen that he wisely began to insert his cameos into the first half hour of the picture. Otherwise, they might forget to pay attention to the plot.
His not-so-secret motivation was self-promotion. Hitchcock figured that the best way to become famous was to keep himself in the public’s eye, quite literally. He enjoyed the fact that his fans were always looking for him. They had to keep their eyes peeled, since he might show up at any minute, and in the most unlikely places.
Which brings us to the Director of the cosmos.
Does God ever show up as a character in his own creation?
Here we come to the heart of Christmas. The true King has arrived in the City of David, just as the prophets foresaw: “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times” (Micah 5:2).
But if you wanted to catch a glimpse of the king, where would you look? He’s a newborn, lying in a feeding trough for animals.
Then for years he’s a blue-collar worker, an itinerant teacher, and a mentor to a dozen spiritual apprentices, all of whom let him down in the crucial final hours of his life. The extraordinary thing about God’s cameo appearance on Earth is that, at least most of the time, he seems to be so very ordinary.
All of that happened twenty centuries ago. None of us lived at the right time and place to catch sight of God’s Son as a face in the crowd.
But that doesn’t mean we don’t have the chance to see him all the time. Even today.
One of the last of Jesus’ teachings is fascinating. At the close of one of his parables in Matthew 25, he says that his followers will see him all the time, yet not recognize him.
They will even protest when this is called to their attention. “Lord, we don’t remember seeing you. When did that happen?”
Jesus replies that every time we see someone who is sick; someone who’s in prison; someone who just got evicted from their apartment; a child whose spirit has been crushed by disappointment; someone battling depression; a woman who just lost her job; a man whom no co-worker wants to share lunch with; someone whose VISA bill is bleeding red ink; someone who feels overwhelmed by the present and the future; or someone who wonders if it’s worth even staying alive, we are seeing him.
“Every time you reach out to such a person, even to the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you are reaching out to me.”
Hitchcock fans were always disappointed when they saw one of his movies but missed spotting the director himself.
Imagine going through life and missing our chance to see the Director of the cosmos right in front of us.
So, keep your eyes peeled this Christmas.
You will see Immanuel, “God with Us,” in an amazing variety of disguises.