Isaiah 9:2-7; Psalm 96; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:1-20
The Rev. Candice B. Frazer
After a tour of Europe, Mark Twain decided to try his hand at historical fiction. He studied English and French history, which eventually led him to write The Prince and the Pauper. Originally, the story was meant for children and set in the Victorian era, but Twain later changed his mind and placed it in the court of King Henry VIII.
The Prince and the Pauper has since been adapted for the stage, film, and television. My personal favorite is the Mickey Mouse version, though I’m also fond of (and I am dating myself) the Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen adaptation, It Takes Two, in which a wealthy tycoon’s daughter and an orphan switch places to see what life is like for the other.
That’s the heart of the story: two children who look alike swap places and experience life from perspectives vastly different from their own.
In Twain’s original telling, Tom Canty, the pauper, and Edward, the son of King Henry VIII and Prince of Wales, are able to exchange identities simply by changing their clothes. As each boy lives the other’s life, they encounter both challenges and possibilities—challenges in learning how to survive in an unfamiliar world, and possibilities for imagining how their own world might be changed.
When the king dies and the prince is to be crowned, Edward must risk everything to stop the coronation and restore the truth. Tom, who never wanted to be king, is more than happy to give the throne back to its rightful heir. In the end, Edward is crowned, and Tom is made the King’s Ward and advisor—a position of honor and security he holds for the rest of his life.
It’s a fun story, written for children, but with a purpose deeper than simple mistaken identity. Twain uses the story to expose social inequality, to criticize unjust laws, and to warn against judging others based solely on appearances. He introduces the novel with a quote from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice:
The quality of mercy is not strained;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
‘Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown
These words are spoken by Portia, disguised as a lawyer, as she pleads for mercy for her friend Antonio. In this speech, Shakespeare describes mercy as “an attribute to God himself.”
Mercy as an attribute of God. More than a beautiful sentiment, I think that is in no small part, why God comes to earth. Jesus doesn’t literally swap places with anyone. But in becoming one of us, he enters fully into the human experience. He is born—a baby in a manger. He grows up and learns how to read and write and think. He has friends and a job. Some people like him, and some do not. He laughs. He weeps. He feels pain. He grieves the death of those he loves. He even gets angry from time to time.
Jesus feels what we feel. He experiences what we experience. He lives like us, loves like us, dies like us. In the incarnation, the human experience becomes part of the divine experience—the prince becomes a pauper.
As the richness of God comes to dwell in the poverty of humanity, mercy is both given and received.
Jesus comes to earth because he wants to know life as we know it. But that is not all.
Jesus invites us to experience life as he understands it. He invites us to love one another—to do for one another as we would want done for ourselves. He calls us to feed the hungry, to visit the lonely, to care for the sick, to clothe those who have nothing. Most especially, he reminds us that if we are important enough for God to become fully human—than each of us is important enough to be honored and respected and loved by one another just as Jesus does for each of us.
The incarnation—the fully divine becoming fully human—is not simply wonderful, it is a wonder of wonders. The babe born in a stable in Bethlehem is the point where heaven meets earth, where the vertical touches the horizontal. It is the place where flesh serves the spirit and the spirit exists for the sake of the flesh. In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus says it like this, “If flesh came into being because of the spirit, it is a marvel, but if spirit came into being because of the body, it is a marvel of marvels.” When God takes on flesh and dwells among us, God gives us the greatest gift imaginable.
God gives God’s own self—fully, completely, without condition—simply to invite us into love. Our God is willing to sacrifice so much, to become one of us, because God loves us. And in becoming fully human, God shows his love for us even more deeply.
Mark Twain’s prince did not become a pauper because of his love for the people he would one day reign over. But, by becoming a pauper, he began to experience and appreciate the fullness of the human experience. His life of ease gave way to a brutal and cruel existence in which fairness and mercy were overruled by a harsh, punitive system in which violence and dishonesty were stuck in a perpetual cycle of cruelty, injustice, and fear of which none could break free. And so, Edward vows to reign with mercy—a gift given even when it is not deserved.
That is the mercy of Christ: a gift offered to us even when we are undeserving. It is the richness of God dwelling in the poverty of humanity—born in a stable, laid in a manger. The first to worship him are those without wealth, power, or status. Throughout his life, those who might have embraced him often feared what they might lose, while those who followed him trusted in his promise of hope and love.
Tonight, we call him the Prince of Peace, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords. And yet, he is also the prince who becomes a pauper—rich beyond measure, choosing to dwell in human poverty. Christ comes to delight in us, just as Mary and Joseph delighted in him. He comes to give us the gift of love, and he will always love us.
Amen.