Art 'The Rest Among The Shepherds' by Massimo Barbi
Christmas is here! Alleluia!
Merry Christmas to you and yours!
This is a major feast in the church calendar. DUH! It has been co-opted to get retail back in the black every year through the benevolence of gift giving. I love gifts, giving and receiving. This isn't all bad but it does definitely change focus. I will attempt to bring a bit of the sacred into focus although the joy of a child's face on Christmas morning is indeed sacred as well. Everything belongs.
This celebration of the Son of God becoming incarnate, God becoming human is unfathomable. What does it look like? In a world of violence, poverty and short life expectancy. A civilization that was essentially the norm until the industrial revolution. Candlelight, chamber pots and truly limited resources. Our modern times are the exception to the whole of history. We are not the center of it all, just the current inhabitants. It is really hard to imagine this kind of life in the West without a touch of superiority. The old term '3rd world' was the world. Sometimes it is hard to even think of a God who exists let alone becomes human. The modern mind can want to categorize faith as superstition and a 'opiate to the masses' as Marx put it. Christians can even fall into this at times. Faith is not without doubts if it is real. But this is why we celebrate, God did indeed become a human baby, born in ancient Palestine, the Jewish Messiah and Savior of the World.
The young Mother of God nursing the creator. So human, so good and beautiful. God steps into history in the most unique and vulnerable of ways. Most common thoughts of God are akin to sheer power, not weakness. As well as why would a God set things up with such suffering and difficulty? If I were God....
A human in his most vulnerable, weak and dependent state as a baby. This parallels the vulnerable, weak and dependent state Jesus was in as he faced and endured his passion. Two of the most pivotal times in Christ's life are those of utter weakness. God is indeed powerful but why is it that Jesus subjected himself to such dependence? The truly weak state of a human being. Perhaps to remind us that it is not good to be alone? Perhaps to show us the reality of how God gives us the resources and trusts us to operate in this world? Perhaps to show us life is hard as well as beautiful and God wanted to know and experience it, could God learn? What God is this who subjects themselves to such a reality? Perhaps to truly know how to counsel their children and offer healing and meaning to the pain? Perhaps to show a God who is parental and loving? Perhaps to show us the moral bankruptcy of violence? Perhaps to show us what God is really like?
Love always takes a risk. It is not safe or predictable. It hurts and we know it yet the alternative is so much harder. Love is vulnerable. Love conquers in ways the most logical of us can't quite fathom. Love stands in deep contrast to the nihilism, violence and hedonism of the age. Love is the call to all of us. And this is beautiful Good News.
The light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot comprehend it.
John 1:5
May you embrace your humanity, dependence and the Holy Spirit within you today and always. Merry Christmas!
