thediscerninglife

One of the sweetest things in life is the sight of a vulnerable baby. We are programmed to want to cuddle and protect them even in moments when they exasperate us. For many of us, these feelings surface when we look at a painting of the Nativity or a church crèche. We love to watch the online videos of the Children’s Christmas pageant gone off the rails in a charming way, and it gives us a warm feeling to focus on a chubby little Baby Jesus surrounded by a beautiful halo, lying serenely on a pile of very clean straw. But tender feelings toward Baby Jesus in the manger or in his mother’s arms are tinged with more than a little bittersweetness. We already know this baby will have a hard life and a violent death. Truth be told, even the birth of Jesus was fraught with danger that we’d rather not think about.

Over the centuries, the harsh realities of the Christmas story have been papered over with sentimentality and cuteness. And there’s nothing really wrong with any of that, except maybe Elf on the Shelf. Personally, I think it’s fascist. But I digress. It’s only human nature to want to make significant events special and to remember them with warmth and feeling. Many of us tear up when hearing songs like, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” thinking of loved ones no longer with us. And then there’s the way some of us drive ourselves and those around us crazy with our efforts to create THE picture-perfect Christmas. Over the years I’ve been known to get a little crazy about the perfect Christmas table setting and the way ornaments are hung on the tree.

But while family gatherings, exchanging gifts, good food and drink, and festive lights are a beautiful part of Christmas, they are only a dim reflection of its true meaning. In the Scriptures, we find two different accounts of God’s in-breaking into human history through the birth of Jesus Christ.  From Matthew, a Jewish author writing for a Jewish-Christian community, we are given an epic of the New Moses.  From Luke, a Gentile author, writing for a Gentile community, a Greco-Roman hero story. Very different nativity stories, but in both, a singular focus on Jesus as a Savior, making right the sin of Adam and Eve, saving us from our sinful selves. But there is a third account, even if it doesn’t get quite as much attention at Christmas. It is not the story of Jesus’ birth, but what we just heard: the mystical meditation on the first coming of Christ in Jesus found at the beginning of the Gospel according to John.

The contrast between the two ways – the historical approach in Matthew and Luke and the theological approach in John – sums up the two streams of thought in Christianity regarding the meaning of the Incarnation. In one stream, we are, in a sense, victims of the flaws in our humanity. We are in thrall to the reptilian part of our brains which values survival above all else, and in dire need of God to fix us and the mess we’ve made of God’s perfect creation.  But in the other stream of thought, we have the seed of divinity with us, but need God made human to show us – despite our imperfect nature –  how to live into that reality.

In Luke’s account, the glory of that moment in time when God entered human history as a flesh-and-blood baby is announced by an angel, and sung by a choir of angels, surrounded by heavenly light. But it remains outside us, something to go and see and hear, something to ponder. In John, the glory of God lies within us. It tells us that humanity came into being through the Word who is Christ, and that, by being born as Jesus, Christ came to his own, and “pitched his tent,” as the original Greek reads, among us.

Christ came into the world in humble, dangerous circumstances, because it would have been contrary to God’s purposes for it to be otherwise. Had Jesus been born as a person of high-status, with all the worldly power and privileges that belong to such people, how could anyone but the elite have related to him or believed in his teachings? What could Jesus possibly have said to the oppressed, the poor, the sick, the prisoners, and others on the margins that would not sound like the empty promises of empire? How could they have understood the subversive power of the Kingdom of God? It was far more difficult but better suited to God’s purposes for Jesus to speak from a low status position. It was the only possible way that Jesus’ ministry could have shown the breadth and depth of God’s love and compassion for all of us, regardless of status; all of us beloved children of God, carrying within us a seed of divinity.

The early Church theologian Gregory of Nazianzus, writing in the 4^th century said this about the Incarnation:

“The very Son of God, older than the ages, the invisible, the incomprehensible, the incorporeal, the beginning of beginning, the light of light, the fountain of life and immortality, the image of the archetype, the immovable seal, the perfect likeness, the definition and word of the Father: he it is who comes to his own image and takes our nature for the good of our nature, and unites himself to an intelligent soul for the good of my soul, to purify like by like.”

Let’s linger on that a bit: he it is who comes to his own image, to purify like by like. The fully divine but also fully human being comes to awaken us to who we truly are. Athanasius, also writing in the 4^th century, agrees, saying “God became human, so that humans might become divine.” The glory, the splendor, the majesty, and the awesome mystery of Christ being born into the world as Jesus is this: that we carry divinity within us. While we are God’s creatures and certainly not God’s equal, God and humanity are not divided; flesh and soul, matter and spirit, are not in opposition to one another. Unlike the Buddha, who 500 years earlier taught a way of liberation from the endless cycle of rebirth and the illusions of the material world, the Way of Jesus is one of liberation from the dualism of matter and spirit. All of Jesus’ ministry is focused on freeing us from the belief that as material beings we are somehow separate from God. And in his death and resurrection, he liberated us from the fear of death by showing us that we all partake of his eternal life. That is truly something to sing our Alleluias for! Our mission in life is not to escape our humanity, but to fully live it; to live it to the fullest extent possible in this world. As Jesus said in John’s gospel, “I have come so that they may have life, and have it in abundance.”

What does this mean for us, concretely, in 2023? All the things we treasure most at Christmastime and sing about in our carols and secular Christmas songs – gathering together, tending to those in need, gifting one another with love, treating the hurting with compassion, desiring God’s justice for all, and rejoicing in the goodness of God – these are the attitudes and actions that express the fullness of our humanity. It is in living our humanity fully that we grow that seed of divinity within us and are brought into union with God. Imagine what the world would be like if everyone truly believed that they, and everyone else in the world, carried a spark of the divine within them, and treated one another accordingly. Imagine what the world would be like if we lived in a way that expressed the fullness of our humanity in union with Christ. I think it would be a lot like the parables of the Kingdom of God.

As we give thanks to God for the greatest Christmas present of all, Jesus Christ, let us pray for an end to the evils we humans inflict on one another, and for an end to a mindset of scarcity that pits us against one another. Most of all, let us pray for ourselves and each other, that through the power of God’s grace, we may truly believe that Christ is in each of our hearts, ever being reborn in us, and live into the life in abundance that Jesus Christ taught and lived.

In the words of a medieval carol:

Advent is gone, Christmas is come;
Be we merry now, all and some!