Right now we live in a world where everything—and rightly so, needs to be sanitized. Our hands need to be washed, surfaces cleaned, etc., all to keep a virus from spreading.
Some things however, should never be sanitized, as doing so keeps peace on earth and goodwill to all from spreading like a pandemic of healing. The Christmas story is one such thing.
If you live in North America, you have been told the Christmas story countless times and have an image in your mind of a happy new family in a clean stable with nice groomed farm animals close by. Of course, they are visited by some nice, respectable shepherds and three wise men who bear neatly gift wrapped presents. It is night time and there is a beautiful star shining above them.
Everything is peaceful, shiny and sanitized. Little baby Jesus doesn’t even cry.
Have you ever witnessed the birth of a child? It is anything but peaceful. Imagine a scared 14-15 year old girl giving birth to her first child. In the first century C.E. there is a high mortality rate for mother and child. They are not in a clean hospital surrounded by highly trained medical professionals.
It’s just Mary and Joseph in an unsanitized cave with dirty animals nearby.
After hours of agonizing labour, Mary screams and with a final push, a baby slides out of her vagina covered with blood and slime. Joseph catches the child and quickly cleans him off the best he can with whatever he has at hand before letting him nurse for the first time at the breast of a teenaged girl.
The first visitors they have are the “untouchables” of that society. The shepherds. This is not a job that anyone aspires to have. It’s something you end up doing when you are shunned from society. When you come into town to buy or sell with your meagre resources, everyone knows you are one of those nasty shepherds by your smell. Your low class is carried ahead of you on the wind wherever you go. Announcing that you are a nobody, that you are to be avoided, not trusted.
Those were the first visitors the Son of God had.
Jesus birth was scandalous. Everyone knows that human gestation is nine months. They knew that Joseph was a man of honour who would not violate the purity code of their day. They knew that Jesus gestation was suspiciously short.
They would whisper slurs behind his back like “mamzer”. Or in our language—“bastard”. His mother would have been spit upon in their village and called a “zona”—a whore—especially after Josephs untimely death with nobody to protect them. They had no honour or standing in the community.
Jesus followed in Josephs footsteps as a “tekton”—a common labourer who built things with wood and stone. It was a living for those who did not own land. Something the poorest of society would do. Maybe a step or two above being a shepherd. His first followers included uneducated fishermen, violent zealots, a traitor to Israel who sold out to and worked for the empire (tax collector).
The message of Christmas is not the narrative of an all powerful, all controlling god coming to earth to set up a political kingdom which will force a system of morality on humanity by punishing wrongdoers and rewarding those who hold to “correct theological beliefs”.
If the message of Christmas is anything, it is a revelation that “Emmanuel”, or God with us has always been a reality and it is being shown to us in a most dramatic way. God does not come with pomp and ceremony with minstrels announcing His coming as He enters on a majestic war horse, brandishing a sword and demanding fealty. He enters physical reality quite humbly as we all do. Growing inside of another human, completely dependant upon creation. Growing up impoverished, hungry and undignified, with a subversive message, inviting us to participate in a new-to-us reality.
God is all-vulnerable which makes God perfectly relational and above all, perfect love.
The message of Christmas is that God affirms us. We called Him the “Son of God” because we recognized the divine in Him.
Jesus called Himself the “Son of man”, because He saw the divine in us. He wanted us to know that we are just like He is. We too are expressions of God. We too are complete, lacking nothing, created blameless and unconditionally loved.
I wonder if we envisioned God as a king—someone powerful who we ask to do our bidding for us so we could then “pass the buck” of responsibility? After all, when the divine calls Himself the “Son of man”—that tells me that we have the power and responsibility to make real, tangible and positive change on this earth. It is up to us to do good. We must do more than just pray to an unseen god to do things for us.
We are the hands and feet of God!
Despite an undignified beginning of life, Jesus was convinced of who He was and lived out of that reality perfectly. That’s what makes Him so unique. That’s what makes Jesus worth following.
Each of us needs to look past the lies we’ve been told about ourselves. Religion has told us that we were born sinful—just like Jesus’ society told Him. We have been told that we are not good enough—like others who saw Jesus as a common bastard labourer.
You were brought into existence for relationship with pure love. You are the very expression of God and have the power to change the world around you.
Perhaps the Christmas message is simply this: You have never been in need of sanitizing. You have never been dirty in God’s eyes. You have always been complete. You have always been loved and accepted. The Christmas story is not a narrative which makes this possible contingent upon your belief—it is a revelation of what has always been, but you just didn’t know it!
Merry Christmas!