'In those days a decree went out from Emperor
Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first
registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to
their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in
Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was
descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with
Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were
there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her
firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger,
because there was no place for them in the inn.'
--Luke 2: 1-7
An Eastern icon of the Nativity of Christ.
Did
you ever notice how Luke tells the story of Jesus’ birth? I’m not talking about the manger or the
shepherds, but the birth itself. Did you
ever notice that Luke doesn’t actually say anything about the birth? Here’s how Luke puts it: “While they were there, the time came for her to
deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in
bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger.” Did you catch that? There is no story of the actual birth. No labor, as if Jesus just magically popped
out of there. It's easy, then for us to forget that Jesus was, indeed, born,
because the Gospels—all of them—avoid the messy reality that is a human
birth.
Now, I have
not witnessed a birth personally, but one thing I do know is that they are not
pleasant, meek, mild, clean experiences.
There’s a lot of yelling and crying.
There’s a lot of pain. There’s a
lot of fluid. It ain’t exactly a pretty
picture. Yet in this messiness is
beauty, indescribable, magnificent, holy beauty wrapped in the messiness of the
human experience. Little baby Jesus did
not magically appear in his mother’s arms, and with all due respect to Away
in a Manger, the little Lord Jesus a whole lot of crying he made. His mother’s clothes weren’t perfectly
wrinkle-free and clean, nor did she have every hair in place. Some of you may be recalling the births of your own children, maybe thinking back to how painful it felt, how yucky you
felt throughout, and yet, when it was complete, how incredibly beautiful you,
your child, and the whole experience were. This, brothers and sisters, is quite
possibly the most extraordinary, the most scandalous aspect of the
Incarnation: Jesus was born, the divine
beauty wrapped in the messiness of the human experience.
It was a
messy world that Jesus entered into.
Military and political might made right.
Religious and cultural minorities were silenced and afforded little to
no human decency. People were often
distracted by their own desires and the preservation of their own
self-interests that they ignored the injustices committed all around them. Come to think of it, the world that Jesus
entered wasn't unlike the messy, painful world that we live in
today. All the more reason that we should hear this
story once again.
It is so
very important for us to hear because it’s not a story bound to a long time ago
in a little town far, far, away. We might
wonder sometimes what it must have been like for Mary and Joseph that night
when they could not give birth to their son in the main room of the family home—as
would have been the custom—or in some kind of facility where they would have
been cared for by a physician—as would likely be our custom today—but we don’t have to
look far to understand. Even my own
birth took place on a couch because my mother had a flat tire and couldn’t get
to the hospital! And every day young
women Mary’s age bring children they love with the same passion that Mary loved
Jesus into the world in cars, under bridges, and in detention centers because
they have no other option. To be sure, births such as these remind us of the immediate need for accessible health care for women, but they also bring us back to the animal
feeding trough in Bethlehem, to the painful messiness of that night, where we are
reminded once again that God steps into the mess of this world not in glitz and
glamor but in the sweat, tears, and blood of physical, human labor. And every single day God does it again and
again and again. This is why we need to
hear this story.
My wife
Kristen recently posted a meme that she created on her Facebook page, which has
been shared around quite a bit. In it
she quotes the great 16th century mystic San Juan de la Cruz—Saint
John of the Cross. Here is what she posted:
If you
want. If we want. If we want to see her we need not look
far. If we want to be the ones to help
Jesus be born into this messy and often ugly world of ours, the opportunities
are around us. I’ll share one with you
that happened recently. Operation Red
Sleigh is an event in our area that feeds hundreds of families each year
and provides Christmas presents to kids who might otherwise never be afforded
one. For one magical Saturday morning,
Santa shows up, hot meals are served, laughter and lively conversation fill the gym at Central United Methodist Church here in Asheboro, and Christmas
comes a little early. This year I was
handling the drink distribution when another of our Good Shepherd folks brought over a woman who asked to speak to a pastor. It was clear that hard times had fallen on her. She
had three boys, and a fourth one was only a few days away from being brought into the
world. Four children, little money,
little care. She asked me to pray for
her and her family and include her on our prayer list at our church. We prayed, and she headed on her way. The following week I got a call from a name I didn't immediately recognize. It was this same mother. She was calling to give me an update on her
family. The news wasn’t good, but then
her tone changed. “The whole time we
were talking,” she said, “I could have sworn I knew who you were. And then it hit me. Three years ago you and your church put me
and my kids up in a motel for a few days.
You didn’t know it, but y’all saved us.
That got us out of an bad situation and bought us enough time for
another church to help set us up with the house that we’re currently living
in. Y’all are my guardian angels.” That, brothers and sisters, is the very kind
of moment of which San Juan de la Cruz spoke.
A mother in need, seeking shelter for her children. Sound familiar? If you want, the virgin will come to you,
too.
Another
great author, mystic, and theologian, Thomas Merton, once wrote: “Though it is
a race dedicated to many absurdities and one which makes many terrible
mistakes, yet with all that, God glorified Godself in becoming a member of the
human race.” Merton knew that God’s coming into this world meant something
particularly significant: that everything, every single piece of creation, in
all of its messiness, especially our own often flawed and broken human
condition, had been redeemed by the physical presence of the very One who gave
breath to it all in the first place.
The Incarnation wasn’t neat and tidy, like so many Renaissance paintings
depict it. It was raw, chaotic, and
more than a little disheveled. In other
words, Jesus' birth was just like ours. It serves
as a reminder to us that God is more often found in the mess than in the
tidiness. Our mess. A holy mess. That’s the Incarnation.
