Re-Imagining the Nativity

December 9, 2009

Humor me for a minute. I had a random thought the other day. Okay. Most of my thoughts tend to be random, obscure, and border on a need for therapeutic analysis but this was a fun one to play with for a while and so I’m tossing it out into the universe to ponder collectively.

So I was thinking of the Baby J in the manger and I call him the Baby J with no disrespect; we’re just that tight. Anyway, I was imagining Jesus being like the babies in the comedy “Look Who’s Talking,” where the sub-plot revolves around the film’s star babies engaging in very adult like conversations between themselves in the voice-overs while all that the grown-ups are hearing is your standard issue go0-goo-ga-ga-coo.

Now don’t go reading into my theology with where I’m going with this because I don’t believe when Jesus was born that somewhere within that tiny bundle of flesh embodied divinity was a developed mind that understood the sinful state of the human condition, or knew that his life would shift the entire course of world history or that he had any idea about the Good News he would be proclaiming once he had the teeth and the vocabulary to do so. When Jesus was a baby his world was eat, sleep, and poo just like any other baby that’s ever been or ever will be. He was fully human and fully baby just as he was fully divine and fully God.

So having established my theological leanings concerning a Savior who came into the world needing his diapers changed let’s return to the nativity, the visual Hallmark version. There in the stable complete with hal0-illuminated Mary and Joseph, awed shepherds, road weary wise men, and selected barn animals a heavenly spotlight shines down upon a manger where laying on top of the clean fresh hay and wrapped up in form fitting swaddling clothes is the world’s most long-awaited baby. Just rousing from a nap brought on by the exhaustive long journey through the birth canal, the Lord Jesus, (aka Savior of the World, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Lamb of God) awakens to find himself in a frail little human body complete with a wet bottom and a miserably sore belly button. With hay poking at his backside through the scraps of itchy woolen fabric wrapped around him, he blinks open one sleepy eye, takes in the sights and smells of his more than humble surroundings, furrows his eyebrows, inquisitively tilts his head to one side and looking up to heaven says, “You have got to be kidding me! Seriously?”

I LOVE the shock value of how God most often chooses to work in the world and no place is it more evident than in the birth of God’s Son, Jesus. Absolute perfection! No pomp, no circumstance, no kingly crowns or royal castles or fabric finery sown with golden thread. Just a bed of hay in a damp cave, shepherds smelling of sweat and sheep, an orchestra of stable animals and a pile of swaddling cloth to bundle the baby up against the cold of night. And this is how God’s Son shows up on the human stage. Need I remind you we’re talking about the ONLY Son of the ONE God. You’d think there would be something showy for the one and only Savior of the World. Okay, there was the heavenly host of angels which is a little glitzy by anyone’s standards but considering who had at last made their appearance on the earth, even that seems a little subdued. But when all is said and done I adore the surprisingly understated arrival of the King of Kings.

And doesn’t Jesus continue to show up in just the same style these days? In surprising ways. In unexpected moments. Through ordinary people. Has he ever arrived in the story of your life like that? Speaking for myself (who else would I be speaking for?) there have been times in my life I all but missed Jesus’ appearing because he didn’t come as I thought he should or would or even could. There have been other times when my heart knew that what was before me was all Jesus and nothing but Jesus and yet the unfolding of his presence was so out of my frame of imagining that I was the one looking in God’s direction with furrowed eyebrows saying, “You have got to be kidding me! Seriously?” Realizing I was a lesbian more than sixteen years ago was one of those moments. I had another one a few years ago when I was forced out of a church by several people who morphed from being trusted friends to behind the scenes antagonists in the time it took me to sneeze.  There were times before then and other times since when at first glance I believed God wasn’t anywhere in sight. I’d think “God couldn’t have any part in this fiasco. God would never be found in this place. God would never use those people in my life.”  But then enough time passes and looking back I understand that the very thing that had caused me to doubt the presence of God’s Spirit in the first place was the very thing that had been broadcasting God’s presence all along.

So that was the random thought I wanted to mention. Now get back to what you were doing before I interrupted.

Posted in Holidays and Special Times, Storytelling