Outrageous Christianity: a Christmas meditation.

At this time of year we are surrounded by Christmas images--the tender scenes of Mother and Child, the manger, adoring shepherds, angels--but moving as all of this is, it is usually taken in out of context. Only two of the Gospels say anything about Jesus' birth. Matthew begins with the passage I most hate reading to a congregation: the long genealogy of Jesus (it differs from Luke's), followed by Joseph's story. He is told by an angel in a dream not to divorce Mary, because her pregnancy is not a matter of infidelity; "what is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit." Jesus' birth is alluded to only in the past tense: "After Jesus was born ..." It is the preamble to the story of the Magi, Herod's deceit, the flight into Egypt (from which Jesus comes forth, as Moses did--Jesus as the new Moses is a theme in Matthew), and the massacre of the male children. The angel appears to Mary in Luke's Gospel, and there we find the manger, the shepherds, and the sky full of angels.

Since only two of the Gospels mention Jesus' birth, and all four move toward the story of Jesus' suffering, death, and Resurrection, it is clear that this latter story--at once dark and radiant--is the real core of the Christian message. But the universally appealing image of the Lord as an infant, in the arms of his mother, is a powerfully important one. In Orthodox iconography, there is no canonical icon of the Resurrection as an event. Instead, we have the image of Jesus opening the gates of Sheol to bring forth the souls of the righteous. It is understood that the Resurrection, the death of death, cannot be imagined or depicted in a way that does not diminish its meaning. We can imagine and depict the Crucifixion because in this world it is all too easily represented, again and again. The cross as a symbol of Christianity is everywhere.

So also, in Catholic and Orthodox Christianity is the image of the Mother and Child. But who--and what--is she holding? What manner of man is this? And what manner of baby? What does it mean that the Lord upon whom Moses and the prophets could not look and live, who spoke to Job from the whirlwind and brooded over the waters at the beginning of creation, is among us as a newborn baby?

We are so used to this, if we have grown up as Christians, that we do not see how shocking it is. There is nothing like it in any other religion, which is one reason so many people find it easy to dismiss. It is outrageous. Hinduism has examples of divinity taking on human form. Vishnu and Krishna appear among humans as humans, but this is a disguise. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna can in an instant show his human pupil, Arjuna, his divine form. He does, and it is glorious: "Suppose a thousand suns should rise together into the infinite sky: such is the glory of the Shape of the Infinite God." Here divinity appears in human guise, but does not assume the fullness of humanity. Humanity is something that includes apprehension and fear, grief, need, frustration, and finally the possibility of the submission and obedience to God that leads to resurrection and victory over death.

Jesus asks the woman at the well for water because he is thirsty, and weeps for Lazarus because he grieves with the others who loved him. He is frustrated with his obtuse disciples, and he asks that, if possible, he may be spared the horror of the cross. He is fully human, like us "in all things but sin." In a very undivine, and completely human way, he is capable of not knowing some things, including the time of the world's end. And it is crucial to see that the image of his humanity is not a disguise covering the truer reality of his divinity. It is the image of the fullness of his nature, at once fully human and fully divine.

It is precisely in looking at the humanity of Jesus that we begin to see something hidden about the Father's divinity. This is the new revelation of a God who empties himself out of love for us, who reveals love through a willingness to die for the beloved, who desires healing and wholeness, who stands with all who suffer and are despised. The liturgy of St. Basil the Great shows that the Trinity is revealed precisely here, in the human face of Christ: "O Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the great God and Savior, our hope, who is the image of your goodness, the seal of your very likeness, showing forth in himself you, O Father--the living Word, the true God, the eternal wisdom, the life, the sanctification, the power, the true light, through whom the Holy Spirit was revealed ..." All of this is revealed in the humanity of Jesus, precisely in his thirst, his common lot with us, his desire to avoid the cross, if that be possible (and if it is not, his acceptance of its necessity), his compassion for the suffering, his willingness to forgive, which is a power shared with us. And it is finally revealed in his ability to accept the inevitability of suffering, the solidarity it means with all the suffering world, all wounded creation.

This shows us what the Father is like. More, it shows us what humanity is meant to be like, what we are called to be. The mystery of evil, the mystery of our suffering, will not be revealed on this side of death. The love Jesus shows as the Christ, the one anointed precisely as one of us to reveal the divinity we are called to share in at every level of our lives, from our mother's arms on, is available to us now and we are required to show it to one another. He showed us that much, as we wait for the revelation of the rest.

And so, from the Nativity liturgy: "Today the Virgin gives birth to the Transcendent One, and the earth offers a cave to the Unapproachable One! Angels, with shepherds, glorify him! The wise men journey with the star! Since for our sake the eternal God was born as a little child!"

A blessed Christmas to all.