If incarnation really matters, then it matters in our daily lives, right?  And if it matters on a daily basis, then shouldn’t it be part of the shitty times as well?

Pretty much everything I believe hinges on incarnation, so I kind of need Jesus to be found in the shit.

Lucky me, he was born in the middle of it! (Seriously, maybe.  I mean, I hope they cleaned up the animal’s.  But google it if you haven’t heard labor stories. Sorrynotsorry.)

But he was born in the middle of serious family shit.  Like the ‘how in the world could you be so irresponsible as to be pregnant’ and ‘what were you thinking? Oh that’s right, you weren’t,’ and ‘what are we going to tell the family’ and ‘SHAME’.

You know, just run-of-the-mill family fun.

And now it’s the holidays and family parties and for so many people it’s so awkward.  And tense and painful.  What does Jesus’ birth even have to do with this sort of junk?

O come, O come, Emmanuel

Well, the man knows awkward.  He was born into it, and shaped by it, and eventually, after egging them on (I mean, really, who does that?), everyone he grew up with tries to kill him.

But before the whole ‘throw him off a cliff’ thing, it was just Mary and Joseph going from inn to inn looking for shelter.

Except, not really.

Inn doesn’t mean inn as we think of it, so Mary and Joseph weren’t actually out looking for a place to stay.  Because, relatives.

An unmarried pregnant girl and her boyfriend at the family home with all the aunts and cousins and gossip?

Yup, not awkward at all.

It’s easy to think about Jesus facing down temptations in the desert and empathizing with how we’re tempted and struggle.  But Jesus knowing what some of our most dreaded and awkward social situations are like?  That’s incarnation at its best.  (And all the introverts said amen.)

That mourns in lonely exile here

Until the Son of God appear

I had a Christmas like Mary once.  I feel quite safe in assuming she felt exiled and alone.

Here.  In the midst.  In the midst of the tension and the mess and the racist comments and the inappropriate jokes and the family secrets and the hurt and all of it.

Somehow incarnation speaks into even this.  Jesus didn’t just incarnate once.  He incarnates us, our situations, even our stress.

Come cheer our spirits by thine advent here.

I wonder how his relatives grew into his birth.  How did their minds and attitudes stretch and change as they got to know this person who was so much more than his birth, but yet would forever be defined by it?

Or didn’t they?  Did they always view him as one who didn’t belong?

How did growing up as the subject of gossip shape him?  I know the marginalized and excluded have always been an integral part of God’s heart, but I wonder if the circumstances of his birth didn’t imprint that onto the human side of Jesus.  The incarnated side.

What was Mary thinking on that donkey, plodding toward her in-laws, knocked up and unmarried?

What was Joseph feeling, entering the place where everyone knew his story?

I can hazard a guess, and I promise you, it wasn’t fun.

And close the path to misery

How was Jesus shaped by his birth?  How do our histories shape us?  Did Mary receive grace and understanding?  Or was Jesus’ heart turned even more to the marginalized because of the lack of acceptance he and his mother had?

(Is it heretical to wonder if God made his birth this way so that he would be empathetic to the outsiders?)

Until the Son of God appear.

When there are tears and allthefeelings and ‘we drove all that way for this?’, he’s there.  After a life of awkwardness, how can he not be?

In the uncomfortable silences, the tense discussions, and the long-standing bitternesses…………………..until.

How did Mary and Joseph navigate their own family tensions as Jesus grew? What was it like to have the incarnated one literally in the midst of it all?  Did some of the attitudes present at birth linger at the cross?

Rejoice Rejoice Emmanuel

shall come to thee

If incarnation means anything, it means he can be found even in the anxieties we have about holiday gatherings.  It means that somehow God will appear.

Even if it’s only when you say good-bye.

 

 

If you missed it, yesterday I was talking about Jesus and politics and the advent readings of Isaiah.