But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people:
to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.
This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.”
Luke 2:10-12
In places where animals are kept, straw is spread about the floor like a carpet, where it soaks up the mess and the dirt. But fresh hay, sweet smelling and softer than straw, is put in the feeding stalls. When Jesus was born, they put him in the warmest and cleanest corner of the stable - the trough full of hay. People always put babies in the cleanest environment they can create. A manger in a stable may sound somewhat precarious to us, with our easy access to sterilising equipment and washing machines; it's a far cry from the standards of a modern maternity hospital, but it was the best they could do.
It's not surprising, either, that Jesus was "swaddled" - wrapped firmly to keep his limbs close to his body. It's a practice that's still common today - I remember being taught by a midwife how to wrap my own son firmly in a blanket to stop his startle reflex and make him feel calm and safe.
Jesus was born into this world in order to become totally, redemptively involved in its chaos and mess, dirt and distress. It's a nice irony, then, that the first thing they did to Jesus was to wrap him up tightly to make him safe, warm and quiet, and put him in the cleanest place they could find. There is something of a reversal here. We somehow expect to find God in the clean and sacred places, but he is found in the mess of life. We celebrate Jesus wrapped up tightly, safe and serene in his romanticised stable, but he grew up to be a sleeves-rolled-up leader who disturbed the status quo wherever he went. However much we try to keep Jesus clean and restrained, he breaks out of our expectations, and out of any domestication. Our idea of 'holy' is to protect God from anything profane; God's idea of 'holy' is to enter the dirtiest and messiest corners of our world, bringing the fresh air of heaven, treating the distinction between sacred and profane as almost irrelevant. In fact, Jesus seemingly spent more time with people in ordinary life, and gave short shrift to the religiosity of those made safe by sacred rules.
Of course swaddling clothes and a clean place to sleep were the right things to provide for a baby, as they are now. Yet there are parallels to be drawn here with our faith, especially at Christmas when it's easy to romanticise the nativity and forget that the gospel has 'bite'. The Christian faith thoroughly and uncompromisingly integrates the physical with the spiritual, and it also refuses to separate sacred from secular. Life is all of a piece; faith is not only for the soul, nor is it a matter to be kept apart from life and unwrapped only in church. There is no dualism in Christian thought. Christ is born into a physical body, in a physical world, not to save us from our bodies or from the world we live in, but to redeem us, body and soul.
We seem to have developed an instinct to separate the body from the soul, the sacred from the secular. We don't readily accept that God is present in the mess of life or the realities of physical existence (and even if we do so mentally, ask yourself from time to time in a very "bodily" situation whether you think God is present). We prefer to sanitize the world for God, to create sacred space, and to keep God apart from the vile and the shameful, the dirty and the unacceptable.
However much we attempt to sanitize our world for God, God will not be swaddled. The nativity-play-Jesus may lie meekly in the hay. But the real Jesus will break out of the protective bundle, jump out of the manger, and be down in the dirt with us before we can stop him.
Adapted from Maggi Dawn Beginnings and Endings (and what happens in between), [Oxford: BRF, 2007] p118-9
A very apt commentary on our ability to divide ourselves between the sacred and secular, particularly where the sacred disturbs our comfort zone in whatever we want to do. I can see why we do it, and perhaps we try to put it out of our minds that God is actually within us and with us as we think, live, love and do good or bad. We in our selfish way want to put God into a box which we can dip into or out of at our convenience.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad that God doesn't allow us to live in a comfort zone. Jesus' challenges us to live in ways that are pure and loving in the mess and chaos that are our lives, we either take the challenge head on and live in his footsteps or like most of us, compromise and do the bits that are safe and ignore the uncomfortable bits, because either our 'self' gets in the way or we are actually afraid of the challenge.
So, your post challenges me to think again, to repent and to revive that hope and mystery that is the incarnation, particularly after a few days when I've actually felt very close to God in the final week of advent, when prayer, carol services, the Eucharist have resonated so strongly with me. Singing O Come Emmanuel on Sunday evening in a candle lit church, listening to John's Gospel actually made me tingle all over - the spirit seemed present alongside us.
In fact the Spirit was alongside, not seemingly so. That's the split I was talking about earlier, and you describe. Our ability to put God into a box and imagine he is there, when he is, alive, kicking waiting to be acknowledged
Off to midnight mass shortly - will be leading intercessions with new heart now.