“What Child Is This!?!”--The Rev. Raven Rowe
Psalm 148
Luke 2:22-40
Prayer
Come, Holy Spirit, Come! Grant, Holy One, that in thinking, we may think your thoughts; that in speaking, we may speak your word; that in hearing, we may hear your truth; and that in our willingness, we may make your will our own, as we embrace and embody the love that you share with us always. Amen.
Christ has once again been born into our world.
And what child is this?!?
This, this infant child is our Christ.
So let’s talk about Jesus.
Now I don’t know about you, but personally,
I have my own default image of Jesus.
This is the Jesus that I automatically think of
when I hear people talk about Jesus.
This is my “go-to” concept of Christ.
My default image of Christ
is of the fully functioning adult Jesus.
This is the Jesus that is fully formed and wholly mature,
complete and complex in both body and mind.
Whenever I think of Jesus, I often think of this adult Jesus.
This is the Jesus who challenged societal norms and expectations;
the Jesus who questioned all authority
and many of the common religious assumptions;
the Jesus who often gained more enemies than friends,
through the incarnation
of his brilliant boldness and prophetic preaching,
ways that always seemed to challenge
the systems of power that were present in his time.
This is my default Jesus.
Yet, this is not the only possible image we have of Jesus.
Consider the poem written by Alla Renee Bo-Zath.
She writes:
“Before Jesus was his mother.
Before supper in the upper room, breakfast in the barn
Before the Passover Feast, a feeding trough
and here, the altar of Earth, fair linens of hay and seed.
Before his cry, her cry
Before his sweat of blood, her bleeding and tears
Before his offering, hers
Before the breaking of bread and death,
the breaking of her body in birth
Before the offering of the cup, the offering of her breast
Before his blood, her blood
And by her body and blood
Alone, his body and blood
And whole human being
The wise ones knelt to hear the woman’s word in wonder
Holding up her sacred child, her God in the form of a babe, she said:
‘Receive and let your hearts be healed and your lives be filled with love,
for this is my body, this is my blood’”
Imagine this Jesus. Sweet Baby Jesus.
And consider the implications of all this.
Consider what we know to be true for our own humanity,
and imagine what this might suggest for Jesus’ humanity.
Before the teaching and preaching of Christ,
Jesus was born into the world as a baby.
His mother’s body broke in childbirth,
and it was his mother’s blood that was spilled
when Jesus was birthed into our world.
Jesus needed the living body and life-blood of his mother,
before he would ever be able to share
his own living body and life-blood with others.
Jesus came into the world as an infant,
totally dependent on the compassion and care of others.
He was fed and held by his mother.
This is a Jesus who first needed to receive care,
before he could ever hope to care for others.
Before Jesus could feed others, he first needed to be fed.
Before Jesus could comfort others, he needed to first be comforted.
Jesus could have never been the Christ without first being a part of community.
In her book about high anthropology, and a little bit lower Christology,
Theologian Rita Nakashima Brock insists that,
“If Jesus is reported to have been capable of profound love and concern for others,
he was first loved and respected by the concrete persons of his life.”
Jesus was born into a community that nurtured and supported him,
encouraging and empowering him to become the person who he was to become.
This is truly amazing!
Jesus was born into community;
and not only that,
Jesus relied on community.
Jesus was, and is, relational.
And Jesus was relational in and with his body.
Jesus’ humanity was essential.
Through his body, Jesus was in relation with Creator and creation,
embodied to touch and be touched by others.
What Child Is This?
Our God, in the form of a baby?
There is a certain vulnerability to all this.
But see the tension there?
It would be so much easier to just assume that God was omnipotent.
But Jesus as a baby, this infant Christ, implies a certain vulnerability
that insists on the impossibility of omnipotence.
All-powerful? This infant Christ?
Could he really be an almighty Lord,
if he came in such an innocent form?
But the truth is more complicated than that.
God came to us in the form of a little, tiny, vulnerable baby.
And this kind of God always seems to make people uncomfortable.
But why?
Maybe it is because no one really wants a vulnerable God.
One of my favorite Theologians, Carter Heyward,
she proclaims that the very essence of God is vulnerability,
and that God’s very strength lies in God’s vulnerability.
Because God is relational,
lovingly inviting us to share in the vulnerability of mutual relation.
What child is this?
And what kind of power does this Christ actually contain?
Theologian Andrew Sung Park
proposes that God’s power is “innately limited”
and is therefore opposed to the omnipotence of an oppressive force.
Park writes,
“The power that God does have is the power of persuasion or influence.
God does not exercise that power unilaterally but uses it relationally,
luring us to maximize each given moment.”
I mean, seriously, what is more alluring then a new born baby?
Have you happened to have been around any lately?
What is it about babies that our shared humanity seems to find so captivating?
But babies are vulnerable.
Jesus was vulnerable, relying on his relations with those around him.
And Jesus was relational, which also involves the inherent need for vulnerability.
Because being relational is about being vulnerable.
Theologian Carter Heyward also believes
that there is a certain strength in vulnerability, writing that,
“Vulnerability is the giving up of control,
the turning of oneself over to the common life,
not to be absorbed, stepped on, or negated,
but rather to experience ourselves as co-creators
of the world we want and believe in.”
Heyward continues, suggesting,
“Our strength does not transcend or trivialize our weakness.
It is not the opposite of vulnerability, but rather is its fulfillment.
Our strength is the power of being human,
through which we realize that we are in relation to others—
quite literally, an experience of knowing ourselves as only in relation.”
Jesus shared the vulnerabilities of relation with others.
Maybe Jesus was not almighty,
because he did not wield power as domination.
Jesus was vulnerable.
Perhaps… when we obscure Christ’s vulnerability,
we do so at the expense of our own divinity.
There must be a certain spirituality to our vulnerability.
For our relationality,
our shared vulnerability in relation,
perhaps it is the most crucial component
of who we were created to be,
for we have been made
in the image and likeness of our own God.
Christ is vulnerable,
and perhaps this is not a mark of his humanity,
but a mark of his divinity.
We need to imagine Jesus as vulnerable,
because it is only through the vulnerability of mutual relation
that Jesus is able to touch and be touched by others.
Carter Heyward suggests that,
“JESUS’ power to heal and teach,
to inspire and change people,
was rooted in his vulnerability.”
Maybe it is only through Jesus’ vulnerability in relation
that he was able to help and heal others.
And yet…
It is still a bit strange that within our Christian culture—
where we believe that our God took upon God’s self the flesh of a human body—
it seems strange that we so often adopt the assumptions of Platonic Dualism.
Platonic Dualism suggests that our bodies and our spirits
are in some form of binary opposition,
supposing that our spirits are somehow superior
and that our bodies are therefore inferior.
In other words, as theologians
Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker together write,
“The modern world has a tendency to divide the sacred and the secular
and to disconnect the spiritual from the physical.”
We tend to assume that the spirit
should somehow be separate and separated from the body.
Because of the adoption of Platonic Dualism,
our communities often perpetuate problematic theologies
that are body-denying and body-shaming.
Within our society, when we deny and shame bodies,
we then become much more prone to violating and victimizing bodies.
But Jesus had a body.
Jesus was fully human.
But… What Child is this?
Our Baby Jesus-
whose identity, we are reminded by scripture,
was affirmed at the Temple.
My favorite New Testament Scholar,
and my personal Theological Hero, Professor Ted Jennings,
he suggests that given the opportunity of choice,
the Christian Tradition will again and again,
always choose the most complicated answer for any theological proposition.
Jesus is fully human.
But Jesus is also fully Divine.
Jesus came into this world as a baby.
It would be easy for us to assume that Jesus’ divinity
somehow trumped his humanity.
That our baby God was so full of divinity,
that he never needed to experience
weakness or dependence or vulnerability.
But if Christ is fully human,
then he ate like us and cried like us
and got fussy like us and needed to be changed like us.
All while simultaneously being Divine.
Called to greatness because of his divinity,
all while sharing in the vulnerabilities of our common humanity.
The divinity of Christ could never compromise the humanity of Jesus.
Christ’s divinity could never remove Jesus
from the human need of mutual relation.
The scandalous act of the incarnation proves
that there is absolutely so separation
between the divinity and the humanity in Jesus,
suggesting that there is absolutely no separation
between the divinity and the humanity in each of us.
Jesus was fully relational through and with his body.
Jesus came to earth in human form.
Jesus came to earth as a baby:
he was born of his mother who offered her own body for the sake of his—
to birth him and feed him and comfort him and care for him.
Jesus affirms that the human bodies matters,
because even God had a human body.
Bodies matter.
It is with Jesus’ body that he was present with us,
to heal us and to touch us and to feed us.
Before Christ could comfort us, he first needed to be comforted.
This time of year, it is important for us to honor
this image of our baby God.
What Child Is This?!?
And what does this Christ Child have to teach us about our God?
Listen to the lessons of Baby Lord!
Through baby Jesus, we find this wisdom!
Trust that the reign of God is for the helpless,
because God came as helpless!
Trust that God has a preferential option for the poor in our world,
because God came into our world as poor!
Trust that God is on the side of the oppressed,
because God came into our world and was oppressed!
Trust that God is there on the margins,
breaking down the boundaries that separate us
because God was born out on the margins!
Trust that God wills hospitality for those seeking refuge,
because God came into this world and needed refuge!
Trust that God is found in our humanity, and welcomes us in to God’s Divinity.
What Child Is This, Indeed!
This child is the Christ, that continually needs to be birthed into this world.
Celebrate this Child!