Flesh in the Rubble

 

It was difficult to write a Christmas Eve sermon this year. Not because of personal troubles, but because of war in the land of Jesus’ birth. The places where I turn for sermon inspiration-- blogs, podcasts and recent commentaries, the reflections of colleagues, even my own prayers, all were full of lament and horror over Gaza. The question kept looming over me: How do we celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace in Palestine, while modern-day Palestinian mothers, fathers, and babies are suffering and dying? After much prayer, I finally decided, for better or worse, not to risk preaching a “downer” sermon on my last Christmas Eve as rector. Yet, last Sunday night, even as we held our glowing candles and sang, “Silent night, Holy night, all is calm, all is bright,” I couldn’t conjure up the sweet baby Jesus asleep in the hay. Instead, I kept picturing the creche set up in Christmas Lutheran Church in Bethlehem this year.  

You, too, may have seen a photo of this controversial creche online. Instead of a traditional, peaceful manger scene, the Palestinian Christians in Bethlehem created a scene of lament called, “God in the Rubble.” Here, the baby Jesus is swathed in a keffiyeh, the scarf that symbolizes Palestinian nationalism. He lies in the rubble alone, like a forgotten, cast-off doll. He’s isolated by pieces of jagged, broken concrete, the detritus of war. Mary and Joseph, the shepherds, and the magi are all small figures peering down at him in consternation from above. Mary and Joseph, especially, seem to be reaching out to their child in longing, as if to gather him back in their arms, as if they would do anything to make him safe. No matter your take on the politics of the Holy Land, this is a haunting image of lament to ponder at Christmas.

Since Christmas Eve, I’ve continued to pray with the Bethlehem creche. As a comfortable American Christian, I keep getting stuck in guilt, though-- seeing myself as having a role in the baby’s plight. I fret over the sin that can cover a whole people, the “evil done on my behalf,” as we pray sometimes in our confession. I ache with my long-distance participation in the deaths of innocent people in Gaza and, indeed, in refugee camps and war zones around the globe. So many babies, all breaking my heart and accusing me at the same time. Does my power and privilege push them under the rubble? At such times, all I can pray is, “Lord, have mercy.”  Mercy for them, and mercy for me. Mercy for our nation and for our world. Lord, have mercy.

Sometimes, though, rather than guilt and sadness, I feel a burning indignation when I study this creche. I want to lash out at the world leaders who act only to gain power for themselves. I want to smite the extremists of all religions, including mine. Yes, sometimes I try on the outrage that fills our sibling Christians in Palestine.  In his Christmas Eve sermon, the pastor of Christmas Lutheran Church, the Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac, explained his take on the creche, his voice often harsh with anger and grief. “In our pain, anguish and lament, we [Palestinian Christians in Bethlehem] have searched for God and found him under the rubble in Gaza,” Isaac said. “And in this Christmas season ... he is to be found not on the side of Rome, but our side of the wall ... Barely and miraculously surviving a massacre... When we glorify pride and richness, Jesus is under the rubble,” Isaac continued. “When we rely on power, might and weapons, Jesus is under the rubble. When we justify, rationalize and theologize the bombing of children, Jesus is under the rubble. This is his manger. He is at home with the marginalized, the suffering, the oppressed and displaced. This is his manger.”[1]

When my heart gets stirred up with anger, I hang onto the words of the prophet Isaiah that we heard today. He join him, with all the obstinate hope and feverish longing that I can muster: “I will not rest until … vindication shines out like the dawn, and … salvation like a burning torch.” The Hebrew word translated as both righteousness and vindication in today’s reading refers to God’s overflowing goodness. It’s a transforming goodness, a new order, ushered in with justice, praise, and divine Glory.[2] This Righteousness and Vindication become my prayer: an urgent plea for God to set things right once and for all. “We need it now, God,” I pray with today's psalmist. Now’s the time to lift up the lowly and cast the wicked to the ground. Come on, God. Now’s the time to heal the brokenhearted and bind up their wounds. Now’s the time for peace.  As I look down into the rubble with the shepherds, watching the outcome of evil and genocide, I join them in pleading for God’s promised vindication!

It wasn’t until I studied the Prologue to John’s Gospel and our reading from Galatians, though, that I began to identify with the baby Jesus in the rubble, himself. And there, I found freedom. As baby Jesus, heartbroken and vulnerable, I found redemption in his fragile flesh. For John the Evangelist and his readers, you see, the idea of God’s Glory entering the world and becoming flesh was as strange and scandalous as the idea of baby Jesus in the ruins of Gaza is to us American Christians. For Greek-speakers in the early centuries after Jesus’ birth, it was incomprehensible to think that a divine being, a God of glory and never-changing perfection, would or could enter into the “world.”  Indeed, the world was always cast in a negative light, as a place of impermanence and corruption, a lesser and separate place from the perfect realm of light and spirit. Moreover, human flesh itself was seen only as something to transcend, as something inferior to mind and spirit. If God were to be found in a human being, it would have made much more sense to early Gentile Christians for God to reside only in a human spirit—not in human flesh.

Yet, in our Gospel reading, John dares to proclaim the scandalous miracle of incarnation: that “The Word became flesh and lived among us.” Literally, God pitched God’s tent in this failing, fallen world, entering into sin, suffering, and death with us. God came into the painful rubble of the world. And according to John, that’s where God reveals God’s glory, God’s truth, to us: the glory and truth of God’s loving-kindness, poured out endlessly, over and over again, re-creating all of the broken places. By becoming human flesh, God in Christ empowers us, too, to become God’s beloved children.

St. Paul takes this idea further in his letter to the Galatian Christians: "when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman … so that we might receive adoption as children. And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba! [Daddy!]" So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.” An heir. We messed up humans--God's heirs, along with Christ. Such is our Christmas gift, should we but open it. In Christ, God has adopted us, clothed us in Glory. We are One in Christ, no matter which wars divide us; no matter how many times we go astray and have to start over. We have been redeemed by the divine baby lying naked among the broken pieces. Because this baby is God, we can rejoice in our flesh, and in the precious flesh of all creation.

Lately, I’ve been reading Cole Arthur Riley’s book, This Here Flesh. Riley is a young black author seeking a spirituality beyond whiteness. The title of her book is a reference to Toni Morrison’s novel, Beloved. Morrison, in the voice of the black woman-preacher Baby Suggs, speaks to her suffering community, newly freed from slavery. After she leads them in weeping, laughing and dancing together, Baby Suggs preaches: “In this here place, we flesh. Flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard.”[3] Riley later comments, “True lament is not born from that trite sentiment that the world is bad but rather from a deep conviction that it is worthy of goodness.”[4] We can love and lament at the same time. We are all worthy of goodness, even when the goodness is hidden, even when its hiddenness breaks our hearts. We are all redeemed, ready to join with God in the urgent work of transformation and justice. As Riley exclaims, “If we embrace the beauty of all creation, we find our own beauty magnified. What is shalom but dignity stretched out like a blanket over the cosmos?”[5] What is true peace but dignity for all, stretched out like a blanket over the cosmos, held aloft in my hand and your hand and in the hand of the Baby in the Rubble?

 

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[1] Munther Isaac, quoted in https://www.presbyterianmission.org/story/christ-in-the-rubble-service-from-christmas-lutheran-church-in-bethlehem-draws-a-large-online-crowd/. December 24, 2023

[2] Patricia Tull, Working Preacher, Commentary on Isaiah 61, 2012, found at www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1155.

[3] Cole Arthur Riley, This Here Flesh (New York: Penguin Random House, 2022), Kindle Edition, 4.

[4] Riley, Kindle Edition, 98.

[5] Riley, Kindle Edition, 7.

All Creation Sings!

 

When I was teaching elementary school French, I had a brilliant idea one time for a Christmas lesson plan. In the south of France, people collect and display “santons” or “little saints.” These are small clay figures dressed in traditional folk costumes, representing each village inhabitant, from the town baker to the town pickpocket. The figures are all set up outside the stable, waiting to visit the Holy Family inside. In my lesson plan, my young students were supposed to choose a character from a typical French town in Provence. They would then shape the character out of homemade salt dough. We would bake the figures in the oven, paint them, and display them in the school entryway as our own French “crèche,” or manger-scene.

As we began our work, it wasn’t long before I noticed that there was something wrong with the salt dough that I’d mixed at home the night before. It somehow wasn’t firm enough to allow the kind of detail necessary for the task. I had assigned the most dependable children the job of crafting the Holy Family, the angels, the kings, and the shepherds. These kids were getting frustrated, though, as Mary’s head drooped softly down onto her belly; the angel listed to the right as if she had already sampled too much holiday eggnog; the shepherds’ staffs folded in two; Joseph’s legs crumpled beneath his heavy body; and the necks of the three kings slumped over into each other like some kind of royal three-headed monster.

That’s when I noticed that the rest of the kids weren’t following directions at all.  They weren’t fashioning people from a French village. When I asked them what they were doing, almost every single child said that they were making an animal. Dogs, cats, birds, ponies, and giant insects were taking shape all over the classroom. Only one child was creating a human being. When I praised him and asked him which character he was making, he proudly proclaimed that he celebrates Hanukah, not Christmas. He was therefore making a Hebrew soldier from Masada, for the Hanukkah story.

My blood-pressure started to rise as I watched my brilliant lesson plan go totally awry. Children, however, are creative, and they didn’t let my worry over accuracy ruin their project. They ignored my hand-wringing and single-mindedly continued their work. The next week, when the figures were all baked and painted, the children proudly wrote “Joyeux Noel” above a manger scene … that held a baby Jesus, a couple of bowing angels with droopy wings, a Hanukah soldier, and a whole zoo full of snakes, giant worms and escargots, legless dogs and cats, and quite a number of rocks.

All those years ago, I prayed that the parents who came to our school Christmas program wouldn’t look too closely at our lumpy animal Nativity. I cringed at the thought of this monstrosity sitting out in the hallway, where parents could shake their heads over the low artistic standards that I was setting for their children, as well as the lack of French apparent in the lesson. Now that I think about it, though, the children in my French class were showing profound theological insight in their determination to bring animals to worship the baby Jesus. Think of all the carols that we sing about the ox and the ass standing around the manger. Legends, poems, and stories have sprung up all over the world about the role of animals in the stable in Bethlehem. Even though the Gospel stories about Jesus’ birth don’t mention the animals at all, our human imaginations have filled the stable with sheep and goats, oxen and donkeys, camels, and birds, and even spiders.

Did you know that it was St. Francis of Assisi who is credited with putting together the very first crèche? He’s the one who first put the donkey and the ox into the Nativity story.[1] Leave it to St. Francis to think to include the animals! I wish that I’d known that fact thirty years ago, since I was teaching my infamous Christmas lesson at a school named after St. Francis!

Like the kids in my French class, we human beings seem to be drawn to the idea of bringing animals in to worship the baby Jesus. Our desire to include our animal friends in the wonder of Christmas might be more than pet-loving sentimentality on our parts, however. When God came down to earth as a human baby, God didn’t come only to heal and save our human flesh. God came into the world to remake the whole of creation, animals included. When Jesus is born, the powerful Word through which God made the heavens and the earth enters history in the form of one human being. In Jesus, we see God’s loving face, but we also see the sons and daughters of God that we, too, are meant to be. Theologians have called Jesus the “second Adam,” born to bring to earth human nature as it was meant to be before the first Adam ate that piece of fruit in disobedience to God. Christmas is like a second creation, a creation necessarily touching the lives of all creatures, not just human ones. As Rowan Williams puts it, Jesus’ birth “announces that creation as a whole has found its purpose and meaning, and that the flowing together of all things for the joyful transfiguration of our humanity is at last made visible on earth.”[2]

Psalm 96 sings a beautiful song in anticipation of the moment in which God will come to re-create the whole world. As Christians, we can hear in tonight’s psalm the joy of all creation as it views humanity transformed by God’s presence on earth: “Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice: let the sea roar, and all that fill it; let the field exult, and everything in it. Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy before the Lord; for he is coming, for he is coming to judge the earth. He will judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with his truth.”

Imagine with me right now the animals in a vast Christmas crèche, joining in the psalmist’s song of praise at humankind’s transformation. Can you see them gathering like we do tonight—and every Christmas Eve, year after year—looking toward the baby in the manger and longing with heart and soul for safety, for healing, for the redemption of Creation? I can see them--from the Arctic snows, to the African plains, to the deep oceans, to the American cities--all turning toward Bethlehem and raising their voices in song:

The horse sings: “Thanks be to God that I will no longer have to carry soldiers into battle.”

The seal and the fish shout: “Thanks be to God that I will no longer swim in black, sludgy seas, despoiled by human greed for oil.”

The polar bear cries: “Thanks be to God that my home will stop melting and I can feed my hungry babies once more.”

The dog and the cat shout: “Thanks be to God that I will no longer be beaten and mistreated by tortured souls.”

The ox rejoices: “I’ll be able to lead a plow once more on family farms!”

The elephant and the leopard chime in: “I’ll no longer be slaughtered by greedy humans looking for ivory and skins.”

 The grass exults: “I’ll cover the barren plains once more with green, gold, and silver.”

The mountain rejoices: “I’ll no longer be shattered and hollowed out in an insatiable search for treasure and fuel.”

All living things look at the new baby, and they know that the old ways will soon die. They know that God has come to remake the world, that God has come in truth and righteousness. As Auden writes:

The sullen limpet,/ the exuberant weed,/ The mischievous cat/ And the timid bird,/ Are glad for your sake/ As the new-born Word/ Declares that the old/ Authoritarian/ Constraint is replaced/ By His Covenant,/ … Run to Bethlehem./ Let us run to learn/ How to love and run;/ Let us run to Love.”[3]

Let us all run, hop, crawl, fly and slither to the stable. Let us take our places around the baby who comes to set all creation right. Let us stand hand in hand with all creatures, bearing witness to the power of God’s Love for all that God has made.

Amen.

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[1] Thank you to the Rev. Dr. Michael Jinkins, who brought this subject to my attention in his blog, found at http://www.lpts.edu/about/our-leadership/president/thinking-out-loud/thinking-out-loud/2014/12/16/-christmas-eve-and-twelve-of-the-clock-

[2] Rowan Williams, Choose Life (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013), 57.

[3][3] W. H . Auden, “For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio,” from “Vision of the Shepherds,” part II.