Advent Reflections Week 2

The Scandal of Christmas 

Last evening we watched The Nativity Story with our book study group. As I watched, I kept  thinking, “What in the world were you thinking, God? This is the most ridiculous plan to save the  world ever!” That God, the uncreated Creator of the universe, all powerful and all knowing,  would set aside both his power and his omniscience to submit himself to the limitations of sin stained human flesh because he longs so deeply to be unified with us – well, what could  motivate that but an unfathomable, unstoppable love? But what is even more scandalous to me,  more mind-boggling, is that he would involve us in our own redemption. The sinners become  part of the savior’s plan.  

To imagine that soon after Gabriel’s announcement to Mary, and after all heaven breathed relief  and joy at her “yes,” the human DNA in Mary’s ova cells mingled with the power of the Holy  Spirit and began to divide within her womb. The God of the universe, the Word who spoke the  very process that brought Mary into existence was now inside her as rapidly dividing cells on  their way to becoming a human baby, toes and fingers and lungs developing at their appointed  time, attached to her by an umbilical cord through which his life was sustained (imagine, he who  created life relying on the created for life), and floating in amniotic fluid. Does this not confound  you, too? 

Early in my faith, I felt like I had to clean myself up for God in order to get close to him. God was  shiny and holy and clean and I was fleshy and sinful and dingy. When I prayed, I had to make  sure I had the proper amount of remorse and self-loathing for my sin because only then, when  God saw I was “sorry” enough, could I even think about approaching him. And I often felt  hopeless, because I knew I could never get clean enough because the problem was on the  inside – a place I couldn’t get to myself. 

But watching this movie, and even revisiting the story over and again during Advent, I am  reminded anew that God is not repulsed by our fleshiness, nor by our dinginess or by our  darkest, most secret sins. He came and became one of us by starting the same way we all do,  inside of another imperfect human being. (There are those that attribute sinlessness to Mary,  but I don’t buy it. She was/is awesome, but her virtue is faith and obedience, not sinlessness.  You’re welcome to disagree, but this gives me, a sinful woman, hope.) And when he was born,  he came not in a clean, well-kept home welcomed by extended family, or a palace with  servants, but in a stinky, smelly, dank, dark cave with a poop-covered floor. He was born to  parents with a questionable reputation that would darken the family name for years. Our God is  not afraid of filth. God did not deign to come into the world cleanly, to clean us up from the  outside. No, he was pleased to come and clean us up from the inside by making a way to live  inside us. As close as the embryo Jesus was to Mary – he heard her words, her heart, the  rumbles of hunger and gas and the wretches of morning sickness – as close as he was to her,  he longs to be with us.  

He became the “new Adam” by putting on flesh same as ours but living by the Holy Spirit. It  wasn’t the outside that made him different, it was the inside, the way that he lived from the 

inside out. And because he put to death sin and death itself, and because he ascended and  transcended in his flesh the limitations of the flesh, he now can live inside us and live his kind of  life, the God-life, through our bodies, even through my body! 

This is why the call of Advent is to prepare him room. Mary’s organs and bones had to make  room for the growing baby. If we have repented and received the Holy Spirit by faith, then the  Spirit is mingling with our own flesh to birth Christ in us. Are we making room for him? Are we  moving out the things in our lives that hinder his growth in us? Are we watching for signs of his  life moving inside us and rejoicing in those? I live with hope now because I know that Christ, the  living God, is pleased, not reluctant, to live within me, cleansing me from within so that my lived  life is full of light and love. Make room for him, dear ones, so that Christ may be fully birthed in  and through you, too! 

– Susan Schnieders