Fifth Day of Christmas: Incarnation

We have had trouble potty-training JellyBean. She is three-years-old and now officially “toliet-training resistant,” according to our doctor. Last week she made big progress and finally pooped in the potty all by herself. There was much general rejoicing around here, and JellyBean, when congratulated, announced her inspiration: “Baby Jesus learned to go poo-poo in the potty.”

Well, he did. I don’t know exactly what they used for potties in first century Palestine, but he had to be trained to it like any other toddler.

This is the absurdity and mystery of the incarnation - that the infinite God who runs the universe became a squirmy, squalling baby who spit up and burped and messed his diaper, or whatever they used for diapers back then. Jesus lived as a man like anybody else, getting blisters, catching colds. Maybe he even needed glasses (back before there were glasses).

One of my favorite authors, Charles Williams, argued that the Incarnation was not merely God’s back-up plan for a world gone wrong, but that the Incarnation was the purpose of creation. God made us to love us, and that love found its perfect expression when God became one of us at that first Christmas. That love was reaffirmed in the resurrection, when the incarnate Christ was raised from the dead to live eternity in his resurrection body (with scars!). That love will find its fulfillment when history reaches its conclusion at the marriage of Christ and his Church, when death is conquered, pain is ended and God becomes “all in all.”

Not only does this give me hope for the future, but comfort and reverence for life in my own imperfect body. The Incarnation has in some sense sanctified the human body, reminding us how precious it is to God. Because Jesus was born to us as one of the variations of ethnicity, sex or any other detail of embodied life, those details themselves become imbued with significance. Male or female is something to celebrate not only because God created it, but because God made it part of himself; Arab, Indian or Finn is something to honor because God chose to be born into a language and genetic group and make it part of himself. By becoming one of us in our particularities, God has honored those details and declared them worthy of love by all of us.

The divisions of humanity that are pictured as a result of sin at the tower of Babel have been redeemed by our embodied Lord. May we embrace and honor each other this holiday season, remembering that Christ, too, was one of us. And may we look forward to the day when we will worship him “from every tribe in every language.”

“After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice:

“Salvation belongs to our God,
who sits on the throne,
and to the Lamb.” Revelation 7:9-10