The Advent Child
The Nativity story presents me with an image of eluded expectations. Where I would expect to find the alpha and omega of power, might, and strength, if in cuddly miniature form, I encounter instead ordinary anxiety-inspiring dependency, delicacy, and weakness. I discover not a budding messianic warrior in a palace, but an artisan’s frail child in a stable.
The narrative serves as a reminder that what I call God will always be ahead of my expectations, notions, and conceptions. The liturgy of Christmas brings the birth of Jesus Christ to life, ushering in an end to the Season of Advent, and yet does so while maintaining Advent’s central meaning: God is always to come. God eludes my pathetic attempts to make “him” present. My words fail. All of them. Even my most lofty and seemingly precise words, like “Trinity” and “omnipotence,” focus my mind by way of analogies that could easily become idols.
The Nativity is an apophatic myth: in saying something about the divine, it shows us that we can eventually say nothing. We do not know what we are saying when we speak of the sacred. All of our creeds and theologies, our doctrines and dogmas, in attempting to give the infinite finite expression, say what cannot be said. They are infinitely distant from that to which they refer. Even words I simply adore, like “alterity” and “otherwise,” prove inadequate when used to approximate the meaning of what I call God.
Christmas is a season for celebration, yes; but it is also a call to silence.
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***The narrative serves a reminder that what I call God will always be ahead of my expectations, notions, and conceptions. The liturgy of Christmas brings the birth of Jesus Christ to life, ushering in an end to the Season of Advent, and yet does so while maintaining Advent’s central meaning: God is always to come.***
This is thoughtful and timely, thank you. I too was struck this past Advent by this contradiction. The liturgy of the Church, focusing on the desiring of salvation on the part of Israel ( working up our longing, as it were) also highlights the smashing of desires when they finally rise up to meet God. Israel was languishing in its desire for “the gift”, which receives a certain pedigree of glory and praise even before it arrives (in anticipation). This is the glory of Christmas.
When at last what was long waited for is given, not only does it subvert or even seemingly ignore key facets of that expectation, but the gift having been received (Nativity), is then promptly smashed against the contradiction between God’s reality and the human image (the Cross).
How quickly we go from “For us a child is born!” to “He was despised”
Christ is broken open, almost as if to say “these wounds are the distance between your vain imaginings of me, and me in my inconceivable reality” , yet “I am willing to close the gap between the two by the pain of rupture”
Kyle, you definitely have a way with words. And words have a way of stretching our mind, our imagination and our action. Let me try to explain how this piece affected me.
Your sentence -”I discover not a budding messianic warrior in a palace, but an artisan’s frail child in a stable” – took my breath away and sent my mind reeling across the planet to the ancient City of Bethlehem where our Christian tradition proclaims the remarkable birthplace of Jesus, Saviour of the world and Promised Messiah of God’s Holy People.
For me, there are echoes here of a brilliant lyrical passage from one of the pivotal documents of Vatican II:
“…the expectation of a new earth must not weaken but rather stimulate our concern for cultivating this one. For here grows the body of a new human family, a body which even now is able to give some kind of foreshadowing of the new age.” [Gaudium et Spes, Chapter 3, #39]
Forty six years ago in December 1965, this Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World heralded our Christian dignity and vocation as “artisans of a new humanity”. The remarkable phrase appears three times in that one prophetic document. And now your post reflecting on “The Advent Child” has brought it all back to me again with a new kind of clarity and resonance, due to other current and crucial life experiences occurring in the here and now of our time in salvation history.
Since I had the recent privilege of joining a Peace & Justice pilgrimage to the Holy Land of Israel-Palestine in July, (which included several days in and around Bethlehem), I have been frequently taken up with this dynamic concept of the vocation of the artisan within our human community. Your designation “an artisan’s frail child” has implicit connotations for both Mary and Joseph. But this concept clearly refers to a much wider trajectory of meaning.
Given the cosmological context of our collective role as an intelligent and reflective species, within the earth’s vast biosphere, we humans are beginning to realize our unique role and responsibility of participating and collaborating in the creative action of God in our world.
As Christians, grounded in our faith in the Mystery of Incarnation, there is even more to wonder about and explore as we deepen our understanding of our place in the universe.
During the season of Advent, I attended a series of four weekly meditations called “Come to Bethlehem and See”. This was presented by the Presbyterian Church in Canada as one response to the “Kairos Palestine Document” – (A Moment of Truth: a word of faith, hope and love from the heart of Palestinian suffering), issued by a group of Palestinian Christians in December, 2009.
As a result of these recent experiences, I am beginning to realize that Advent and Christmas season beckon me beyond celebration and silence to engage in prophetic action for justice and Peace. Now the work of Christmas begins when we break the bread of the gospel to the poor and practice the corporal and spiritual works of mercy.
Kyle, you touch on a theme that has intrigued me. The Messiah finally arrives and He isn’t what anyone really expected. Yet, people truly in tune with the Holy Spirit immediately recognize Him for who He is: Elizabeth and Baby John who leaps in her womb, Simon and Anna. I absolutely love how both Simon and Anna recognize him and prophesy. I think if we are to learn anything, it is that we must pray and mostly be humble in our prayer because humility will only lead us closer to God and give us the ability to be bendable where we need to be bent.
We do not know what we are saying when we speak of the sacred.
So true, hence the call to silence.
Thank you.
Silence, yes, at the mystery of it all. But at the same time, this is the Incarnation of Emmanuel — God-with-us. It may leave us speechless momentarily, but it does not leave the Divine speechless. Jesus Christ is God’s Word, spoken in this time and place — a concrete, embodied presence we can see and hear. This is God saying to us, “this, in human terms at least, is what I am like.” So silence yes, because the word deserves to be heard, but then I think a response, as if to say, “I can live with this.”