Anyone who grew up in an even remotely liturgical church community has heard of Advent. The rest of us have seen Advent calendars, with tiny doors concealing tinier candies. And anyone who has seen Christmas Vacation knows Advent is when Clark Griswold spreads mayhem and puts up far too many Christmas lights.
What is Advent? It is the liturgical season which begins the church year and when we prepare for Christmas. It runs from the first Sunday in December through sundown on Christmas Eve, when the season of Christmastide officially begins. The purpose of Advent is prepare for the coming of God into the world in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, but we are forever rushing Mary to push that baby out so we can open our presents. Instead, we need to push back against the holiday rush and make time to meditate on the mystery and gift of the Incarnation. Our cultural ADD makes it a struggle to “treasure all those words and ponder them in our hearts.” And there is a lot to ponder.
Imagine how you would react to an archangel appearing in front of you—the first thing they always say is, “fear not.” Zechariah gets trashed because he doubted Gabriel and was struck deaf and speechless while waiting for the birth of his son, John, but Mary struggled with the angelic annunciation as well, and, let’s be honest, we would have too.
Luke 1:11-13, 18-20 NRSV Then there appeared to him an angel of the Lord, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. When Zechariah saw him, he was terrified; and fear overwhelmed him. But the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will name him John. . . . Zechariah said to the angel, “How will I know that this is so? For I am an old man, and my wife is getting on in years.” The angel replied, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news. But now, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time, you will become mute, unable to speak, until the day these things occur.”
Luke 1:28-30, 34 NRSV And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God . . . Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?”
And after Jesus birth, she still had a lot to think about:
Luke 2:15-19 NRSV When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.
My takeaway is that the idea of almighty God coming to earth as one of us (Immanuel) is disturbing and frightening and hard to understand. We’ve domesticated it with familiar stories and cozy manger scenes, but it’s still hard to get your head around. God is depicted as loving and gentle in the Hebrew scriptures but also as mighty and holy—the sort of holy that could get you killed if you came too close.
We might ask along with Mary, how can a transcendent, eternal God become a (human) creature in the world that they made? That seems hopelessly self referential (the creator becoming created), and if I’ve learned anything about logic, that’s bound to create a paradox. A self existent creator cannot be created. A first cause cannot be caused.
What is incarnation? Contemporary science argues that our physical body is integral to our consciousness—our thoughts are expressions of biological processes, and mind can’t be separated from body. Even in the first century, various cultures and schools of thought disagreed on the nature of the soul and whether it could exist apart from the body. There were notions of a life force common to all creatures as opposed to consciousness and intelligence or to an eternal soul. What makes us alive? What is the essence of who we are? The incarnation was a puzzler—if it was difficult to speak of spirit and body, then what of a divine spirit and an earthly body? Incarnation came to be understood by the majority as the perfect melding of God and humanity—the hypostatic union, to be exact. Jesus had two natures that were one nature, distinct and yet inseparable. Still, finding words to describe it is an exercise in oxymoron. It’s a bundle of paradoxes tied up in red Christmas ribbons.
So what is this scriptural bundle telling us? That still isn’t settled, but we don’t need to nail down the specifics of our Christology to appreciate its grace and mystery.
- The incarnation is God entering all the messiness of human life. God had poopy pants and zits. God had embarrassing erections.
- God had crappy days and somehow maintained divine perfection. Maybe it’s not sinful to feel bummed out.
- God understands when we have crappy days. God doesn’t say, “oh, that must feel bad”; God says, “I’ve been there too.”
Still, I have lots of questions:
- It seems awfully Epicurean to insist on God being purely spirit and existentially distant from humanity. Is that why the Incarnation was such a shocking idea? That Jesus was Emmanuel, God With Us?
- Does spirit simply mean immaterial? Outside of creation? Transcendent?
- Can God have existence without physicality?
- If we are made in the image of an immaterial God, then how can we be physical beings?
- If God is transcendent, how can we be made in his image?
- How could an immaterial God create a material universe?
- What is kenosis? What was Jesus' emptying himself of to become one of us?
- Is the incarnation a factual description or a metaphor?
- If the incarnation is a metaphor, what is it a metaphor for?
What is a soul?
- Does our soul develop as we mature?
- Was Jesus God at conception?
- Could the infant or prenatal Jesus have been God if his soul didn’t yet exist?
- Did Jesus know he was God as a child? Those would have been truly terrible twos.
- Can we have a soul without consciousness?
- What is the essence of God?
- What kind of language can even express this stuff?
I don’t know, and perhaps it is better to have good questions than certain answers. That’s what I’ll be pondering this advent.
