Cold descended this week as a reminder we’re in the darkest days of winter now. I’m currently typing in front of my fireplace as the wind whips through the open space between my apartment building and the one just across the parking lot. Temperatures for next week are fluctuating between highs of 30 to highs of single digits. I don’t love the cold, but I prefer a cold holiday season and a dark and moody Christmas morning to a balmy, sunny one. Cold darkness seems fitting. As Fleming Rutledge writes, “Advent begins in the dark and moves towards the light.”
The darkness of doubt descends as unexpectedly as a midwestern cold front. One moment we stand in surety and another collapse in overwhelming ambiguity. Even the way we tell the Christmas story is tainted by a sort of familiarity that obliterates any sense of wonder. For 34 years, I’ve heard a regurgitated story of a young virgin miraculously impregnated by God, a long journey during a census, no room at the inn, a stable and a manger, three wisemen, heavenly hosts, and “shepherds keeping their flocks by night.” We swallowed the lore of silence and calmness and brightness, losing sight of the absolute messiness of birth and blood and shit and sweat. We speak often of the paradox of divinity enfleshed in fetus and tissue, skin and bones. But what about the paradox of competing emotion: fear and gratitude, grief and hope, exhaustion and peace?
Mary was wholly human in a patriarchal culture that lawfully murdered women for any sign of pre-marital sex. Who would believe the story of a divine visit, a prophecy fulfilled in the form of an immaculate conception? Surely she felt the anguish of cultural rejection paired with gratitude for the gift she carried. And perhaps this is the reason for her visit to Elizabeth. In a community that would reject and judge, Elizabeth affirms, celebrates, and welcomes. Elizabeth does what Jesus will later do with the woman caught in adultery and offers safety free of condemnation. Joseph was wholly human in a patriarchal culture that lawfully allowed him to divorce without consequence. Can we blame his disbelief, his own fear of a community that would reject and judge him for staying with a marked woman?
In the nativity story, we see real, messy humans who are not perfect in their faithfulness or consistent in their belief. I wish we’d stop treating Mary and Joseph as perfectly faithful icons, and remember the complex paradoxes of humans containing multitudes.
In Honest Advent, Scott Erickson writes, “We will always take our most important stories and sacredly set them apart so we remember them for the rest of time. But this process becomes unhelpful when we separate our own fleshly humanity from the humanity found in these sacred stories. Because when we dismiss the aches and pains, the fluids and hair, the naked fleshiness under all the fancy clothing, we can dismiss ourselves from being ones who could also find ourselves in a sacred story. It’s the meeting place where the Spirit of God meets every person—our physical bodies.”
I struggle with a glamorous story that obliterates Mary’s raw, human emotion, paints her as an obedient saint instead of a flawed, messy, bloody human woman. I buck against a story that would equate faithfulness with acquiescence, as if Joseph didn’t grieve or despair or doubt himself.
Some people are so worried about being irreverent, they strip the raw humanity from these ancient figures. They don’t think about Mary screaming obscenities during a painful childbirth, a naked, bloodied baby, a stressed out Joseph overwhelmed by a long trek and his sudden task as midwife. We find ourselves identifying more with Ebinezar Scrooge than Mary, Joseph, or Elizabeth because we’ve iconized them as nearly perfect. But what if Mary, Joseph, and Elizabeth were also human like you and I? And what if faithfulness actually means being wholly human in our search for the divine in our midst?
This year, I’m choosing to consider the personhood of Elizabeth, who knew the great grief of a barren womb, a grief that tarries even with hopeful news. I’m reading Mary’s Magnificat that references a God who “knocks tyrants from horses” and “pulls victims out of the mud.” I’m noticing the limited space Joseph inhabits in a story that elevates the bodies of women, the goodness of women who are not stumbling blocks or silent bystanders but central and sacred. I’m astounded by the visitation of pagan foreigners, the inclusion of dirty shepherds, the presence of grit and stink and bodily fluids.
I’m disinterested in a sanitized version that recalls a compliant Mary, a delighted Elizabeth, a loving Joseph in a calm and perfect scene of one-dimensionality. Give me the grittiness of real life. Give me the hope of the incarnation. Let me see human proof that our embodied presence in this world matters: our faithfulness alongside our despair, our hope alongside our anger.
And perhaps, this is why we have Zachariah’s story. I haven’t forgotten about him—a key character who loses his voice after receiving an angelic message that his elderly wife will bear a son. Zachariah was wholly human with a basic understanding of human anatomy and aging. His disbelief is understandable. Maybe his muteness was more gift than punishment, a period for silence and contemplation to consider this miracle of miracles.
This Christmas, may we remember the significance of human characters in the divine birth story. We are not obsolete or only useful when we cast our humanness aside. It is our physicality and limited capacity that makes us worthy. Our divine reflection makes us beloved. We can wrestle with the paradoxes and unknowns, ask irreverent questions, feel the weight of world without losing our souls. There is abundant grace for us in the messiness of being human.
Loving + Savoring
Book: Honest Advent by Scott Erickson – I read this little advent book during advent 2021 and have been rifling through it again this season. I love the way Scott digs into the messy bits of the Christmas story. It’s a healing and redemptive collection, and includes some of his absolutely stunning artwork.
Book: Sinners in the hands of a Loving God by Brian Zahnd – (I wrote more about this book here). As I’ve been reading over the past week, I’ve found such profound hope and peace with the way Brian talks about a God of love instead of a God of wrath, a perspective that truly changes everything.
Movie: Klaus (via Netflix) – People have been talking about this beautifully animated film for a while, but I finally watched it this week and fell in love. It’s a sweet story with a surprising amount of depth and beautiful animation I couldn’t get enough of.
Podcast: The Bible for Normal People Episode 230: “Pete and Jared Ruin Christmas” – I love this podcast for the scholarly and easily accessible conversations about the Bible, the harmful ways we interpret some things, the ways tradition informs our understanding, the abundant grace we have for asking questions and digging deeper.
Thank you for the reminder to embrace our humanness rather than running from it or seeing it as something terrible and sinful. Regarding Mary's humanness, only once in my time growing up in church did I hear a pastor talk about the cultural pressures and isolation that Mary faced when she was pregnant. That sermon challenged what I had been taught before about Mary happily accepting God's will with no other details until the inn. What strength she had to carry Jesus in a society where she was likely shunned and judged harshly for being pregnant and unmarried.
What a poignant and reflective post! Thank you for reminding us that being human is also part of being sacred.