Day 10 - Tuesday, December 11
A Child is Born
Scripture: Isaiah 9:6-7
For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to establish it, and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from henceforth even for ever.

ON JESUS AS BABY

I have a six-month-old baby. His name is Gus. And as of this writing, he’s been cast as Baby Jesus in this year’s church Christmas pageant. (His three older siblings have been cast Angel #2, Angel #3, and Cow. Yes, we’re very proud).

Gus as Baby Jesus...Hm. Jesus as baby...Right.

I don’t know about you, but I find this weird. I find it strange and unfamiliar. I find it this way every year honestly, and I’ll go to my grave defending this sensibility. I want to keep it that way. Christmas is a weird religious and cultural phenomenon, for Christmas is the Incarnation of God. Our belief in Christmas is a commitment to the dual nature of Christ—de novo and sui generis. If we embrace the incarnation of the Son of God—the assumption of a fully human nature by the fully divine Logos, well, then we embrace the weird.

Isaiah 9:6-7 describes the other-worldliness of God that invades and conquers our world. Yes, Christmas is a political invasion. An invasion, occupation, and ultimate overthrow of worldly power, and the broken and lonely enterprise of being human. And the invader? A baby. That’s what Christians believe, and I find this wonderfully, comfortingly strange. All the more so because it’s about a baby.

Here, I could go into a long-winded interpretation of that tour de force of theological nuance, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, wherein Will Ferrell’s Ricky says grace praying to “Dear eight-pound, six-ounce newborn infant Jesus—don’t even know a word yet, just a little infant and so cuddly, but still omnipotent…” To which his trophy wife, in her one moment of sensibility in the film, objects, “Jesus did grow up…you don’t always have to call him baby. It’s a bit odd and off-putting to pray to a baby.” Honestly, I could say a lot more here about how exquisite a social critique of consumer-driven American Christianity this scene offers, but I’ll save you that rant. You came here for an Advent devotional after all.

If we find Christmas normal, it’s because we’ve bought it as such from the Coca-Cola Company and the jingle-jangle of Christmas advertising. Baby Jesus is, in this mode, a baptizing of our worldly consumption and worldly power-games as innocent, docile, and morally permissible (nay: praiseworthy). But Thomas Merton reminds us of—"the deep, in some ways anguished seriousness of Advent, when the mendacious celebrations of our marketing culture so easily harmonize with our tendency to regard Christmas, consciously or otherwise, as a return to our own innocence and our own infancy. Advent should remind us that the 'King Who is to Come' is more than a charming infant smiling ... in the straw.” (From “Advent: Hope or Delusion?" in Seasons of Celebration: Meditations on the Cycle of Liturgical Feasts, 88-89)

If “unto us a Son is born”—if we are to say that, then I’d suggest in that moment, we ought to figure ourselves his lowly and humble parents. His mother: young, scandalously with child, laboring, exhausted, lowly recipient of grace, and utterly dependent on God. Or his father: cut out of the biological process, dishonored and shamed, yet loyal and willingly humiliated. Yes, to us a Son is born.

I remember the sober (err, terrifying???) but genuine joy of holding all my kids in the moments after they were born. I simply cannot fathom what profound act of strange mystery and apocalyptic (i.e., revealing) shock must accompany the experience of lifting "Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” from the straw of the manger.

Advent, birth, deliverance. This most-ultimately-strange mystery is somehow most-fitting for our redemption. Baby Jesus, in his best representation today, reveals to us the self-emptied Cosmic Christ. As Merton goes on to explain in that essay, “The Advent mystery is then a mystery of emptiness, of poverty, of limitation. It must be so. Otherwise, it would not be a mystery of hope” ("Advent: Hope or Delusion?," 95). That is the political mode of this Baby, on whose shoulders rests all government. Not one of saccharine goodies and packaged, zany, moo-ing, charming, jingling Christmas marketing pageantry. Rather, it is the presentation of omnipotent, cosmic Ruler God in the weakest and most identifiable of forms: a little baby—a child given us—bidding we hold him and keep him and honor him. Because we see ourselves in him, because we identify with that weakness and utter dependence, we must if we are to become one with him, trusting in his justice and righteousness "from henceforth even for ever."

Yep, he’s a baby. It will come as odd and off-putting to many. Keep it that way. Keep Christmas weird.

Prayer:
Dear Sweet Baby Jesus,
You invite us to weakness, to reorient our faulty and fragile understanding of power. You invite us to dependency, to resist the temptation toward prideful individualism. You invite us to humility, to re-prioritize our concerns toward your kingdom. You invite us to poverty, to rectify our idolatry and consumerism. You invite us to yourself, to rest.
Amen

Evan Rosa
Director, Biola University Center for Christian Thought
Editor, The Table
Adjunct Professor of Philosophy
Biola University