Love Looks Like Vulnerability: A Christmas Reflection

This Christmas season I have given significant thought to the vulnerability of God. I rarely hear vulnerability attributed to God within the church. Characteristics like humility and servanthood are consistently mentioned, as they should be. But vulnerability? Rarely.

Do we consider vulnerability too irreverent? Perhaps it feels like a human word and not a God word. Within certain theological frameworks, I presume, a word like vulnerability threatens a certain conception of the sovereignty of God. If God meticulously determines and allows everything that happens then God can't be vulnerable.

But first, what exactly is vulnerability? Here are a couple important elements:

• Emotional exposure. It's always easier to stay within the confines of a carefully curated comfort zone. But healthy vulnerability recognizes that although comfort zones are easier to exist within, to live as a flourishing human being we must break out of these spaces. Consequently, we will feel emotionally, physically, relationally and spiritually exposed.

• Intentionally moving towards uncomfortable/messy spaces. We do so because of a deep commitment to a relationship. We lean into difficulty and discomfort because of love.

If these two concepts contribute significantly to vulnerability, and I think they do, then vulnerability is exactly what we see God doing at Christmas.

The vulnerability present in the incarnation has multiple layers of depth. Too often we explore the first layer while bypassing the second.

Layer One: God Becoming Human

In Luke we read,

"And while they were there, the time came for her baby to be born. She gave birth to her first child, a son. She wrapped him singly in strips of cloth and laid him in a manger because there was no lodging available for them"

It's tempting to romanticize this moment. In the way the birth of Jesus is presented in children's books and the nativity scenes one would assume it was a peaceful and serene moment devoid of any pain, mess, noise or fear. If there were animals gathered around Jesus inside the cave they must have been holding hands and singing kumbaya. But there is no way this is what it was like. Why? Because Jesus entered into our reality. That's the whole point. And in our reality labor and delivery is stressful, sweaty, loud, messy and painful. Animals are smelly and make lots of noises.

Theologian A.J. Swoboda and New Testament Scholar Vijay Gupta, when encouraging us to not forget the humanity of Jesus, put it this way:

"Jesus didn’t come merely to die for our sins. Nor did he come to show off his miraculous superpowers and celestial wisdom. In the history of Christianity, the incarnation of God teaches us that Jesus was born into the fullness of humanity. He was born, in other words, into the complete mortal experience, warts and all. And yes, Jesus may have had warts. He breastfed as an infant. He learned to walk. And the Messiah—in those awkward teenage years—went through puberty. Why did Jesus have to experience all of that? He did this to free us from the grip of sin and death by entering humanity. As the second-century theologian Irenaeus famously put it, 'He became what we are so that we could become what he is.'”

Layer Two: God Becoming a Particular King of Human

In some streams of Christianity the social location of people in the scripture isn't considered. When we carry around a spiritual gospel devoid of any material or social dimensions it is easy to do so. But when we do we miss so much of the gospel story.

In theological language, considering the specific kind of human that God became is referred to as "the scandal of particularity". When God chose to become one of us he came at a particular time, in particular place, within a particular people group with a particular socio-economic location. The social location of Jesus has significant implications for the gospel and discipleship.

When we read the birth narrative (again I am using Luke), some of the seemingly insignificant details of the story are actually the most profound and powerful aspects:

"At that time the Roman emperor, Augustus, decreed that a census should be taken throughout the Roman Empire. (This was the first census taken when Quirinius was governor of Syria.) All returned to their own ancestral towns to register for this census. And because Joseph was a descendant of King David, he had to go to Bethlehem in Judea, David’s ancient home. He traveled there from the village of Nazareth in Galilee. He took with him Mary, to whom he was engaged, who was now expecting a child.

First, Jesus was Jewish. His father was a "descendant of King David". Within the context of first century Palestine the Jewish people were an oppressed minority group under the thumb of the mighty Roman Empire. The boot of this dominant military machine was often on the neck of anyone who didn't get in line. Such was the reality of the marginalized. Howard Thurman, a African American theologian during the civil rights era, puts it this way:

"Of course it may be argued that the fact that Jesus was a jew is merely coincidental, that God could have expressed himself as easily and effectively in a Roman. True, but the fact is he did not. And it is with that fact that we must deal”

Second, Jesus was a Nazarene. Nazareth, according to most historians, was a small agricultural town with a population of 200-500 people. It was a unimportant dot on the Roman Empire map. The city of Sepphoris was right down the road. Sepphoris, the capital city of Herod Antipas, was a power-center for culture and politics. Nazareth sat in its shadow.

In the gospel of John, as Jesus summons his disciples, an interaction reveals how little Nazareth was thought of by the surrounding community. When Philip ran to Nathanael to tell him about Jesus Nathanael replies "Can anything good come from Nazareth?" Additionally, in Acts we see the early Christians being called a Nazarene cult. This was not a term of endearment.

Third, Jesus was from a lower economic class. Continuing in Luke's birth narrative we read:

"Then it was time for their purification offering, as required by the law of Moses after the birth of a child; so his parents took him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord. The law of the Lord says, 'If a woman’s first child is a boy, he must be dedicated to the Lord.' So they offered the sacrifice required in the law of the Lord—“either a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.”

Being Jewish, Jesus' parents were committed to abiding by the Old Testament law. In Leviticus 12 we read:

“If a woman cannot afford to bring a lamb, she must bring two turtledoves or two young pigeons"

If there was any doubt, this is a dead giveaway. Jesus is born into an unimpressive socio-economic context. Carpenters were better off than your average subsistence farmer, but they were a far cry from the socio-economic elite.

As we hold this important context together we realize that God entered the world as a member of an oppressed minority group from a nowhere town into an unimpressive family.

Jesus' contemporaries would have had no category for this. Many of us today, even many Christians, don't have a category for this either.

In the ancient world the paradigm for power and rule was Alexander the Great. He lived several hundred years before Jesus (356-323 B.C.) but his influence remained strong. Being born into a royal family Alexander took the throne in Macedonia at age 20. He then embarked on a decade long military rampage seeking to conquer the world. And conquer the world he did through violence and coercion. When he died at age 33 he ruled so much of the ancient world that he was regarded as divine.

Then there is Jesus, the messiah, entering the world on the social, economic and political low ground. It is here that we encounter a critical truth....

The power of God is hidden in vulnerability and weakness

As Paul fleshes out in his letter to the Corinthians, believing that the power and wisdom of God comes from vulnerable places - from places regarded as weak and insignificant from a worldly mindset - is foolishness to many. How absurd to think that real power, transformation, healing and restoration can come from a jewish baby born in nazareth with parents who can only offer pair of turtle doves and a couple of pigeons!

But is it?

The last 5-6 years of my spiritual journey has been marked with significant moments of disappointment and disillusionment with many expressions of American Christianity. I have observed institutions of power and people of influence within American Christianity marked by hypocrisy, fueled by narcissism, caught in scandal, built upon fear mongering and defined by coercive power grabs. Oh the countless people who have walked away from church (and perhaps Christianity) due to these corrupt expressions of Jesus! Just this past week, a pastor I have admired for many years, was just accused of a significant moral failure. It's happened so often that I'm hardly surprised at anything anymore.

This disillusionment has also hit close to home as my family and I were abruptly run out of our own congregation by leaders motivated by fear and wrapped up in a movement that was more interested in doubling down on status quo than anything else.

Once we lick our wounds, if we have the grace to see, there is a gift that is hidden under the debris. What is this great gift? A holy discontentment that causes us to fall back on God. We realize that we trusted people or institutions over Jesus himself. We realize we've been looking in Sepphoris rather than Nazareth for God to show up. it's precisely in these moments, despite the pain, that our trust in this great truth can increase: the power of God really is hidden within vulnerability and weakness.

The other week my mom asked me how my faith and hope have been impacted through all of the church disillusionment that I've experienced. I said my faith and hope hasn't diminished at all but something has radically changed...the people and places I look to in order to find Jesus.

When I want to grow in my Jesus-shaped leadership I'm slower to grab a book by a celebrity pastor and quicker to seek out a humble mentor who is present in my life.

When I yearn to see goodness and beauty within the church I'm less likely to turn my gaze towards a powerful Christian institution and more likely to pay attention to the local church on 2nd and Main Street where - every single week - there are faithful saints doing their best to love God and love their neighbor.

After all, Jesus was born a jew from Nazareth, placed inside of a feeding trough for animals, into a family with a couple of turtledoves and pigeons. This is where the story of Jesus of Nazareth begins.