T.S. Eliot wrote in ‘Four Quartets’, “Humankind cannot bear too much reality.” So we divert ourselves from the true message of Christmas either by romanticizing the story of the birth of Jesus or by replacing it with our mythologies of about the magic of Santa Claus, Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer, or Frosty the Snowman. Because of secularists and atheist protests, we nervously mention Christmas trees or avoid public displays of the nativity story because it offends somebody. The gospel nativity stories have become a casualty of our cultural wars.

But our Advent hope lies in the scandalous promise that God will become one of us. “The Word will become flesh.” But is the most amazing event that startles us. The ‘reign of God’ will come when God embraces us in all our strange and paradoxical reality, and we embrace ourselves and one another with all our human contradictions and weaknesses.

Augustus Caesar ordered a census for the purpose of taxation. Counting the number of conquered subjects and taxing them was Rome’s imperial destiny to collect taxes for the divine Emperor. We always presume that there is one Davidic descendant, Joseph. But I suspect that there were a number of Davidic descendants or would-be claimants crowding the inns of Bethlehem. All the private and semi-private rooms around the courtyards were already taken. And there were no room for the couple from Nazareth in the inns of Bethlehem.

So Mary gives birth to her child outside of the town. God affects the birth of Jesus outside of the economic, political, and religious order. Cities and towns were imperial sites for taxation and rule. The Magi have to search and follow a star to discover this child whereas the shepherds find the child accessible to themselves outside the gates of town and city in a barn or cave housing for animals. Jesus is born among the domesticated animals in an open courtyard.
Jesus is born outside of the Roman census; his birth is undocumented and remains unrecorded. We do not know the time of the day or even the day or even the year that Jesus was born. It is guess-work or theological reflection from the second century CE that dates it at the time of the winter solstice when the longest nights and shortest days take place. “And there a light was born in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.”

The birth of Roman rulers were precisely recorded: the time of day, the date and place of their births, and the births of the children of Herod the Great were likewise recorded—but not the “word become flesh” remains in story but not in any official documents. Jesus is literally born outside of the established political order; he is born an outsider, a nomad whose destiny was to live on the borders of his society and eventually to die outside the political capital of Jerusalem. And again we know the season Jesus will be crucified is springtime at Passover, but we do not know the exact year he died. Sometime between 27-30 CE.

“This will be a sign for you; you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” The child is laid in a manger suggesting a place where animals are housed. St. Francis of Assisi rightly understood that Jesus’ birth with animals housed in the stable/cave and that Jesus laid in a manager had significance. Francis was the first Christian to create a Christmas crèche with animals, for he comprehended the universal connections of the infant Jesus with animal life. All life had the same divine parent and thus all life is siblings. Jesus was not born fro humanity only but for the whole world—all beings of God’s creation.

Jesus’ birth does takes place at the margins of society but outside of society in the uncivilized world, and it begins a story that repeats itself over and over in his ministry and life. He is an outsider his life, an outsider to the religious establishment in Jerusalem, and is political outsider on the cross outside Jerusalem.

God is born an outsider to human civilization but an insider to the world. Religious scholar Karen Armstrong observes, “If we study the Christmas story carefully, we are left with the disturbing sense that the world’s future lies with the very people cast to its margins.” It is a story of an outsider for all those whoever felt outside of society and alienated from religion. It is given to the wealthy and privileged as an opportunity to hear what they most forget about themselves and their world. God has become an outsider.

What the birth of Jesus allows us to imagine God become human. We see it in him how the divine and the human are woven forever one. God did not just take on one human nature. God took on all human nature and said “yes” to it forever! God took on everything physical, material, and natural as himself. That is the full meaning of the Incarnation, the humanity of God—God with us. The story of Christmas announces that where there are poor and disadvantaged people, there is Jesus. From his birth until stripped and dying on the cross, Jesus identified with the poor and oppressed. There is no Christianity without care for the poor and the suffering, and that includes the Earth and all life.

And that’s the whole point! You and I are simultaneously children of heaven and children of earth, divine and human coexisting in a well hidden disguise. We are a living paradox, just as Jesus was. We also are a seeming contradiction that is not a contradiction at all. Most Christians were simply never told the real good news that flesh and spirit, divine and human, coexist in a wondrous mystery. That was not made clear in Jesus and surely not in ourselves by the church. The consequences of not fully acceptance of “the word became flesh and dwelled among us” have been disastrous at all levels of notions of human perfection and exclusion of the less perfect” the pure and impure, saved and sinner. God’s incarnation did not happen in the pregnancy of Mary but the ancient unfathomable time of 15 billion years ago when the big bang happened. God fused Godself with the gases and the atomic particles that would be shaped in the womb of Mary, given birth to a child– who would experience the fullness of human life, all its joys, tragedies, and disappointment. The child—born of heaven and earth– would discover divine nature within himself and within the world.

Matter always reveals Spirit, and Spirit lies hidden as the divine energy within all that is physical, material, earthly, human, fleshy and erotic, flawed, and failing. Everything is a sacrament of the divine presence! Nothing else could truly be called good news. We learn the real meaning of human life, compassionately interconnected with the web of life, by meditating upon the life of Jesus and following in the footsteps of Jesus.

Let me quote extensively the Letter of the Divine Child authored by Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff:

Christmas is the feast of children and of the Divine Child that hides within every adult. The belief that God came near to humankind in the form of a child is enormously inspiring. Thus no one can claim that it is just an unfathomable mystery, fascinating on the one hand and terrifying on the other. No. He came close to us in the fragility of a newborn who whimpered from the cold and hungrily sought the maternal breast. We have to respect and love this form in which God chose to enter our world, through the rear, in a grotto of animals, on a dark and snowy night, “because there was no room for him in the inns of Bethlehem.”

Even more consoling is the idea that we will be judged by a child and not by a stern and scrutinizing judge. What a child wants is to play. He immediately forms an affinity with other children, poor, rich, Asian, black, or blond…He is original since;

if you are able to make the hidden child be reborn in your parents, your uncles and aunts and other people you know so that love, tenderness, and caring for the whole world and also for nature well up in them;
if when looking at the manger you discover Jesus, poorly clad, almost naked, and you remember how many children are equally poorly clothed, and this situation wounds you to the bottom of your hearts, and you can share your surplu

innocence because he does not yet know the maliciousness of adult life.

The Divine Child will introduce us into the celestial dance and the banquet that the divine family of Father/Mother, Son and Holy Spirit has prepared for all its sons and daughters, without excluding those who once were torn by suffering.
I was reflecting on this blessed situation when an angel like those who sang to the shepherds in the fields of Bethlehem approached me spiritually and gave me a Christmas card. From whom could it be? I began to read. It said:

“Dear little brothers and sisters:

If when looking at the nativity and seeing the Child Jesus there between Mary and Joseph, next to the ox and the mule, you are filled with faith that God became a child like any one of you;

if you are able to see in other boys and girls the ineffable presence of Jesus the Child, who once was born in Bethlehem and has never left us alone in the world

if you are able to make the hidden child be reborn in your parents, your uncles and aunts and other people you know so that love, tenderness, and caring for the whole world and also for nature well up in them;

if when looking at the manger you discover Jesus, poorly clad, almost naked, and you remember how many children are equally poorly clothed, and this situation wounds you to the bottom of your hearts, and you can share your surplus and want to change this state of affairs right now;

if when seeing the cow, the donkey, the sheep, the goats, the dogs, the camels and the elephant in the nativity, you think that the whole universe is also lit by the Divine Child and that we are all part of the Great House of God;
if you look up to the heavens and see the star with its luminous tail and remember that there is always a star like the one of Bethlehem over you, that accompanies you, shines on you, and shows you the best paths;
if you remember that the Three Kings who came from far off lands, were really wise men and that still today they represent the scientists and teachers who are able to see the secret meaning of life and the universe in this Child;

if you believe that this Child is simultaneously (Hu)man and God, that, being (Hu)man, He is your brother and, being God, a part of God exists in you, and therefore you are filled with joy and real pride;
if you believe all this, know that I am born again and Christmas has come anew among you. I will always be near, walking with you, weeping with you and playing with you, until the day when all — humankind and universe — reach the House of God, who is Father and Mother of infinite goodness, to live together forever and be eternally happy.
Bethlehem. December 25, Year 1,
Signed The Divine Child Jesus

This Christmas my wish for you is to step into the heart of the scandal and mystery of the God-word became flesh and living within you.

Merry Christmas! 2014