On Christmas morning we watched this video and this reflections refers to it.
Let us pray: May God who is Majesty, Mercy, and Mystery speak words of life, and love through these words this Christmas morning. Amen.
I had to watch a lot of Christmas videos in order to find the one we watched this morning. The story of the birth of Jesus is arguably one of the most well known stories and a LOT of content has been created to get this story out there. Now I am sure all of it has been helpful to at least someone and I admit I am a very particular person but I found most of it pretty trivial and sentimental. Lots of well used and unhelpful tropes, cliches and stereotypes.
But this little video filled my heart with joy. Of course the very gorgeous children and spectacular scenery of a part of the world that is dear to my heart.
But this video also captures for me, something profound about the Incarnation, which is what I want to reflect a little on this morning.
When Christians say Incarnation we are talking about the moment when the divine, God, took on human form, in Jesus. This theological mystery is encapsulated in the opening verses of the Gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”
Jesus’ came in the form of a particular person, in a particular place, at a particular time, and among a particular culture.
Theologians have even come up with a name for this, “the scandal of particularity.”
Luke tells us Jesus was born in first century Bethlehem at the time of Emperor Augustus when Quirinius was governor of Syria (as Sonny read us). And yet this birth, this moment when God breaks into history through the Incarnation, is not witnessed by these powerful people. Rather it is Mary and Joseph – a young woman and her faithful husband who risked everything on their trust in God – who are there. And it is the shepherds keeping watch over their flocks and Magi staring up at the stars who discern it. It is these ordinary people, poor, humble, often scorned people who are present when the Word becomes flesh and dwells among us.
And still now, I think, it is more often those, who are not so filled with their own power and privilege, who discern God’s ongoing presence and action in the world.
Jesus enters the world of Augustus and the angel makes the same promises as the Empire – good news, a saviour, peace – but the angel’s message is not spoken in the Empire’s halls of power. God’s good news, is not brought about through violence and oppression. Right from the start Luke is placing Jesus and his Kingdom in stark contrast with the powerful Roman Empire.
This context really matters. Ill say again the Christian faith comes to us through a particular person and their story.
And yet throughout the centuries and across the world people have found their story in this story.
This is evident in all the different depictions of this story from around the world on this slide.
It is also evident in the video.
The video was set in Bolivia. Bolivia is considered the poorest nation in South America, a continent that is not short on poverty. In recent decades they have made significant progress in reducing extreme poverty but economic development is limited by high production costs, poor infrastructure, inequality and the country’s landlocked status. They lost their coastal access to Chile in 1879.
Bolivia also has the highest Indigenous population in South America. The children we see in this video are likely Uru children. They live in the area around Lake Titicaca which borders Peru. They weave their homes with the reeds on the lake like we saw on the video.
They have brought the Christmas story alive for us and for themselves by imagining what it would look like if this story happened in their time and place.
In 2007 Martin and I visited Bolivia. We were visiting family in Peru but we were able to travel through Boliva on our way.
This is a photo of Martin shining the shoes of one of the many, many Bolivian shoeshines. Shoe shining is not a particularly desirable job due to the strong fumes, low pay and social stigma but it is one of the few ways poor children with limited education can make enough to at least get some food and so there are a lot of them. And they can be very insistent in selling their service, particularly to tourists. The boy in the photo was one such boy. He followed us around for a long time trying to get us to allow him to shine our shoes.
Martin finally says to him, “ok you can shine my shoes if you let me shine yours.” This was a very small thing but it mattered to Martin. These mostly young boys have a pretty bad reputation. Widely considered to be addicts and thieves (which of course some are but not all), many face discrimination and have become outsiders in their community. Martin wanted to connect, to do something to demonstrate the dignity in this work.
The boy was not sure about this but not wanting to lose us as clients he eventually agreed and we ended up having a good laugh together. We also invited this boy and couple of his shoe shine friends to watch Bolivia’s world cup qualifier with us. They lost. This small, very poor nation does not have much hope against the giants of South American football, but they were happy to be able to watch it.
While, the boy and his friends mostly just thought we were a bit weird, I thought there was something kind of Incarnational about all this.
This story of God being birthed among us, as one of us, in the same way we were, has given meaning to so many ordinary experiences. That it took place in such meagre and difficult circumstances has empowered so many, like the children in this video, who live in poverty or under oppressive regimes. That it was announced to outsiders, like shoe shines, has given dignity to those who experience discrimination and prejudice.
As Christians we hold the tension of the particularity of this story, with our conviction that Jesus does indeed continue to be Incarnate among us and within us. As we sing, in the well known hymn
O holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray;
cast out our sin, and enter in, be born in us today.
We hear the Christmas angels the great glad tidings tell;
o come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel!
The story we read and they hymns we sing remind us of the particular time that God stepped into our world in the person of Jesus but they also point us to all the moments when God steps in making himself known in new, personal and special ways.
Perhaps this is a notion some of us struggle with, perhaps we prefer the idea that God is with us and all people in the exact same way, all the time. But this is not the God that this story proclaims. This story proclaims a God who did and continues to come to specific people at specific times in specific ways. They may not be the ways they expect. In fact it may be in ways they least expect but it will be in the ways they need.
This week I was reading yet another article from Christianity Today, titled, “The Incarnation is the rule not the exception.”
The author, Julie Canlis writes, “Jesus mission was to reveal God to us and reveal us to ourselves. Nowehere is this revelation more evident than in the birth of Christ.
The Incarnation can no longer be seen as a temporary mission where Christ “stooped” to take on our feeble flesh simply in order to get a job done. If God’s whole plan is for us to be fully inhabited by him, then the Incarnation is a stunning picture of what humans were designed for.”
In this video these children are remembering a story that happened over 2000 years ago, a long way from where they live. And yet they are bringing this story into their time and place and culture in ways that give dignity and meaning to their lives. I wonder what a similar video made in Alice Springs would look like?
Today we celebrate that Jesus has come, that He has taken on our humanity and redeemed it.
We acknowledge that Jesus is here among us but also among the poor and He calls us to be there with him.
And we look forward to the time when Jesus will come again. A time when God’s dwelling place will be on earth again. When there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain. When the order of Emperors and Kings and dictators and the powerful ruling over the poor and the elites hoarding all wealth to themselves will have passed away.” A time when all will be made new!”
