...shrugging off God-ness

For he is our childhood’s pattern;

day by day on earth he grew;

He was tempted, scorned, rejected,

tears and smiles like us he knew.

Thus he feels for all our sadness,

And he shares in all our gladness.

---Cecil F. Alexander, 1848

“You don’t know how I feel!” “Nobody remembers what it feels like to be my age!” “You have no idea what I’m going through!” Now, whether you are a child or a teen, a young adult just starting out on your own or an elder dealing with the autumn of life, chances are you have felt (if not voiced) these very sentiments. I know I have. There is no emotion so isolating as what this hymn refers to as ‘sadness’; the feeling that others don’t know what you are experiencing is one that builds walls between people, making it even more unlikely that anyone will connect with you. Here’s the thing, though. God knows. Jesus has been there.

The miracle of the incarnation, ‘becoming flesh’, is that part of becoming flesh means being human --- with the aches and pains, the tears and fears, the insecurities and lonelinesses. To shrug off God-ness for a time, Jesus took on skin, and everything that fit inside it --- the jumbled mass of feelings and aspirations that make us real. For this, Jesus walked out of heaven and into Bethlehem.

Our pattern, our goal, in humanity, incarnate. The Christ Child.

...faint or full

Does sadness fill my mind? A solace here I find,

May Jesus Christ be praised!

Or fades my earthly bliss? My comfort still is this,

May Jesus Christ be praised!

---Katholisches Gesangbuch, 1828

Probably none of us, if we live long enough, will avoid the deep ache of sadness. Some may be fortunate, and experience only brief periods of “fadedness”. Others, through life circumstance or brain chemistry, may slog through long terms of depression and sadness. And, because Jesus walked this life fully human, we can surmise that he experienced every emotion common to humanity, including the dark cloud of sadness. This thought is so comforting to me --- to know that I can experience nothing that my Savior has not experienced first. And out of that comfort can come praise. In my darkest moment, I can cling to Christ, and sing my anguished, confused, joyful song of praise, faint or full though it may be.

May Jesus Christ be praised, and may praise do its transformative work in the world, and in me.

...for my sake

My song is love unknown, my Savior's love to me,
love to the loveless shown that they might lovely be.
O who am I that for my sake my Lord 
should take frail flesh, 
and die?
---Samuel Crossman, 1664

How overwhelming, that God stepped into the same skin that we walk around in, knew the risks, took on the aches and pains, shouldered the heartbreaks.

Chose this life. This death.

Chose not to walk away.

For my sake.

Did Jesus look like his pictures?

He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
---Isaiah 53:2

Maybe it's been a slow news week, or maybe it's just that most wonderful time of the year when non-Christmas experts suddenly want to chime in on all things Christmas; but today a talking head on a national news network took to the air to state that it is 'just historical fact that Jesus was a white man.' And I just sat there, smh (for those of you who, like me are afraid of online slang, this one is safe --- 'shaking my head'). Because this TV lady (I'm not ready to call her a newscaster right now) had walked into the Children's Bible, Illustrated Edition trap. You have that Bible, don't you? It's the one with the full color front, with the picture of flower-child Jesus --- long, flowing, light-brown hair, shaggy beard (also light brown), righteous surfer tan set off by his white robe, rope sandals --- surrounded by a group of adorable (also white) pudgy children. What sets the picture off, though, are the piercing blue eyes.
Now, everything we know about Jesus' origin (yes, historically) tells us that he looked nothing like a gentle surfer dude. He undoubtedly looked like a typical middle-Easterner, dark-haired and -skinned. That is the history. And perhaps Isaiah's writing (quoted above) hints at Jesus', well...plain-ness. The piercing blue eyes? Probably not. Heads that turned when he walked by? Nope.
See? That was part of the idea of incarnation. Not that God took on human skin to walk the earth as America's (or The Galilee's) Next Top Model. Not that God came down in an Elvis sequined jumpsuit that shouted 'Look at me!' But that God came as a regular Joe, passed as the son of a regular Joe, and lived right here with us, like us.
What made Jesus holy, set apart, was the message bound up in his humanity --- the message that God is for us. It wasn't his historical dark skin and hair. And it wouldn't have been his whiteness.

...so here we stand, whoever we are, 
bathed in the light of a star...