Grounded in grace Immaculate reconception By Tim Brown When I was


young and turning the corner into the teenage world, I started to burn old pictures of myself. If I found one


of myself in an awkward stage or thought I looked off, I’d burn it in the sink. The phase didn’t last long, but I still remember it because from somewhere I’d gotten the idea that I wasn’t OK, be it my face or even just myself. Now, many years later, maybe


this early struggle is why I’m so drawn to Christmas, at least theologically. Christmas is all about incarnation. All about embodiment. All about promise and hope for bodies. Christmas is all about God loving humanity enough to put humanity on for a while. Christmas is about bodies being OK, by God. Martin Luther believed


Christmas was especially for children, and he’s not wrong about that. Children are the ones most captivated by the story of a God- child. The world has capitalized on that wisdom in ways that are pretty antithetical to Christ’s first arrival. It’s like the common assumption underlying the rush of this season is that we must buy things, banking on the idea that we’re not OK and need supplemental material to make up the gap. Don’t take that as an argument


for not giving gifts on Christmas. By all means, it’s a season to give thanks for the bodies around us,


and gifts are a wonderful way to show appreciation. But that young guy many


Christmases ago didn’t need another video game. He needed most of all to be shown in many ways that he wasn’t “off”—that he was OK. A lot of people need that—children and adults— but not in some self-help, ego- building, self-esteem sort of way that passes as theology these days. That young guy needed a new


lens to see himself and the world, not a rosier lens. Christmas provided a new lens


for bodies who thought God was never coming, who had begun to think that the prophet Habakkuk, who proclaimed: “If God tarries, just wait,” was ultimately mistaken. Waiting bodies are weary bodies, and yet God showed up in a weary, vulnerable body from among the bodies instead of above them. And that would be the greatest


gift for us in the end, though we still often forget about it. Christmas still provides that new lens for those with eyes to see. The hope and promise of


Christmas is about the salvation of bodies, especially bodies that don’t always feel OK. The babe crying from the manger was a signal to a crying people, to a world dominated by the subjugation of bodies under the boot of the Empire, that God was crying, too, and had not forgotten those beloved bodies. Poet and activist Lawrence


Ferlinghetti has a wonderful, subversive poem titled “Christ Climbed Down” that I read every Christmas. The whole poem is


worth pondering, but the last stanza is particularly meaningful to me: Christ climbed down from His bare tree this year and softly stole away into some anonymous Mary’s womb again where in the darkest night of everybody’s anonymous soul He awaits again an unimaginable and impossibly Immaculate Reconception the very craziest of Second Comings So for those anonymous young


bodies out there who look in the mirror and aren’t sure if they’re OK; for all the body-shamed people out there; for those old bodies, distraught over the way time has changed them; and for every body in between: Christmas is especially for you. If the incarnation of God in


Christ makes anything plain, it’s this: God loves humanity enough to become humanity and is still known through that humanity today as Christ appears in neigh- bors and strangers. The craziest of second comings, indeed! This should cause all of


us who worry about bodies to reconceptualize just how we look at ourselves and others. That is a wonderful gift this, and every, Christmas. An immaculate reconception for this season.


Tim Brown is a pastor of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Raleigh, N.C. He blogs at reluctantxtian. wordpress.com.


VOICES OF FAITH • LIVINGLUTHERAN.0RG 5


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52