I have been called an iconoclast. I suppose I have earned that.
I believe that at best, icons are a superficial image of God's reality in the world. I believe that at worst, they are graven images that attempt to shroud the truth of God with our limitations of belief and spiritual authenticity... even to being idols at times.
I believe that I am speaking through this mechanism to adults - not children or those who must be sheltered from reality or who must live an idealized and false view of reality for their comfort.
Jesus is God. Let me be clear on that. In my mind and heart, Jesus is God and speaks for God... represents God's will in how we live with God and those who God loves here and now, in this part of God's Kingdom.
Jesus' birth signifies, therefore an incarnation of God. God bothered to reach into our world. God who is all power, wealth and status reached into this ridiculous world of ridiculous folk, out of love for the humanity which God created and with which God has continued to have a relationship. It means that God is with us, all of us in this part of God's Kingdom, in love and grace, joy and peace. It is hope for us - our only hope.
Jesus was born in a stable because His parents had no bribe money for the Innkeepers. Jesus was born in relative poverty. It probably took all the resources they had just to travel to Bethlehem for the Census, because Rome had killed the middle, working class of craftsmen, artisans and other trades persons like fishermen, and smalltime shepherds. They took all the resources of those they occupied for empire and for the few elites who benefitted from empire. Jesus was laid, not in a bassinette, but in a feeding trough for animals, full of hay and grain and whatever secretions the animals left that were feeding on them out of the trough. Jesus was wrapped in rags.
Jesus, as more than one modern prophet has pointed out, was "born in blood between urine and feces." I know that we like to idealize the image, but it is the truth. It is how babies are born (naturally). Tears, blood, sweat, filth and the cold met Him at his birth in the stable.
Jesus was born, not in status, wealth or power but in scandal. His parents were not married. In a Roman dominated world in which one's status meant everything, and among the religious purists and therefore hypocrites of the time it would be a shameful thing and "beneath" many.
God loves us that much. God, who is above the ridiculous considerations of status-driven society, occupying and oppressive power and ill-gotten wealth at the expense of others, bothered to identify not with the Roman empire or the Temple Cult leaders of that time who were in collusion with them, the corrupt King of Israel or the wealthy in society, or even those who stuck their heads in the sand and went on believing in some pure, holy, iconic vision of God's presence - but with people who lived in utter poverty at their hands, and people who lived in scandal and shame.
God's son leaves the glory of heavenly status, wealth and power to be born on earth and in human form, NOT in the Temple or the Palace or the gated communities of the wealthy, but in a public stable in a little, insignificant town. And heaven broke forth with exaltations of joy, not to the royal or powerful, wealthy or elite, but to the night shift of shepherds who watched their precious few flocks in order to preserve them from the wolves, so that they could eat the next day from whatever Rome did not take away. It was they who got to announce this to the world.
Jesus is our hope. God loves us. Jesus' scandalous and messy birth, refugee status, itinerate life of poverty, message of justice in Agape Love and Grace and scandalous and messy death all signify how God identifies with those who have unjustly been held down, back and out by the rest in the world. God identifies with those who have been abused and victimized by Satan through the evils of humans out of their Greed, lust of power and desire for status "above" other human beings.
Jesus' presence should still mean hope to us because of the justice and peace Jesus' commanded through the living of Agape Love and Grace. For some, it has been twisted into a justification of their wealth, power and status as signs of God's blessings - a myth that Jesus Himself dispelled in His Gospel teaching. For others, it means that they can aspire to be the ones who hold others down, back and out for their own gain and rely on God's Grace even in that evil. For still others, it means that they can bask in the pleasant (and false) glow of ignorance, a reliance on supernatural intervention and/or an iconic joy and ignore the realities around them, while others suffer at the hands of some in society - ignoring reality through an insulating, personal and false spirituality. For many, even most in the world, it is meant to be the hope that God will bring the high lower and elevate the lowly, that God will even out the rough, even ruthless and straighten the crooked who do these things to others through those who will be faithful to God's will. That comes only in the living of Jesus' commanded Agape Love in the world, here and now, by those who profess to follow Jesus.
God is with us, and God's incarnation can be seen as a sweet, pure and quaint (though false) picture.
God is with us, and God's incarnation can also be understood as God reaching into the sinful world in a very real way, identifying with those who have been most victimized by it and commanding that we do better in how we love God with all that we have and love our Neighbors as ourselves. That is the Gospel message of Good News in the midst of the bad, light in the midst of darkness and hope in the midst of despair.
God does not stay in the glory, but gets down to it in the gore.
God rarely works in quaint, pure and sweet ways, but rather in Power and in Love, through us.
This begs the question - Do you receive THIS incarnate Emmanuel?
and perhaps another... Whose side are you on?
Pastor
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