When I was a teenager, having been raised in a Christian tradition, I began to ask two overarching questions: Who is Jesus? and How should I live? Decades later, I still ask them, although the farther I progress in life's journey, the more I focus on the first. Was Jesus simply a wise and compassionate first century Jew, the Son of God, or something in between? Are the gospels to be taken literally, or can we learn from their historical context? I have read books by classic Christian scholars like C.S. Lewis and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and more recently by historical critics like Kung, Borg and Spong (the resemblances in their names escaping me until I juxtaposed them now). All ask the same questions, all revere Jesus, and yet all have different answers about who he was and what it all means.
Every year at this time, as we reflect on the nativity stories, I am propelled back to these questions of faith. Having chosen law school over seminary as a young man (though having minored in religious studies in my liberal arts college), I ask them without the benefit of a depth of scholarship that might have helped inform my views. That is why I am dependent on the scholars who have written books for mass consumption to help guide me in my search.
Perhaps because of my lack of scholarship, I can only arrive at simplistic answers to my questions, all the while recognizing that I can never fully grasp, and should never claim to comprehend, that which is beyond my power to comprehend. After all, isn't our inability to know with certainty, isn't the presence of doubt, why faith matters?
So here is my simplistic and doubt-filled answer to question one. Jesus is the reflection of God in humanity. The stories of his birth as told in the gospels are the story of incarnation or, as T.S. Eliot called it, the intersection of the timeless with time. We can see God, we can grasp timeless, eternal truth, by learning from Jesus. That is the primary reason why Christmas matters to me. It exalts the birth of one who presents a window into the holy. And it does so by telling us that Jesus was born not to the rich and powerful, but to the poor and powerless. The God of Christians, as seen through the lens of the nativity, is the God of all humanity, and it is the babe in the manger who is exalted above the rulers of the world.
The beauty of this answer, for me, is that it does not require me to exclude other faith traditions or abandon my intellect. It does not require me to accept the literal truth of the narrative - that Jesus was born to a virgin, that he was born in Bethlehem, that three kings brought him gifts, or that he later performed miracles, literally rose from the dead, and ascended bodily into heaven. Whether I believe that these things really happened or understand them better as metaphors, I can still be overwhelmed by the beauty and meaningfulness of the story that has captured the religious imagination for two millennia. I can still well up with tears when I hear someone sing "O Holy Night," and I can still be moved to prayer when I picture the babe in swaddling clothes lying in a manger.
And so, my answer to question one, however incomplete and ill-informed, leads me to the answer to question two. How should I live my life? I should live it, as the prophet Micah said, doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with my God. For me, this means sacrificing for my family, helping my neighbor, remembering the less fortunate, and seeing the value in every person. It also means combating prejudice, rejoicing in the diversity of humankind, and rejecting dogmatic belief systems. Admittedly, I am not very good at these things. But the story of the humble birth of a baby who would one day change the world helps me find my way.
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