The Angels

The shepherds laughed around the fire. Nearby lowed their flocks. A pleasant evening, up in the pastures, the best time of–AN EYE, big as the Temple, large as the hills of Ephraim, ruptured the sky, a bleeding of eyes, a froth of eyes, thousands of eyes ripped the night apart. The backblast extinguished the fire, and the shepherds threw themselves into the dust, gibbering, preparing to die. Four faces had the thing, each an incandescence of bronze. It spoke and every word blasted their ears back into their heads. Its voice told of the redemption of the cosmos, of the crushing together of God and humanity, of sweeping the stars from their courses.

And with the first thing was an infinity of things, each six-winged, two wings hiding faces unseeable by mortals, and two hiding feet unimaginable by mortals, and two joining with their fellows on either side, a chain, a ladder, from horizon to horizon, singing of the Will of God, the awful benevolence of God.

In silence, a silence more terrible than the skull-wrenching tone it replaced, out of the silence came a still, small voice.

“Go to Bethlehem. There you shall see what we have told you.”

And it were gone. The fire was still lit. The sheep baaed contentedly. Nothing had happened.

With speed born of panic, the shepherds re-extinguished the fire, and left the hills for the town below.

A Disgusting Christmas Meditation

(These are null words, placed here so that the first sentence of this post does not appear in social media preview windows, lest it gross folks out when they’re just scrolling through Twitter feeds)

A few days ago I had a thought: if we had a jar of Christ’s diarrhea, would it be a holy relic?

That’s a Christmas thought.

Today is Christmas, the Feast of the Nativity. Today we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, Yeshua bin Yosef, in Bethlehem, a small town to the south of Jerusalem in the land of Judah. Christmas is the celebration of an event, but also of a doctrine, the doctrine of the Incarnation.

The Doctrine of the Incarnation confesses that Christ was God Almighty, the Second Person of the Trinity, made human. By this doctrine, Jesus was fully God and fully man, 200%, losing nothing of either. It’s easy to say that, but we need to think about what it means.

Jesus Christ was born. I don’t know if you’ve ever witnessed a birth. I’ve seen three close up. For a man, that’s as intimate as you’re ever going to be with the process. Though light years distant from the experience of the mother, it’s still not an easy thing to watch.

If we confess the doctrine of the Incarnation, Jesus’s birth was no different than anyone else’s. There was blood and shit. Mary was screaming, in terrible pain. After the baby comes the placenta, the afterbirth, a wad of blood-soaked tissue. The idea of Mary and Joseph smiling down at the newborn, backlit with halos—that’s later. First comes agony.

From that holy night begins Christ’s—God’s–journey through this fallen world He made. Through the trials that burden us all.

Jesus Christ hungered and thirsted.

Jesus Christ knew arguments and wars.

Jesus Christ watched friends and family die, and mourned them.

And Jesus Christ got sick. He had fevers and aches and rashes. He coughed. He puked. And, almost certainly, at one point or another, suffered diarrhea. Which nobody at the time thought to save in a jar. But they could have.

We usually speak of Christ’s coming down to us as an act of love, as something done out of kindness. But you can also say that it was a responsibility He had, that God has no right to tell us anything unless He is willing to come down and suffer with us.

Which Christ did. He walked through life among us, one of us, and not an easy life. And in Gethsemane, right before the end, he gave the cry of humanity to the Father: “God, please, take this cup of suffering from me!”

And God said “No.”

Later comes the Victory. Later comes the halos and the trumpets. Not yet.

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.

The answer to the question is: yes, a jar of Christ’s diarrhea would be a Holy Relic, worthy of having a cathedral built around it, with choirs of monks and virgins singing perpetual choruses of praise. Because that jar means God is with us, Immanuel. That is the message of Christmas. Praise be to God, Alleluia! Amen.

Step Into Christmas

Welcome to my Christmas song
I’d like to thank you for the year

I somehow never heard Elton John’s “Step Into Christmas” before 2014. I don’t know how I missed it for forty Christmases. When I finally did, it came as this lovely discovery of middle age. It’s such a happy song, with a vision of the season, wry and sincere at the same time, relishing the past and looking forward to the future. When the ad nauseum Christmas music radio stations play it, I turn it up. I love that song.

What could this awesome song have been like in context? When was it was first released?

“Step Into Christmas” was released in the Christmas season of 1973.

Oh.

Christmas Prayer

Lord, keep us from the time of trial

But should the time of trial come, keep us strong in it.

Lord, give us Christmas cheer

But if the age should prove cheerless, give us Christmas nonetheless.

Lord, grant us Christmas peace

But if war should ride over us, let us have peace within us.

Lord, let the holi-day be a real thing, above us.

Let it not be tethered by what we do.

And if we are silent, Lord,

Let the stones sing.

Christmas is Meat

Theologically speaking, Christmas is a celebration of the Doctrine of the Incarnation. See that “carn-” in there? It’s the same root as in “carnivore.” Meat. Today is about meat.

Jesus had a placenta, a big, red, dripping hunk of placenta. He had meconium, the dark, extremely sticky (though thankfully odorless) feces that results from ingested amniotic fluid in the womb. He grew. He ate. He got sick. He walked. When Christians say “the body of our Lord Jesus Christ” in Communion, we’re talking about mucous, blood, spit, semen, piss and shit.

God, in the person of Jesus Christ, has joined us here in the dirt. He has come to eat his own dog food and walk among us. God is meat. This is the core of the Christian revelation. Glory be to God.

Have a meaty, bloody Christmas. May it ooze and spew. And, as the hippies used to say, may the Baby Jesus shut your mouth and open your mind.