The Human Face of Mystery
Year after year Christmas presents us with a question, "Who was Jesus?" Without going into depth, it is safe to say that this has been an issue for the church since Jesus was (or was not -- depending on your perspective) resurrected. Was Jesus human or was he divine? How did the human and divine co-mingle in Jesus? What is it to claim that Jesus was Christ, the anointed one? I suppose these questions will be around for another millenia or two but I guess I am just not too interested in picking sides. As I figure it, Jesus is the human face of the mystery we call God.

Face it. God is vast. The reality that we refer to as God cannot be contained by human words,thought or imagination. This vast mystery just cannot be held by the human mind any more than a thimble can hold the Pacific Ocean. God desires involvement with humankind. A friend of mine, an X-Files fanatic, once said that yes there in a vast conspiracy but that it is not some alien plot. It is love plotting and love plots in our favor. Jesus is the human face of this conspiracy, the human face of mystery. Christina Rossetti wrote the lovely hymn, "Love came down a Christmas." For me that is the good news of Christmas -- this vast reality of God is love and we know that love in Christ. It is that simple.

And what better way to annouce love's presence than through the birth of a baby? Babies naturally excite love in most of us, moving us out beyond ourselves into a relationship defined by love. How does this happen? It's a mystery, but a mystery we can count on. Love will not let us go. The human face of that love. Jesus.

There is a paradox in all of this, however. While Jesus is the human face of the mystery, Jesus in no way diminishes the mystery. For example, we know divine love through Jesus Christ. That's true, but still if you were to try to explain divine love to me, you could do little other than babble on. Love, the most real experience in our life, is intangible and cannot be grasped and held. We know God's love in Jesus Christ, but we still cannot fully explain love. So, Jesus is Jesus and God is still God -- a transcendent loving conspiracy of radical, indefinable love. And that's good news!

"When nothing is special, everything is."
On our refrigerator at home there is a note attached. It says, "When nothing matters, everything counts." My daughter, an art student in San Francisco, put it there. Another reading might be, "When there is nothing special, everything is." In her art work, Becky is trying to show the glimmering transcendence of ordinary life. The light of presence can shine through a paper cup lying by the side of the road just as it can shine through a famous religious painting -- say, a piece on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

There was nothing special about Mary. Nothing. She was an ordinary peasant woman engaged to an ordinary peasant man. Together they lived in a two-bit town, Nazareth. The disciple Nathaniel says about Nazareth in the Gospel of John, "What good can come out of Nazareth?" So, there was nothing special about Mary. Yet, there she was minding her own business, maybe mending her robe, or pounding some flour, when the angel Gabriel surprises her, "Greetings favored one!"

This is the glimmering transcendence of ordinary life. Something like this can happen to such a one as Mary. Where nothing is special, everything is. It is a gift in this Advent and Christmas season to ponder this story -- the ordinary is favored by God. If Mary, then all of us. God-with-us, Emmanuel comes as easily to the peasant's hovel as to the courts of power, as easily to streets of the city as to the mansions on the hill. God with us means God with all of us, the Spirit of God, the transcendent shimmering in ordinary life.

This story comes to us during Advent. Yet, in it we get the whole Christmas story, the story of God's incarnation. As ordinary Mary is favored, so favored are all of us. We are the beloved of God. God is with us. That's good news!