Jesus offended people. He didn’t fit their expectations of what a religious leader should be. He was too messy. If you needed healing it was likely he would spit on the ground and then pick up the spittle mixed with some dirt and make a mud paste that he would wipe on your eye or whatever part of your body needed healing. He didn’t always wash his hands before eating. If that wasn’t bad enough, he washed people’s feet.
Many of the first century Jewish leaders, especially the Pharisees, expected Jesus to obey the dietary and hygiene laws of their people. These laws were important symbols of Jewish identity at that time. They also served a practical purpose of keeping people healthy in a world where the poor hygiene of most people was a vehicle for disease and death.
It wasn’t just the Jewish religious leaders that had problems with Jesus’ messiness. Many Greco-Roman Christians were uncomfortable with Jesus’ earthiness and not from concern for germs. There was a myth common among many people in the Roman empire that in the beginning humans were created as pure spirits, not much different from angels. These spirits were curious about the material universe created by God and went to check it out. The material universe proved to be very interesting and many of these spirits got trapped in the material universe. Those who were trapped soon forgot that they were pure spirits and began to identify themselves only as the flesh and blood creatures they had become. The forgetfulness made it difficult for them to be freed from the trap of material existence because soon they didn’t even realize that they were trapped.
Many pagan religious leaders and philosophers argued that the most effective way to achieve our true nature as spirit was to reject the material world and dedicate oneself to contemplation and ascetic self-discipline. Yet, not only was Jesus messy, he seemed to enjoy the material world, eating and drinking with all sorts of people. To think of Jesus as the Second Person of the Trinity was difficult for many people used to thinking of spirit and the material world in opposition. The idea that the Word was made flesh, that the divine willingly entered the material universe and took on flesh, made no sense to them. However, this is exactly what Christians said happened in Jesus.
The ring tone on my cell phone is an old John Lennon song, “What if God was one of us…”. That is exactly what happened in Jesus of Nazareth. The divine became flesh and blood and entered the human condition. That is what Incarnation means, when we are talking about Jesus. The Christmas celebration is fundamentally a celebration of the Incarnation.
Christianity rejects the idea that the material universe is a trap. The material universe is the God given means for expressing our spiritual nature. our bodies, with all their messiness, are the mediums through which we act and our spirit finds expression. Every virtue, every good deed, every act of heroism may have its origin in our spirit but can only find expression through our bodies. While every virtue, good deed and act of heroism may begin in our imagination and inspired by the Holy Spirit, they only become real when they are incarnated in our actions.
Have a blessed Christmas as we celebrate God’s willingness to get messy and be one of us in Jesus.