INCARNATION

Meet Me in the Mess: Rethinking the Christmas Story

December brings a wonderful tapestry of spiritual celebrations across the world. Whether it’s the lights of Hanukkah, the reverence of Mawlid al-Nabi, the enlightenment celebrated on Bodhi Day, or the joy of Pancha Ganapati, this month holds deep meaning for many faiths. Among these traditions, Christians celebrate Christmas – or as we sometimes say in more theological language, we celebrate the beauty of the incarnation. At this point, even many lifelong Christians might be raising an eyebrow and thinking, “The beauty of the what now?”

We have all witnessed a dramatic shift in church attendance in recent decades. So many of our friends and relatives have drifted away from organized religion. Some of this exodus we, as church, have solidly earned through our own missteps. Others might argue this is simply part of spiritual growth: a natural movement toward finding truth across all traditions – and while there’s profound wisdom in seeking what unites us rather than what divides us, those of us who still identify as Christian find ourselves asking a genuine question: What makes this path unique? Not in a defensive, circle-the-wagons kind of way, but in an honest search to understand—why Jesus?

For many religious traditions, the path to God involves escaping the physical and transcending the mess of “the world” in the name of the spiritual. One metaphor suggests that humans from all different religious traditions are traveling up the same mountain on different paths to the same God. But what makes Christianity distinctive is that we don’t travel up the mountain to find God—rather, God comes down the mountain to find us.

Some theologians say that the first and primary claim of the gospel isn’t what we often think—that “Jesus died for our sins.” Nor is it, as we’re sometimes told, that “God loves us and has a wonderful plan for our lives.” Rather, the first and primary claim is simply this: “God is here.”

The word “Emmanuel” literally means “God with us.” We Christians believe that God saw us going astray and took the initiative. It is not we who travel to God, but God who comes to be with us—right here in our very own history, in our joys and hopes, in our sorrows, grief and anxiety. Our Doctrine of the Incarnation speaks not of a God somewhere “out there” or “up there,” transcendent and aloof. Instead, we believe in a God who humbled himself to walk the earth with us, who is still physically present in a simple meal of bread and wine shared among us, and who lives within each and every human being.

Also, we don’t believe that the incarnation is something that began in Bethlehem and ended on the cross either. Rather, we believe the incarnation continues in us. Our scriptures don’t say that we “symbolize” or “resemble” the Body of Christ; they plainly state we ARE the Body of Christ. As St. Teresa of Ávila says, “Christ has no body but yours, no hands, no feet on earth but yours, yours are the eyes with which He looks compassion on this world, yours are the feet with which He walks to do good, yours are the hands with which He blesses all the world.”

Whether we are Christian or not, there’s something captivating about this idea of the incarnation—a divine love story where God doesn’t just watch human life from a safe distance but chooses to dive right into its messy reality. And not through some grand entrance, but through perhaps the most human experience of all: a baby born to a displaced family, amid straw and animals, in all the beautiful chaos of birth.

Maybe that’s why this ancient story still catches our imagination. In our fractured world, it whispers something surprising to our modern ears: the sacred is already here. Instead of demanding we climb spiritual mountains to find meaning, love comes seeking us out. It shows up not in our perfect moments, but in our ordinary ones—in shared meals, in hard conversations, in showing up for each other. That’s exactly what our disconnected world is hungry for—not more rules or rituals, but the simple, radical truth that the divine doesn’t wait for us to get our act together. It comes to us in a baby’s cry, in a stranger’s kindness, in the messy beauty of human love. Perhaps what we need most is not just the courage to believe that love comes looking for us, but the willingness to be that kind of love for others.

This article was published in the Grosse Pointe News on December 18, 2024. Several years ago I posted a more lengthy and less polished version of this piece that you are welcome to read if you like by CLICKING HERE.