As a nation we celebrate the birthdays of key historical figures in US history. It’s meant to honor their memory and rekindle ours. George Washington, of course, led the Revolution, and after serving his term as president, peacefully transferred power to the next president. Abraham Lincoln made the Emancipation Proclamation and led the US through Civil War, freeing slaves. Martin Luther King, Jr. peacefully protested to increase genuine equality and equity for those who didn’t have it, especially African Americans. Christmas is, of course, the day we celebrate the birth of Jesus, the unlikely founder of Christianity which strives to follow his teachings.
I don’t remember spending any time placing a mini plantation on our mantel to honor Washington or building a log cabin anywhere in our home for Lincoln or buying greeting cards with a two-story Queen Anne style home to honor MLK. We don’t focus much at all on their birthplaces – we focus instead on their leadership legacy. Yet where people start sometimes alludes to what matters to them later. Washington was born into great wealth on his family’s plantation. Perhaps it was his wealth that helped him truly see how poorly the King was governing that moved him toward revolution? Lincoln spent the first half of his life in a log cabin. Could that beginning have shaped his understanding and empathy of those who physically labored to get by? Could MLK’s beginning have shaped his understanding of segregation’s severe inhumanity? Could there be a correlation between Jesus’ beginning and his leadership mission and vision?
In the first century, nobody sent Christmas cards of Jesus’ birth site. Because it was humiliating and unfit for any publicity. There is almost nothing about Jesus’ birth narrative that is beautiful. An extremely poor couple finds their way to Bethlehem just as Mary is going into labor. In a part of the world that is noted for the hospitality ethic, nobody makes room for them. How humiliating is that? The only option given them was a cramped space where farm animals were kept. Smelly. Filthy. Unholy. Mary gave birth in that awful setting with only the help of Joseph and a supporting cast of a cow, donkey, a goat or two, and sheep. Think gas station bathroom. You can’t get much lower. And the first folks to come greet them? Not the Mayor of Bethlehem or the Governor or Chief Priest, but the lowest-on-the-totem-pole shepherds, who smelled like the labor and deliver barn. Nobody wanted to get that card in the mail! Can you imagine receiving a Christmas card of a family crowded into a highway gas station bathroom? If we didn’t have angels signaling that this was happening, nobody would see it as anything more than pitiful. Yet this beginning spoke volumes of what was to come. This beginning was countercultural and counterintuitive. This is the narrative the Luke’s Gospel chose to spotlight. In the worst circumstances imaginable, God was powerfully present. Not rejecting them. Not ridiculing them. But joining them. Inhabiting the space with them. Empowering them. In the humblest of settings, with the humblest of means, we recognize God showing up.
The theme continued all the way through Jesus’ life. He was not known for climbing the corporate ladder but rather descending it to be near and befriend those who felt rejected (because they were). Outcasts. Lepers. Prostitutes. Tax Collectors. And mostly everyday people. He walked around proclaiming that God did not favor the powerful over the powerless as has always been believed even to this day, but that God has a more pronounced presence with those who struggle. He challenged the religious and political systems that protected the status quo that favored the wealthy at the expense of the poor. He called out bad theology taught by the highest leaders of Judaism. He lived in defiance of their narrow teaching. He proclaimed love for all and he himself loved all. His way was love all the way through his death. He was no Zealot looking for a violent revolt. He was a pacifist rebel who was so effective at what he taught and lived that we don’t just give him a day to honor his memory, we give him a season.
What Jesus are you remembering this year? The glossy, overly romanticized, highly filtered Jesus that never existed, or the one whose birth was a rebellion of norms that shaped the Rebel Jesus? His birth reminds us that God is with those in the worst of circumstances. His life proved that it was true.
This week I read an email sent out by Pete Enns to his fans. Enns is a biblical scholar, author, speaker, and host of The Bible for Normal People. He wrote:
Over a decade ago, I heard well-known scholar of early Christianity, John Dominic Crossan, speak at an academic conference... He said if you took someone who knew nothing of Jesus, but did understand the religious-political powder keg of 1st century Palestine— understood the tensions between various Jewish groups with different ideas about God and how to live in their own land under Roman rule, and tensions between Jewish and Greco-Roman customs, now centuries old—and then handed that person the Gospel of Mark, that person wouldn’t have to read much before asking, “Who is this Jesus?” and “When is he going to be killed?”
I like being reminded of this Rebel Jesus, the one Jackson Browne wrote about. I want to forget the Jesus who behaves, who looks like he would fit right in at church, who acts as expected, colors between the lines, and never wanders off the beach blanket, and remember instead the rebel Jesus, the countercultural, sometimes snarky, sometimes funny, uncompromisingly in-your-face-against-hypocritical-gatekeepers, uber-compassionate toward outsiders, challenger of the status quo, total mensch Jesus. That’s where I’d rather be this Christmas.
Some of us need to pause and remember Jesus on this celebration of his birthday to reset our minds. Is there any part of us that lost sight of who he was and what he was about? Have we traded the rebel for a revolutionary? Or worse, for a model of the status quo? The Rebel Jesus challenges our thinking, our worldview, our held beliefs, our motivations, our attitude, our biases, and our behavior with Grace. How will we be altered considering his birth?
Some of us are struggling and need to be reminded that God draws near to the brokenhearted – broken by struggle, poor health, economic issues, bad luck, bad choices, bad start, etc. Some of us relate to the humiliation of the stable and manger all too easily. That’s were God showed up with love and light. God is with you. You are not alone. You are loved, supported, and empowered by the Source of everything.
Considering all that Jesus’ birth represents, have hope, peace, joy and love! In the Rebel Jesus these were reborn in a time of political turmoil, deep prejudice, inhumane injustice, and extreme poverty. Christmas declares forever that God is like a current that runs deeper than despair, flows with and toward love, for everyone (including you!). Always. May you find yourself in that flow. May you find yourself altered where you need it. May you find yourself full of the love of God that has always been there, and always will be.
The Rebel Jesus by Jackson Browne
All the streets are filled with laughter and light
And the music of the season
And the merchants' windows are all bright
With the faces of the children
And the families hurrying to their homes
While the sky darkens and freezes
Will be gathering around the hearths and tables
Giving thanks for God's graces
And the birth of the rebel Jesus
Well, they call him by 'the Prince of Peace’
And they call him by 'the Savior’
And they pray to him upon the seas
And in every bold endeavor
And they fill his churches with their pride and gold
As their faith in him increases
But they've turned the nature that I worship in
From a temple to a robber's den
In the words of the rebel Jesus
Well, we guard our world with locks and guns
And we guard our fine possessions
And once a year when Christmas comes
We give to our relations
And perhaps we give a little to the poor
If the generosity should seize us
But if any one of us should interfere
In the business of why there are poor
They get the same as the rebel Jesus
Now pardon me if I have seemed
To take the tone of judgement
For I've no wish to come between
This day and your enjoyment
In a life of hardship and of earthly toil
There's a need for anything that frees us
So, I bid you pleasure
And I bid you cheer from a heathen and a pagan
On the side of the rebel Jesus