The Being, The Broken and The Bread for the Becoming Beloved: A Reflection on this (Confusion Every)

While the season has been usually inundated by the concerns of consumerism and mindfulness of materialism, Christmas ought to be remembered as the ultimate revelation of the supernatural to the natural: God becoming man for the remission of sin.

That sounds a whole lot common. But what does it really mean? What does God taking the human flesh presuppose?

God, in the Old Testament (OT) had been usually thought of as fully majestic. That majesty would be often interpreted as "total other-ness" and anger, since anyone who comes to His presence unmediated would die or, at least as seen through Moses, would cause a realization of "alienation" and unworthiness (see the even the response of Isaiah 6[1]).

Indeed, God is pictured mighty. Unbreakable. Unreachable. Thus, Jesus speaking of God as "Abba" (Mark 14:6 [Cf. Romans 8:15, Galatians 4:6]) was almost unthinkable to the 1st century Jews. How can the great great great Creator from the without be addressed as "personal father"? All the more confounding the situations have become when Jesus claimed that deity... when He said that "before Abraham, I am".

Though the idea can be traced immediately through the Greek notion of dualism: material|immaterial, physical|non-physical, body|soul, whence the former in the binary are deemed inferior to the latter, and the experience of bodily existence as ephemeral, fragile and subject to pain and weakness is pervasive to all worldviews available back then. Either people—erudite and commoners alike—would have to condition the mind to benumb the body, hence escape pain (Stoicism) and attain 'peace' (Buddhism) or would have to justify that the pursuit of pure physical pleasure is all that there is, hence noble (Hedonism/Epicureanism) and thus to simply yield to one's apparent natural inclinations (Taoism). Both would have to do an awful lot of intellectual gymnastics and rhetorical pyrotechnics so the fact of the matter be better addressed: the physical is haunted by extinction. It is not worthy of glory or it must be made worthy of glory (Cf. Docetism).

So when Christmas came, God becoming human and taking the flesh, the idea was, one may say, not welcome. "How can this be?", asked both by Zechariah and Mary, on the same intensity though of different intentionality. How can the almighty, all majesty, and the all glorious allow Himself of taking that lowly form of an infinitesimal speck of dust? ....that fascinating, albeit disgusting wriggler on this face of the earth? (as Schopenhauer describes the human condition).

What people then (and even of today) do not understand is that God is allowing what has always been thought of as just and reasonable: Sin has to be punished and paid for; the one to be punished is the one (or one with those) who committed the (cosmic) crime; and the one to pay must be acceptable according to the standard and demand of the punishment. Man has to pay for their sin. But only God has the capability of reaching the standard He set. Therefore, God has to become man. Therefore, Jesus Christ. Therefore, Christmas.

Christmas, i.e. God taking the human flesh, is always in anticipation of Jesus getting broken (see Isaiah 53). That speaks of a lot with the sincerity of God's heart to save mankind. If God did not have the slightest intention to make forgiveness accessible to humankind, He would have certainly remained in the realm and reality of ‘unbreakability’ and utter otherness and our alienation from Him is still absolute, irreconcilable and irremediable. But "The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us" (John 1:14). But God, in Jesus, stripped Himself off of that majesty (Philippians 2:6-8) and took the form of the to-be-redeemed: "While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take it; this is my body.” (Matthew 14:22). His adopted physical body, frail just like ours, is to be broken and His blood, similarly scarlet, but sinless unlike ours, is to be poured out for the forgiveness of humans' sin—past, present, future.

So, the confusion unto Christmas is always "understandable", then and now. In the ancient, it is impossible, because the gap between the divine and the mortal is a fixed chasm, thence the latter eternally damned. In these contemporary times, Christmas is nothing but the celebration of the material and is just another temporal season to be observed.

But neither cannot be less than a quarter of the truth. Christmas is when the Unbreakable takes the position and condition of the breakable and allowed Himself to be broken that some may partake of the opportunity to be made whole and be accepted in the Beloved of God (Ephesians 1:6). Cheers to a glorified future to those who will receive! Merry Christmas to everyone! :)

[1] Bible verses are cited and referred from the ESV unless otherwise noted.