what child is this?

this is early to be writing something that's loosely christmas-themed, but i don't much feel like being in the present, anyway. i've been thinking about the birth of Jesus. even though the birth probably took place in the spring, and pretty much everything about our whole nativity-schema is historically incorrect, this time of year makes me think about it. (what i'm writing works under the belief that Jesus is the Messiah, which is what the nativity assumes as well. it's not about the theology behind that particular idea.)


i just wrote an essay on the movie children of men. there's a line in w.h. auden's poem "musee des beaux artes" that talks about suffering, and that the aged are "reverently, passionately waiting / For the miraculous birth". i kept thinking about this line while i watched the film. it's brilliant, especially if you're a fan of neitzsche, but there are also undeniable parallels between the hopelessness of the world painted out in the film, its redemption resting on the birth of one child, and the story of the birth of Christ. my professor posed a question before we screened the film, "what hope do children bring when things look very, very bleak?"
in the movie, jasper says to kee, "your baby is the miracle the whole world has been waiting for."

there are so many characteristics of birth that are beautiful and contain hope for us, beyond the mystery of its biology. there is that limitless potential (keirkegaard wrote about possibility never disappointing us), there is a revival of imagination, there is the pure joy of bubbling, high-pitched laughter, there is "faith put into practice" (as children of men describes it) and the magnificence of something so small, a cell, becoming a perfectly shaped human being.

children captivate us. but why did Jesus have to be a child? think beyond the necessary fulfillment of prophecies, such as Isaiah's that Immanuel would be concieved by a virgin, and the Son of Man needing to be born of man, just like the rest of us. there are some other bible stories about children, too. remember when abraham couldn't have a son, yet he was promised descendants as numerous as the twitching white dots in the canopy of the night sky? then there was a miraculous birth. remember when people had to put blood on their doors when they were slaves in egypt, or their first born child would be killed? the blood connection between parents and their children is the epitome of the beautiful human connection, the linkage between everyone in our flawed and glorious race, and helps us understand how God feels about us (having created us and everything). still, though, think beyond all of that. why a baby?

there is a kind of hope that only children bring. the birth of Jesus reminded us of what a miracle birth is in the first place. he didn't just walk out of the dust like Adam, his first breath being the breath of God. Jesus had to go through the gory, bloody birth that every child does, that your future children will come out of, that you came out of. hope makes us alive, and the limitless potential of a newborn baby is as pure as hope can come to us. mary and the divinely appointed few who knew the secret of this child's identity waited with held breath to see his life stretch out. they watched the messiah king come from humble yet miraculous birth and turn the world on its head with his upside-down heirarchy of servanthood and martyrdom and love. Jesus taught meekness, and the need to learn about God and His Kingdom and to be curious about its mysteries. He said to receive the kingdom of God like a child, and he was a child once, so he really can say that, he knew what it implied.

finding "the kingdom".

My friends and I have been talking a lot about the kingdom of G-d. What is it, and what does it look like? It's something you don't think much about or realize the full gravity of when you first start following G-d. You think you might have to christianize your world, or live in a way that fits into the church's agenda. Wear a shirt with the modern artistic represention of Jesus' head sprawled across it, get rid of any movie with a rating above PG, listen to music that recycles christian cliches every few lines. The kingdom in this context is for the few, and it is something you subscribe to.

His kingdom is not exclusive. It is for the Gentile and the Jew. Jesus prayed how we should regarding this, painting out the presence of this kingdom on earth right now: Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. The seraphim that Isaiah walked in on, in their burning manifestion of angelic glory, were praising G-d singing, "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of Hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory."

When the kingdom brushes up against you, and you enter into it, you are changed by it. You step into it, and you are transformed. It invades your world. It invades your philosophy, your art, your relationships, even the mundane. Your passion is revived and made overwhelming in a way that it aligns with the will of the King, of G-d. It is your life in the context of a relationship with your Creator, with your Messiah. Yet we tend to hold pieces of ourselves back.

G-d's kingdom looks like this: all of Him for all of me. It looks like the early church having all possessions in common, not bound to this earth but belonging to G-d, all part of the same body. It transcends the physical and moves into the emotional, the mental, the spiritual, the soul, the heart. We tend to divide ourselves into small parts, to categorize ourselves by our different relationships and our involvement in different places of culture. But this division is an invention; it doesn't exist. The church has burned people by making them feel they can only bring the "spiritual" parts of themselves to church. You become like that pathetic old man in T.S. Eliot's first poem, preparing a face to meet the faces that you meet, murdering and creating yourself. Give yourself completely to Jesus and you'll be transformed. You'll be uniquely the person He meant you to be, and you can spend time with Him wherever You are. You can have all the vivacity and beauty and sacrifice and compassion and mercy of love, akin to what we deem is only found in romantic love, for everyone, all the time. It'll be flowing out of you, it will be a constant presence in the kingdom. You'll know truth, which will set you free, and you'll know how to love people with that truth, because you and I aren't their judge.

The kingdom to me right now is my relationships within the community I live in and the beauty of authenticity spoken between people. It is walking past trees in Flagstaff and feeling that soft, whispering breeze sweep in and out of my clothing, and hearing my feet tread on the dirt and snow. The kingdom is drinking coffee with a good friend and enjoying G-d's creation. The kingdom is loving the homeless and the rejected, loving my enemies, riding my bike to work as I try and talk to G-d, studying for my classes and writing, getting wrapped up in the words of literature that I can hear G-d speaking truth from.

The kingdom is in all of these things, but we try to make it exclusive. We confine it and give it definition as if we understand everything about it. We try to advance our own egos with it. Jesus' kingdom knows nothing of vanity, it is lived out in love. Jesus lived with the same 12 men for three years during His ministry, and they got to be witnesses to how He really lived, day and night. They got to see the kingdom forcefully advancing, and others taking it by force and being transformed. Let's let G-d reign in our lives and see how He completely turns them upside down, let's see our passions revived and our love grow outward and deep with truth.

Father, Thy kingdom come & Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.