“Any real connection involves vulnerability. Whether in marriage or friendship—or even with a stranger—a relationship can progress only so far along the normal platitudes of strength and accomplishment. It is only when we have exhausted our tales of trophy winning, when we let down our guards and speak to the truths about our travels, that we find that where we really connect as humans is in the places we have found we walk with a limp.”
― Honest Advent: Awakening to the Wonder of God-with-Us Then, Here, and Now
During the season of Advent, many churches will use royal blue candles and vestments. Blue was associated with Byzantine royalty, and became the color associated with Mary, the mother of Jesus, “the Queen of Heaven.” In Advent, all of Creation joins Mary, full with child, full with Holy, in our pilgrimage towards The Birth. The Word of God carried into the world through the body and voice of a woman. A poor, migrating woman in an occupied land, pregnant out of wedlock, with strange and wondrous visitors gazing in on her conception, pregnancy, and birth. The stars, the royal blue, the veneration, would not be experienced in her lifetime. Instead, she would bear the banal blessing of every mother raising a child. She would see her adult child gain a strange following, and watch helpless as his naked body was displayed in agony. Yet again her most intimate and vulnerable moments on display for the gaze of both mockers and mourners.
Amid the pageantry of Christmas, the travel, the shopping, the music, the tv specials, we can so easily forget the vulnerability of this birth. The God of Israel, who had seemed so caught up in the distinction between holy and unholy, clean and unclean, was gestating inside a mother, birthed among fluids and shit, incapable of speech, unwelcome at the temple until a poor man’s sacrifice was made.
We wrap these moments in royal blue because the incarnation reveals the impossible. Emmanuel, God with us, is no fairy tale. Dignity and worth are restored to all creation through the slow and vulnerable growth of relationships. The Christ in me meets the Christ in thee and the spirit in our wombs jumps for joy.
God could have saved us in an instant. Instead, a child is born. God could feed the world with manna from heaven. Instead, God stirs the human heart to compassion to build community and seek solutions for the poor. God could end suffering and death with a mere breath. Yet God hung exposed on a cross, because any real relationship involves vulnerability. And a Father/Son/Spirit kind of God, a God of Love, a God who speaks, well…that’s a God who wants real relationships.
The incarnation reveals that God is not interested in just rescuing souls from eternal torment. God is interested in embodiment. Salvation of soul and body. ALL of me. ALL of you. Dressed in Royal Blue, whether the gaze of the world recognizes it or not. God is interested in you, my friend. And not to keep track of whether you’re on the naughty or nice list! God is interested in you because you are valuable to God. Your precious soul and your wondrous body.
Have a blessed Advent, and may your Christmastide be full of joy.
This week’s comic is inspired by my dear friend and colleague, Rev. Tobi Nguyen, whose ministry gestated a restoration of my faith in the church and in myself. Thank you, Pastor Tobi. May you be enriched in your new appointment.