Love is the theme of the second week of Advent and Advent seems a good time to deal with some theological concepts that have troubled me. (That might not be your first inclination when you think about love but stick with me here.) I’m interested to hear your perspective on this, so consider this an invitation to a conversation over the next couple weeks.

 

 

 

 

The concept of Christmas is that we celebrate the coming to earth and infant birth of Jesus ( we can get into the immaculate conception another time). Good stuff right? I mean, a baby is a snuggly addition and the Bible was certainly due for a redemption story after the way many babies were treated in its pages, including Herod killing all the infant boys in an attempt to protect his throne from the one who’d been prophesied to overthrow it.

 

 

That little fleecy diapered baby didn’t happen in a vacuum; he was born into a Jewish family in the Middle East.

 

Read that again more slowly: a Jewish family in a country in the Middle East.

 

We might try to acknowledge this, but we only really think about it at Christmas time, and after that, in just about every single church I’ve ever been to, Jesus grows up into a hockey playing, lutefisk eating descendent of Vikings.

 

Foreigners, immigrants, migrants, asylum seekers, peoples who were in North America before western explorers “discovered” it, people of different faith traditions — all those people are somehow different, in many people’s view, than a teenage middle eastern couple looking for a place where they can find shelter and deliver a baby. We’re so quick to cast people as “other” and so quick to develop convenient amnesia about the roots of Christian faith. We shouldn’t forget the lessons of love for all peoples that we learn at Christmas time just because a couple months have passed and the remnants of pine needles have finally been picked out of the carpet.

 

 

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When we talk about love, or the idea of Jesus being “love come down” it’s way too easy to whitewash Jesus’s heritage and background. He could have been put into any family in the entire world. But he was placed into a middle eastern family that had no trouble blending into African surroundings when they were on the run. White/Caucasian churches tend to overlook that information, if not deliberately then passively, and then discover it strikes them as surprising (or even offensive) when anyone suggests Jesus could be anything other than Caucasian. Even though much Western art has portrayed Jesus as a white man with blue eyes above his flowing beard, the Bible is quite specific about the lineage of Jesus. This Jewish/MiddleEastern/African Jesus should not come as a shock for people who spend so much time insisting on a literal reading of the Bible.

If it ruffles our feathers to think about God choosing to send Jesus in the form of a person with a brown body, people who are caucasian (like me — specifically Scandinavian and European descent) need to take a look at our own biases. One of the best checks of my own implicit bias is a little self reflection when I see imagery that agitates me or seems quite different than what I’ve always seen. Why does it strike me as unusual? Is the usual way I see it an accurate portrayal? What do I think is the “right” way for something to be portrayed?

The counter argument to acknowledging Jesus’ lineage is usually something along the lines of saying, “Well, I don’t see color,” or “Why does it matter where he was born since he’s God and is now all spirit and doesn’t have a body anyway,” or to lean heavily on the Middle Eastern but definitely not African delineation. If it’s so unimportant, then why get discombobulated by the idea that he wasn’t a fair skinned person? If it’s so unimportant, why make sure to point out he wasn’t from Africa? Might I take the liberty of pointing out that Egypt is in Africa and when they were on the run Jesus’ family took off to Egypt?

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If love has come in the person of a non-white person, what does that say about my position as a white female or my action and advocacy regarding the treatment of our brothers and sisters of color? If love has come in the person of a Jewish man, what does it say about people’s tolerance of anti-semitic rhetoric, even in the form of old jokes, or hate-filled actions?

What does it say about us white folks if we can only follow someone with the same skin color as us?

It’s something we should stop and consider, and Advent is an appropriate time for such reflection.

 

Are you used to the idea of God as a white dude with a long flowing beard? Or Jesus as a blond-haired, blue-eyed Norwegian? 

Want to read Advent posts from previous years? Here’s my post on Love from last year and then here’s one from two years ago. And if you missed last week’s post on Hope, you can read it here.