We are vulnerable – and we know it. We feel it in our bones. We smell it in the air.
Over this past year we’ve seen:
- our children killed in schools
- our government embroiled in hatred
- our cost-of-living soar
- our anxiety on the rise
- our jobs threatened by technology
- our city hit with floods and tornados
- our minority neighbors threatened
- our inboxes overwhelmed with spam
- our families struggle
We’re vulnerable – and we know it. We blood-and-bones creatures aren’t wired to withstand the anger, speed, and chaos of this culture. We find ourselves living somewhere between fearful avoidance and fake toughness.
I think this is why, in this season, our hearts turn to Mary. She is the picture of vulnerability. Close your eyes for a minute. Can you see Mary? How tall is she? How old? Where is she standing? What is she wearing? What color is her hair? Her eyes?
If you go to the Nelson Art Gallery in Kansas City, you can see Mary through the eyes of ancient artists. If you combine their paintings into one composite:
She is a mature adult, living in a larger than normal Jewish home, sitting in a chair by the window, dressed in blue, reading a book as the light casts a saintly glow on her face.
This is the Mary of classic art. She appears to be fully in charge of her space.
But we know better. Mary is barely out of junior high. She wears Walmart or Old Navy clothes at best. She can’t read because girls her age rarely could. Her parents make her decisions, including the one that she would marry an older man named Joseph. We don’t know if she liked this or not. And she lives in a two-bit town without a McDonalds or a stop sign.
And one night, into the bedroom of this teenager, comes the brightly beaming Gabriel, whose very name means “God has shown himself mighty.” She stands there in her flannel nightgown, her hair braided by her best friend, wearing Big Bird house shoes.
If you ask me, this is divine overkill.
- Resplendent angel – precocious child
- Messenger of the Most High God – a girl barely beyond puberty
- Holy wattage – candlelit bedroom
- Might and glory – weakness and vulnerability
Defenseless? I think so.
Fragile? Yes.
Overwhelmed? Most likely.
Vulnerable? Definitely.
This is why we adore her. She’s like us. Overwhelming stuff is happening in her world. Forces beyond her control are rearranging reality, even superseding biology. And she stands at the intersection of heaven and earth with human salvation resting on her response.
We can get our arms around Mary because she accepts her vulnerability. Here she is
- Pregnant without a believable explanation
- Easily suspected of immorality
- Ruining the prearranged marriage
- Inviting the scarlet letter
- Guilty of a death by stoning
Her future is fragile. She’s vulnerable.
But Mary is not the most vulnerable character in the Christmas story. There is one who becomes even more vulnerable than she. The baby in her womb, who is God come to earth.
In this season, we are invited to behold the vulnerability of God.
- God the Creator becomes creature
- God, the breath of every living thing, becomes embryo
- God, whose hand scoops out oceans, floats in a fetal sac
- God, whose voice thunders, cries for mother’s milk,
- God, who feeds every living being, is hungry
- God, who is sovereign, can’t defend himself
- God, full of glory, poops and pukes
On the day that Gabirel came to visit Mary, on the day the Holy Spirit came upon her and the power of the Most High overshadowed her, on that day – God became vulnerable.
How vulnerable? If we read the gospels:
- Herod hunted him
- His hometown tried to stone him
- Pharisees judged him to be evil
- Family members thought him “off”
- A friend betrayed him
- Liars testified against him
- Rulers caved to a mob crying “Crucify him!”
- City folk spit on him
- Soldiers tortured him
- Dying thieves mocked him
- Religious leaders taunted him
On the day of the angel’s visit, in a dimly lit little girl’s bedroom, God entered into our vulnerability. The most powerful governance known to humanity was rooted in vulnerability.
I’m afraid we’re forgetting this.
We actually prefer God to send Gabriel and show himself mighty - not vulnerable. When we feel vulnerable, we want to behold a powerful, transforming, delivering, world-altering, situation-changing, pain-stopping, death-defying, putting-me-in-control God. We want a God who pounds his fist and makes us win – now! And that’s the God being caricatured by much of American Christianity today.
But that is not Mary’s Jesus, Mary’s God. That’s our fear making a big bad idol.
Friends, we will not find God in the world’s power plays. We will find God in the womb of our vulnerability. It’s where God always shows up as Immanuel: God with us.