My wife and I wrote a Christmas message to read aloud to our family on Christmas Eve. Though it’s specific at times, we also feel it’s general enough for any audience to find hope within it. Merry Christmas, all.
Christmas is the only time I consider Leviticus 12: the purification laws about childbirth. Yes, I know that timing is unexpected. You’d think I’d be pondering Luke 2 at this time of year. But I love that story most through the context of Old Testament Law. That’s what Jesus was born into, so I think it’s important to note.
Leviticus 12 states that after a woman bears a male child, she is deemed unclean for seven days. “She shall not touch anything holy, nor come into the sanctuary, until the days of her purifying are completed.” The process of her purification took over 30 days. This fails to mention the complexities of layered uncleanliness that must have impacted birth. Leviticus 15 outlines the laws around contact with bodily fluids, and anyone or anything that comes in contact with the fluid of birth would be deemed unclean as well.
Years ago, Monika–in the throes of helping many women through birth–reminded our church on an open mic Sunday that the Nativity scenes we see in department stores are not accurate. Newborns do not don halos and open, worshipful arms. They wail and clench their pruny fists. Birth is not polished and pristine. It is messy and filled with bodily discharge, blood, and pain. Birth in a barn? Mingle that truth with the scent of animals, feces, and the straw that stuck to said liquids.
Many might assume that to even acknowledge the raw honesty of Luke 2 is sacrilegious or disrespectful to the divine. However, I think if we try to polish the dirt, stink, and bodily fluids out of this story, we may miss the point.
Because here we have Jesus–God in flesh–coming clothed in the same fluids that Israelites worked to separate themselves from. In The Christmas Story, we have Jesus–God in flesh–being born in one of the most unclean environments. In The Christmas Story, we have Jesus– God in flesh–being greeted by outsiders first: lowly shepherds. In the Christmas Story, Jesus–God in flesh–laid his newborn head on Mary’s bare chest in the holiest of tender moments before her purification days had even begun.
His birth feels like an explosion to separation. His birth feels like a marriage of divinity and humanity. There is no longer clean and unclean. God himself wore the fluids and the straw and the humiliation. God himself broke the purification law by lying his head on Mary’s chest while an umbilical cord still connected them.
THIS is good news, for now there is no need for shame. THIS is good tidings of great joy. There are no outsiders. There is only love. And nothing can separate us from it.
And here we are now, an imperfect family coming together to celebrate love and joy. We are incomplete, away from a large part of our whole. We all have our own stories of raw birth, but like Jesus we know that the nitty gritty of life is not shameful, it is beautiful. For like Jesus, my dear family, we are rule-breakers and misfits. Starting with Nagyi, our matriarch, strengthened by those who came before her, she slogged through a muddy field on foot to cross a border. That is messy work, law-breaking even. But it was also courageous. It took strength, passion, and grit–similar to that required of Mary. She and Dad moved to a new country to carve out a life in an unfamiliar land, always a little on the outside. These traits of strength were passed down to us and then through all of us. That grit carried us through New England winters.We struggled together as a family, trying to build relationships while also lugging buckets of water from the well, attempting to unfreeze solid pipes, trying to find the next meal. We did it all while our parents spoke Hunglish and our car was stuck in reverse. It was painstaking.
We continue to break rules and live messy, authentic lives by overcoming mental health issues, climbing out of addiction, fighting to proudly love who we love, facing money problems, marriage problems, blending families, and navigating changes in faith. Y’all, we have lived some life. But THIS is the good news here too. There is no need for shame. Because we are also a family that knows how to love. We have experienced that love is not a thing that exists in spite of the messiness, but that messiness is the whole point. It’s what made the Divine birth story beautiful! Israel tried hard to achieve sterility, but God seemed to say “You’re missing the point. Love is at the intersection of Divinity and Humanity.” The messiness that had been deemed unclean for so long is what Jesus was literally born into as if to say, “This is not messy; this is holy.” And here we are. Embracing one another after mud, blood, sweat, and tears. Seeing one another. We know that when life is at its messiest, we have each other. We can lay our sticky wet newborn heads on the chest of this family and find real solace. No one has to polish up first. No one has to wait 30 days for purification. Do you know this is rule breaking even now? In our polarized, Instagram-filtered world, we embrace our messy differences.
Let’s remember the birth story was meant to undo the separation of clean and unclean. Let’s love each other with THAT kind of love, then bring that kind of love to others. Because that is the gift of this time of year. That is the story of Christmas.
this wordy world 