Sarx

 Emmanuel, Rex et legifer noster, expectatio gentium, et Salvator earum: veni ad salvandum nos, Domine, Deus noster.

 Emmanuel, our King and Lawgiver, the one awaited by the gentiles, and their Saviour: come to save us, Lord our God.

This verse recaps all the previous ones – all of the titles are implied or stated openly. It represents the sum total of all of our desires for a good king, light, law, triumph. And we cry and pray and moan and…

We get a baby.

There are wars and rumours of wars, there are earthquakes and invasions and towers falling. And we get a baby.

There are political betrayal of the poor, enslavements, death penalties and injustices; hate, destruction, scams, religious infighting. And we get a baby.

Am I talking about today or Israel in 10 BC? Yes.

A baby is nothing. Weak. Choking on its own phlegm, struggling only to feed again, demanding nothing but attention, unable to even see further than its mother’s nipple. A baby is lost without adults, near-dead in a couple of hours, pooping volcanos of waste (been near a baby recently?), unable to teach, to speak, to even know: its brain doesn’t do that yet.

A baby?

This is the answer to our prayers?

God? Right there?

The world – and, if we think about it, most of us, will ask “WTF?”

Over time the iconographic tradition developed to show the Baby as a sort of Benjamin Button, some sort of a new born octogenarian wise man. But that tradition misses the point. In order for Jesus to be one of us, fully one of us, he experiences our helplessness at birth: he’s not superman. That would spoil the game.

To be one of us, his brain is jelly. He may be omniscient but his brain, his physical hardware is unable to deal with it. He can’t speak, his muscles can not allow it. His vocal chords needs to develop from screaming, his bones – a little on the squishy squishy to pass through the birth canal – need to strengthen from the calcium in Mary’s milk. His lungs need air. His body has no immune system. His hands can not even hold…

A baby? God?

The incarnation makes me cry. Who loves me that much?

What we pray for is not what we get: we want someone to sweep in, fix everything, prop up the right politics, tear down the wrong ones, slam the evil people and cuddle the good. We want, of course, to be the good folks. Instead we get something that we need to care for. Something that we have to protect, that we could shatter…

God.

Right there.

In a year or so, before he’s learned to say “Ava” or “Eema” God will find himself running around on the grass and squatting behind bushes to relieve himself. His family will (or will not) be embarrassed by odd, silly moments when God does something any child can do right in front of the guests. His mother will (or will not – depending on her) blush in the market when the local yentes coo at God and gossip about his untimely birth. His Dad may (or may not, depending on him) restrain himself in the synagogue when the alter kackers kvetch about young girls and older husbands and goyische soldier boys.

God. Right there.

It’s not what we wanted. It’s not what we deserved. It’s not what we were promised as we read the text…

It’s love.

Seventh in the 2009 series on the Great O Antiphons. The complete text of the Antiphons is here, and a meta-post listing all the meditations is here.