Good Enough For God

Christmas lasts a long time in the monastery, as it does in the rest of America. We do it backwards from most people, though. Instead of starting the Christmas season immediately after Thanksgiving Day and then moving on to other things shortly after the 25th of December, we wait until late Christmas Eve to begin the celebration. We continue through 12 official days of Christmas and then let it slowly fade until February 2nd, when we remember the presentation of the infant Jesus in the temple. Included in the celebrations are the remembrances on January 1st of the naming and circumcision of Jesus (the Feast of the Holy Name) eight days after the celebration of his birth, and on January 6th of the visit of the wise men from the east (the Feast of the Epiphany).
     The holiday on January 1st is one of my favorites in the Christmas season, because it reminds me that all of human life is important to God, not just the things that we tend to think of as "spiritual." It reminds me that human life is important to God, individual humans are important to God, and human activities are important to God. In fact, all of those things are so important that God freely became a human and participated in all the common activities associated with that particular human Jesus of Nazareth. On the first day of every new year, at this Feast of the Holy Name, we celebrate two of those common human activities: the naming of a child, and the circumcision of a child.
     The naming of a child is an important decision for the parents. Several lists of names are usually considered before they eventually decide on one or two or three to give the child. The Bible tells us that Mary and Joseph were spared all the work of choosing a name for their son, because an angel had already said that the name was to be Jesus. Where I grew up in Texas, Jesus was a common name, although most of my classmates with that name usually used a nickname like Chuy or Beto or Junior. It was only on the first day of school when the class roll was called that we ever heard their real name (usually mispronounced by the Anglo teacher as "Geezus" instead of "Haysoos). The name Jesus is not uncommon up here in the Midwest either, although most of the time it is anglicized into Joshua, as it is in the Old Testament of ordinary English Bibles. Neither was the name uncommon in Jesus' time. In fact, the prisoner who was released by Pilate instead of Jesus was named Jesus Barabbas. A common human name was good enough for God.
     The circumcision of a son is also an important decision for parents. Once again, Mary and Joseph were spared that decision because in their time and place, it was simply the thing to do. It was a common, although quite meaningful, human activity, and it was good enough for God.
     The circumcision of Jesus also reminds us that Jesus had all his human body parts. A common human body was good enough for God. In the Gospel according to Luke, we hear a little about Jesus' childhood and adolescence. Not many details are given, but twice in the book we are told that Jesus grew, just as any boy is expected to do. A common human childhood and adolescence seem to have been good enough for God, too, and even though his later years were a little extraordinary, they were lived out in the ordinary society of the time and place. In fact, if we believe it when we say that Jesus is fully God and fully human, we are saying that we believe every human bodily function, every human urge and desire, and every human fear, joy, pleasure, and pain were experienced by God in Jesus. All of those things belonged to Jesus, and therefore they belong to God. Since whatever belongs to God is holy, then all of human life is holy every bodily function, every urge and desire, and every fear, joy, pleasure, and pain. Because of creation, we bear God's image, and because of the Incarnation, God bears our image. We are doubly holy.
     That makes us doubly responsible for treating ourselves and each other as the holy beings that we are. We must take care of our holy human bodies, as well as our holy human spirits and souls. Our bodies, minds, and emotions need proper care to function as best they can. Our intellectual, sexual, social, and family lives must never be abused or neglected. Mistreatment or improper use of any parts of our lives mocks their holiness and degrades the entire human race. We don't always seem very holy to ourselves or to others, but that is because we are human, and humans grow. We must foster and cultivate our growth in holiness just as we must foster our physical and mental growth.
     As our holiness grows, we see the holiness of others more clearly. We begin to realize that our immature ideas of holiness might have been wrong, and we realize that even though others are different from us, they are holy nonetheless. However, even before we reach total maturity we are obliged to treat every person as the doubly holy image of God whether or not we can see their holiness, and whether or not they are growing in that image, or are stagnant, or are even actively trying to erase the image of God from their lives. That obligation is not an easy task. It is hard work, and we fail at it a lot of the time. We all need to work at it, every day and every hour. We can grow only with God's help, but we still need to put that help to work through prayer, honest self examination, and other disciplines. Fortunately, we have an example of growth and holiness set before us in the particular, common human life of Jesus of Nazareth. As noted preacher Barbara Brown Taylor once said: "He did not come to put us to shame with his divinity. He came to call us into the fullness of our humanity, which was good enough for him."