“Now I gaze honestly at the muddled reflection and the darkened world around me ... I feel that ‘thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices’ when I allow myself to become a place for Jesus’ abundant love to break in. Instead of hiding my weakness, I can point to it and declare it as a broken - yet open - door to more of Jesus. ”
Testimony by BEKAH TELLO
As I’ve grown up from a child into a woman, the Christmas season has become a bit tarnished. The sparkly cheer of childhood delight has been weighed down by loss, stress, and personal pain. Christmas magic, as I once knew it, no longer feels authentic or the right expression of my experience in this world. Or at least that’s what it seemed like until I met the rich Anglican traditions of Advent. I came to understand that Jesus shared my frangible state and did so with a love that brings peace and healing. Looking bravely at this brokenness through the lens of the Incarnation has become the most meaningful part of my Advent experience.
I no longer attempt to scrub away the dirt. Now I gaze honestly at the muddled reflection and the darkened world around me. This cracked and broken mirror ushers me into a truer enjoyment of Jesus and his love of my humanity. He doesn’t hate my muddy reflection or the splintered pieces, but he holds them with me because he is Immanuel, God with us. God with me.
My mind flies back in time to the moment of Incarnation: Jesus, our Savior, settled into human form and Divinity took on all the brokenness of humankind. Prenatal Jesus descended deeper still into the body and womb of a teenage girl, delicately kept alive by her flesh, her blood, her organs. God the Father did not shy away from sending his son to live covered by the elements that make us temporal, nor was he embarrassed by societal assumptions about Mary’s pregnancy. He gently took Mary’s fear and filled her instead with blessings, speaking the words of nearness and intimacy I also long to hear, “The Lord is with you.” Immanuel, God with us.
Rest on the Flight into Egypt (the holy family resting) by Rembrandt, 1647
Jesus’ willingness to take on our humanity meant that he had to be born into the world with all the accompanying darkness, pain, and mess. The world’s first glimpse of our Savior was of a baby covered in vernix, mixed with his mother’s blood, and the wet warmth of amniotic fluid. Yet as grimy and uncomfortable as this scene may be, in doing so, God was speaking dignity into our most broken and messy places. Mary’s body had to break to release the Messiah in our world, yet in this breaking, she also opened up herself, and all of history, to the deep reach of perfect Love. Immanuel, God with us.
My days are full trying to keep my three young sons safe during their very active play. Growing up a carpenter, Jesus would have experienced many of the same familiar cuts and wounds as my kids. Unwieldy lumber may have crushed his toes or an errant hammer strike blackened his fingernails. During the course of his work, his bones may have broken or his skin torn open and healed again in rugged scars. These things would have marred his physical body, yet Jesus’ spirit ached as well. He experienced the soul-wrenching grief of losing his earthly father, Joseph. Perhaps he shared the aching absence of an infant sibling lost in childbirth. He grieved and wept over the devastations that befell his own life, relationships and community, and he weeps for mine as well. Immanuel, God with us.
Yet in none of these painful situations did Jesus renounce his human form or spite its limitations, as Isaiah 53 details. Jesus lived out all of God’s goodness in a body that looked and felt like ours. Therefore, my deepest scars - physical, emotional, and spiritual - are not things to be hidden because they are the same things that Jesus also experienced. They are places with deep value that are healed and mended with dignity under his gentle love. The Incarnation reminds me that my broken body is still good because Jesus makes broken things whole. Immanuel, God with us.
The fear and shame that try to scab over my own wounds dissolve when I catch a glimpse of Jesus’ resurrected body. His body is still scarred but it is wholly perfected. I feel that, “thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices” when I allow myself to become a place for Jesus’ abundant love to break in. Instead of hiding my weakness, I can point to it and declare it as a broken, yet open door, to more of Jesus. And some beautiful day Jesus Christ will dignify my real scars, my real female body, my real broken spirit and reform me into a perfected and glorified person. This remaking is a testament to an eternity of God’s goodness, from glorious Eden, through the millennia of broken human history, and beyond into wondrous eternity. The Incarnation began by Jesus lovingly taking on our humanity, my humanity. And one day I will meet him face to face, fully human, covered in scars healed by love. Immanuel, God with us.
