In a Manger?
By: Michael Mcdowell
Tags: Liberation Theology, Christmas, Advent, Christianity, Theology

In a Manger?

I have found Advent pretty affecting this year. I am sure I am not the only one. The emotions we associate with Christmas — joy, hope, peace, newness, justice — have found me in great need of their message. Christmas songs have resonated with me this year; in years past most have just irritated me (Christmas Shoes is the worst song ever written). But now, lyrics such as “Rescue captive Israel that mourns in lonely exile here” and “in his name all oppression shall cease” fill me with every bit the excitement and energy I feel listening to my favorite artists.

Because this year is different. The new kingdom Jesus inaugurates in His advent is a felt need of many for whom it was a matter of faith in the past. I’m part of this group. I, frankly, felt very little need for Jesus’ kingdom in Christmases past. All was calm for me.

But now, as fear and nerves and disappointment settled into my bones over the course of the year, I have a visceral desire to see and experience Jesus’ kingdom. With such thick, nearly tangible dejection all around, the qualities of hope, joy, peace, newness and justice become more than mere platitudes that make their way into halfheartedly-sung hymns and sermons aimed at listless crowds in the church. Instead, they become dares, challenges to the zeitgeist and resistance to cultural forces that would channel our despair into consumeristic anesthetization.

Of course, these orientations revolve around something: a baby boy, lying in a manger. We proclaim hope, joy, peace, newness, and justice in the face of despair because our God became human to save us and inaugurate a new kingdom, a Strange New World, to borrow Barth’s phrase. But what exactly does a baby boy have to do with hope? Why exactly does Jesus’ advent as an infant fill us with joy (or, perhaps more aptly, why is it supposed to)?

There are many reasons why. Whole books have been written on the question. And I do not presume to have the definitive answer. But as I meditated on this question, specifically as it is interrogated in Luke 2, I found one potential answer: Jesus’ advent as a baby means that the powerless prevail. This means that we, mourning in lonely exile here, will prevail too. As we recognize our spiritual powerlessness and use our material power to benefit the powerless around us, we participate in the Strange New World that Jesus brings, and thus have confidence that we will prevail.

Powerlessness in Luke 2

Power juxtaposed with weakness is the first theme Luke teases out in his nativity story in Luke 2. In one corner is the reigning champion, Caesar Augustus, the famed Roman emperor, and the most powerful man alive at the time. Luke portrays Caesar as so powerful, in fact, that he can have the whole world counted.

And in the other corner is… Joseph and Mary, peasant Jews, in the line of David, from a no name town in a no name province. They are so powerless, the line of David has fallen so far, that they must submit themselves to the census, and when they travel, they are so irrelevant that they cannot find a room in which to stay. And these two are supposed to win? These powerless people are supposed to prevail?

As if to amplify the comedy of the fight — a Roman emperor against a peasant couple — Luke tells us of the advent of Jesus, the Savior of Israel. He comes, to be sure, but not as a warlord, king, or rival emperor with the armies of heaven behind him, but as a baby boy, so destitute that He has his first sleep in a manger, a feeding trough.

The reader can almost hear Luke’s incredulity in his repeated use of the phrase in a manger. My pastor in college, Jeremiah Morris, preached on this passage one year, and he had the congregation read the phrase “in a manger” out loud as though we were scandalized. The point was well-taken: the Savior of Israel was not supposed to be a powerless baby boy. Jesus truly did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped. He truly did empty Himself.

This theme of powerlessness continues as Luke describes the first people to hear the news of Jesus’ birth, of the new kingdom coming. They were not royal couriers or diplomats but were rather shepherds. And in the story, these shepherds do what all shepherds do: shepherd! This would not matter, except that the whole world was supposed to go and register themselves to be counted. What Luke seems to suggest here is that these shepherds were so irrelevant, so unimportant, so powerless that they were not even considered as part of the “whole world.” And yet they are the first ones to hear the Good News, and they are the first to go see this baby boy and they are the first to worship Jesus. As Luke tells it, the Christmas story is powerlessness all the way down.

Victory for the Powerless

But powerlessness itself does not inspire hope; the mere presence of powerless people in no way distinguishes God’s world from ours. But what the powerless do certainly does. And this is where the advent story does distinguish itself from our world and our kingdoms, for in the new kingdom that Jesus inaugurates, the powerless prevail.

Note Caesar’s act at the beginning of the chapter: he institutes a census. Now when we read the Bible and see the mention of a census, our little Bible alarms in our head should go off, because in Scripture, censuses precede disaster. The idea of a census should take the reader back to 1 Chronicles 21, when King David, at the height of his power, decides that his kingdom should be counted. In response to his hubris, God severely punishes David, relenting from total destruction only because of God’s mercy. When we read about Augustus Caesar instituting a census, then, our Biblical expectation should be: he’s going to lose.

But there is a more explicit promise of victory in this passage. After the angel finishes talking to the shepherds, a host of angels appear and say (not sing, look it up), “Glory to God! And on earth, peace to those with whom He is pleased.” Peace on earth. This is a promise. Peace will come to those on earth with whom God is pleased. Victory is promised. The powerless will prevail.

Why this matters

In the kingdoms of the world, regardless of their political philosophy, the powerful rule over everyone else. Insofar as the powerless are mentioned, it is only as a political tool, an assertion that the incorporeal “we the people” or “workers of Russia” are behind them. The powerful rule. The powerless are left behind.

In the Strange New World the Christmas story presents, however, the powerless rule. The last really are first. Like the Black workers in Flannery O’Conner’s Revelation, those that society deems unworthy, unimportant, and inconsequential climb the ladder to heaven before the respectable, established, powerful people. In God’s Strange New World, the powerless are not left behind, but are the focus of the narrative, the targeted demographic of material and spiritual salvation. And they will win.

In my brand of Evangelical Christianity, this idea of powerlessness arises in conjunction with spirituality in discussions about salvation. And that’s great! When salvation is framed as a personal decision an individual makes, a profession of need of Jesus’ saving power, the convert admits her personal powerlessness in exchange for Jesus’ grace and mercy. Again, this is well and good. But this is where I see many of my Evangelical friends stop. Once I admit my spiritual powerlessness, I have nothing else to do. But I am convinced that this is untrue.

If it is the powerless that prevail in God’s kingdom, then we must align ourselves, not only spiritually, but materially with the powerless. The Christmas story, after all, is focused on the materially powerless. If we have admitted our spiritual powerlessness, then perhaps the next step is to ally ourselves with the materially powerless that we may participate in God’s already-present kingdom. If God’s Kingdom is here, and it is, and if it is advancing, and it is, then Christians have a choice: they can participate in its advent and presence by using whatever material power they do have to come alongside those who do not have power, or they can pretend that the kingdom of God is a purely spiritual reality requiring only a confession of its citizens (it’s not).

I’ve seen this modeled by my wife’s grandparents. They had nothing growing up, and had only a little while they raised their children. But all their lives, they took what they did have and gave an enormous percentage away, so much so that they were audited by the IRS. Late in life, they had a financial windfall and came into a lot of money, and it has not changed them in the slightest. They still give most of what they have away to those who need it. These two understand that the our spiritual powerlessness should motivate us to use what material power we have for those who have little.

But back to hope: if we admit our spiritual powerlessness and use what power we have for those who have little, then we are guaranteed victory. It is a guarantee that neither life nor death nor coronavirus nor elections will separate us from God’s love, from victory. Our admission of spiritual powerlessness promises us entry into a kingdom that is not just a spiritual reality, but is and will be a material reality, too. Christians have a mandate to bring the hope we have for a better world in the next age and translate it into hope for a better world now, that we may “Rejoice! Rejoice! Immanuel has come to thee, O Israel.”