Advent II: "Let all mortal flesh..."
The intensity of being a person who exists in this container we call a body, still sometimes catches me off guard. Nowhere have I found this tension to be more difficult than in the liminal space of pregnancy, where my body is housing another’s.
This week found me curled up on my couch, crying and close to a panic attack because I couldn’t get out of my body. The baby’s movements were especially triggering for some reason - harsh elbows or knees hitting tender places, a growing claustrophobia that I couldn’t escape. I couldn’t see the miracle, I couldn’t feel anything but that I was being held hostage in a body made more foreign by the day, needed for the survival of another human, and provoking anxiety at every turn.
I wondered later, did Jesus ever feel claustrophobic in his human body? What must it have felt like for God to become incarnate, to become limited by the edges of a baby’s tiny body, first encircled by the dark warmth of amniotic fluid, elbows and limbs bumping against Mary’s abdomen, then suddenly thrust into the cold air, squalling and slippery? Were there times along the way, before he got to Gethsemane, when he pleaded with his Father to escape the plight of being a human? Where being humbled by taking on flesh was something he might have longed to escape?
I don’t know. I don’t know which of these impulses to escape a body that feels like too much is sinful, and which is just human. I can’t say what Jesus felt, but I wonder. If my own limitations feel humbling and constraining, what was it like for God - omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient - to become man?
The Incarnation is at the heart of the Christmas story, and flies in the face of my own desire to flee my body and exist on a spiritual plain somewhere. The church fathers fought this battle long ago when they named gnosticism as heresy - they condemned the desire to separate spirit and body. The gnostics tried to tell us that our bodies were evil and subject to decay, while our spiritual selves were somehow the higher good. Jesus only appeared as a man, they argued. But if this was true, then the whole crux of Christianity means nothing. The power of the crucifixion hinges on the Incarnation.
The truth of Jesus being birthed as a real live human, shakes us from our tendency to gnosticism if we let it, but our evangelical traditions, our church pomp, our sanitary Western selves sanitize these scenes, and we forget that in the joy and miracle, there was blood and pain. We forget that embodiment matters. The Nativity scenes are depicted cradled in light, a tidy, swaddled baby placed in a glowing mother’s arms. And part of that story is true. But where is the story of Mary wincing through contractions on a journey she didn’t want to take, the prospect of birthing a baby in her relative’s downstairs room looming ahead of her. Did she utter “let it be done to me according to Your word” during transition, or did her resolve falter? It feels almost sacrilegious to ask questions like this. How dare I extrapolate such a base human experience on to these untouchable icons?
But if they’re untouchable icons, what’s the point? If the Incarnation wasn’t about becoming human and being WITH us, then why does it matter at all?
I can only speak for myself, but I need to know that God cares about the experience and struggle of being human. I get it. If you’ve got a history of your body being complicated territory (and who doesn’t?), it can feel tempting to believe the lie that God doesn’t care what you do with it. How many of us plough over our feelings with busyness, ignore our body’s demands for rest, hit “override” with caffeine, and get angry when our human limits don’t cooperate with our God complex? (me).
Could you call dissociation a form of gnosticism? I’m not sure, but I think you could make that argument. When we retreat so far into our heads that we neglect our lived experience, no matter how distressing it might be, we become fragmented, losing the wholeness that God intended for us to have.
Isaiah 61:1 proclaims,
“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
because the Lord has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor;
he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;”
I believe that it was an Allender Center podcast that pointed out that the word for “broken-hearted” in this passage literally means the “shattered, or broken into pieces”. The verb form is used in other passages to talk about idols being thrown down and shattered. When God promises to bind up the broken-hearted, he is not merely promising to comfort the sad, but to literally gather up our broken pieces and put them together. If you’ve been anywhere in the trauma world, you’ve probably heard this concept of fragmentation - the ways we protect ourselves from ourselves. Our bodies hold so much, sequestered in chronic pain, panic attacks, headaches from clenching our jaws, autoimmune diseases and any number of other forms. The Incarnation, rather than condemning this experience, imbues it with hope. Jesus’ lived experience offers the promise of freedom from captivity, even in our bodies, even now.
As I’ve mulled over these thoughts this week the hymn that came to mind is, “Let all Mortal Flesh be Silent”. It’s a chant that dates back to the 4th century and was used as a meditation before receiving communion in some ancient liturgies.
(I don’t love the graphics of the video, but I do love this version of the hymn)
Listening to: This podcast with Scott Erickson was a beautiful reflection on some similar themes. I loved that it was his wife’s biology that inspired his leaning into what became “Honest Advent”.
Thinking about: I dove deep down the rabbit hole of research this week to learn about iron deficiency’s effects on sleep (because I have been TIRED, and not sleeping, and all my hair is falling out). I’m very thankful for some good guidance from my doctor and I’m hoping to be a human again soon. It turns out that even if your hemoglobin is normal, low ferritin can make you pretty miserable and has a documented connection to restless leg syndrome. (Supposedly the blood tests are not always a good indication of iron in the brain, so supplementation can improve symptoms even if your levels are “normal”. Who knew? Bodies never cease to amaze (and frustrate) me).
Laughing at: This reel cracked me up. My almost two year old’s current life goal is to get his hands on the lighter we use for Advent candles every night… 😬