I have yet to meet someone who hasn’t thought or more often uttered something along these lines: “Imagine if someone from [long ago] stumbled upon our world. They would feel [that we are gods; that we are magicians; that we are miracle-makers].” But what if we have this all backwards?
I am thinking about miracles at this moment because Christmas is coming. In the Christian calendar, God is about to enter Creation (not for the first time, nor for the last) in the form of a human being. It is a miracle.
So I am imagining someone from our time suddenly stumbling into Palestine, into Bethlehem, and being told — perhaps by a shepherd — “Over there. In that stable. A young girl is giving birth to the Creator of the World.”
The German sociologist Max Weber wrote of our age as an age of “rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, . . . the ‘disenchantment of the world'” (“Science as a Vocation”). That kind of says it all. To be sure, first century Palestinians were rationalists. Like us, they too tried to fit unexpected events into the world that made sense to them. And all evidence suggests that they enjoyed and practiced intellectual sparring. Finally, at least for the scientifically sophisticated — the Stoics — there was no small amount of disenchantment. “Let us see how we can fit all things into the grand cosmic order.” None of this is disputed.
But we send rockets to the Moon. They did not. We splice genes. They did not. We split atoms. They did not. All of this is conceded.
And, yet, perhaps only as an exercise, let us see if we can imagine the kind of world that must exist for men and women to experience the divine presence in a vulnerable, crying, fece-covered, needy, physically constrained, mentally underdeveloped newborn child.
“That was all a story,” you say, “made up to make Jesus’ birth fit into first century interpretations of Jewish prophecy.”
Well. Ok. Then imagine the kind of world that must exist for prophets to imagine the divine presence in a vulnerable, crying, fece-covered, needy, physically constrained, mentally underdeveloped newborn child.
The point is, we — today — cannot. Think. God. That. Way.
But it gets worse. Far worse. This vulnerable child, which late first and early second century Christians will confess as God; this child, once a grown man, will undergo death. “Impossible,” you say. Gods do not die. Gods are impassible. Gods are all-powerful. “Even though I am an agnostic (leaning towards atheism), even I know that Gods do not die.” End of story.
I am going to leave Easter to its own season. Today, however, I am contemplating the birth of God to a young couple in ancient Palestine. I am wondering about the kind of world that would to exist for this to be even possible. And I am thinking that, were men and women of first century Palestine to enter our world they would be struck less by our gadgets and technology than by our complete lack of wonder.
Today I am thinking of the miracle of Christmas.