“Vulnerability” – 2024 Christmas Dawn Meditation

A lot of theologians like to make a big fuss over Jesus being born a baby. Or, really, over God being born a baby. They talk about infinity becoming finite, about spirit taking on flesh and mortality, about the God of all becoming embodied – and as a tiny baby at that. My conceptions of who Jesus was don’t entirely jive with this, but…

It is, in fact, rather awe-inspiring to think of Jesus as a baby. In most of the gospel narratives he is a grown man with profound insight, incredible spirituality, and unusual wisdom. While he didn’t possess much power in the ways of the world – he was poor, homeless, and peace-able – he had a lot of the other kinds of power. He was well liked, even loved, by many. He had followers who trusted him, supporters who enabled him, and the kind of faith that can move mountains. His was the power of Love, but he had it in spades, and we are people who believe in the epic power of Love.

But as a baby, he was fully vulnerable. I have been reminded of this, this year, this second time I’ve picked up a newborn and been responsible for keeping him alive. Babies are 100% dependent on others. They can’t eat without help, they need others to change their diapers. They often need to be soothed to sleep, or reminded to wake up. And all that is when everything goes RIGHT.

The funny thing though, is that we’re more like babies than we’d like to admit. We, too, are 100% dependent on others. We can’t eat without the supply chain enabling food to get to our tables. We can’t excrete safely without the work others did on our septic lines. Many of us also need to be soothed to sleep and nearly all of us need alarms to remind us to wake up.

And that’s, too, when everything goes right. Because it turns out that being in these finite, mortal, human bodies is ripe with things going wrong. Injury and illnesses plague us. Abilities come and go, and dis-abilities ebb and flow in the opposite direction.

We are so profoundly vulnerable in these bodies of ours.

Many years ago, while serving as an intern hospital chaplain, I had the honor of getting to know a man who was being treated for very serious cancer. He was in isolation even within in the cancer unit because treatment required the complete dismantling of his immune system. (Sadly, this happens more frequently than we’d like to discuss.) His family was too far away to visit, and he was bored and scared. Also, being sick didn’t fit his identity. He was, as he said, “a bouncer in the seediest bar in the city.” He wasn’t supposed to get SICK.

Bodies. Are. So. Vulnerable.

And nothing we do, nothing we say, nothing we imagine can keep them safe negates their vulnerability.

We’re all dependent on each other, we’re all in bodies that can’t fully be trusted… we’re all a lot like that baby placed in the manger – and a whole lot MORE like that baby than I think we’d like to be.

And, in case you hadn’t heard it or forgot about it, the mangers at that time were hewn out of the bedrock. To place a baby in a manger was to put the baby BELOW floor level, where anyone could step on him or trip over him in addition to the animals feeding around him. It is a profound metaphor to think of that level of vulnerability for that new baby, one that makes me squirm a little.

Confession, when Isaiah was born I was utterly horrified at the idea of putting him down on his first night on earth, and simply refused to sleep because in my mind he HAD to be held. The nurse – wise woman that she was – responded to me that I HAD to sleep if I was going to recover from the c-section. My best friend, therefore, held Isaiah for his whole first night, so I would sleep without the horror of him being… gasp… in safe bassinet in a hospital. I may resonate a little too much with the concept of placing a baby in a manger! I think that’s a hard no.

I think we can take from this Christmas story, and from human life in general, that vulnerability is holy. We may not like it, we may ABSOLUTELY HATE IT, but it is holy. In our vulnerability we are bound to each other by our needs, in our vulnerability we become more open to the Divine, in our vulnerability we learn again and again that God is with us, in our vulnerability we see how little control we have… and hopefully make some peace with it.

The angels sang, the shepherd came, Mary pondered it all in her heart – a baby was born, as vulnerable as any of us, and it was good. So, too, are our fragile, vulnerable existences. It is HOLY to be vulnerable. May God help us. Amen

Rev. Sara E. Baron 
First United Methodist Church of Schenectady 
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305 
Pronouns: she/her/hers 
http://fumcschenectady.org/ 
https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

December 25, 2024