The absurdity of the Christmas Story

The Sunday before Christmas, my pastor at my church gave a sermon on the "scandalous" story of God stepping into the human story through Jesus. It seemed to me that he was trying to cast the story, as is often is the case, as one of unbelievable risk and vulnerability on God's part. God becomes one of us through Jesus and experiences life through our eyes. It's pretty ridiculous when you think about it: an omniscient, omnipotent God humbling himself as a human being, subject to his environment and those around him. Subject to the frailty of the human body itself. But for some reason, I found the sermon unconvincing. A friend later asked me about it, and I could only honestly respond that it had not had much of an impact on me. I could understand the concept, but it was not really moving my heart and soul. And this frustrated me, because I wanted to be in awe of the Christmas story - of God stepping into human form, not as a glorified ruler, not in the glory He is due, but born to teenagers in the back room of a motel in some backwater town of the Roman Empire.

I was thinking through all of this a couple days later, and for some reason I recalled a quote from Dave Matthews of all people. It's at the beginning of the song "Oh" from the album Live at Radio City. He mentions the song is about his grandfather, who fought in WWII in Africa against Rommel, who was "no pushover." And then, right before beginning the opening chords, he almost inexplicably says, "There's evil people. But they still came weeping out of somebody's vagina." It's a hilarious moment, but I think there is a lot packed into what Dave is saying. Even powerful, history-changing people were born as a helpless infant to a woman, covered in baby goo, and completely reliant on others to provide for their survival. Each and every one of us has a humble start in this world.

And for some reason, this quote struck me because it finally captured for me the absurdity of the whole Christmas story. I started laughing out loud when it clicked. The Creator of everything came weeping out of somebody's vagina. And that, at least to me, represents the absurdity and the scandal of the Christmas story.

----------------
Now playing: Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds - Oh
via FoxyTunes