Christ
is born! Christos Raždajetsja! “Christ is born to raise up the likeness that
had fallen.”[1]
This is what he accomplishes today in that cave. He is restoring our likeness
to God from which we have fallen.
If
you have a new garment of pure white linen cloth and if you wear this garment
too often or for all sorts of rough tasks and dirty jobs, it soon becomes
stained. Beautiful, pure, white cloth becomes yellowed, stained, and imperfect.
A contemporary American in this situation is likely simply to dispose of the
garment and buy a new one. We are, in fact, in the commercial season of buying
new things. Our culture and our economy is set up this way. It’s been called a
throw-away culture and a consumer culture. But this is not the case with
traditional cultures. A traditional textile worker would not give up on a
garment even if it was stained beyond the power of any bleach, but might then
take the stained white garment and dye it vibrant colors – blues and purples,
reds and yellows and greens. A plain white garment becomes a coat of many
colors. And the end result is a garment more beautiful even than the new
unstained garment.
You
know, a beautiful Chinese tea bowl breaks as easily as cheap second hand
crockery. What to do then? We break a lot of bowls at my house. Probably, we
break one every week. I like to tell the children, as I sweep up and throw away
yet another broken bowl, that ceramic can last for a thousand years if properly
cared for. This is true. But when the bowl is broken, sweeping it up and
throwing it away isn't the only option. There is a custom among traditional Japanese
craftsmen to take the broken pieces and fuse them back together. Now, some of
us may do this with superglue, which can work well enough for a while – though
the result is always compromised and inferior to a new and unbroken bowl. The
cracks gradually worsen and the piece must eventually be thrown away anyway.
The traditional Japanese craftsman, however, does not use superglue, but
lacquer mixed with gold – a material more beautiful, precious, and strong then
the ceramic the bowl was first made with. This is called kintsugi – golden joinery. And the cracks are made more visible, not less. They're
emphasized by this technique, not hidden – but they're changed into things of
beauty. And the bowl that was broken and then made whole is better and more
beautiful than the bowl that was never broken.
I
can tell you as a painter that, almost mysteriously, these reworked paintings
often have a greater depth and beauty, at least to my eyes, than a pristine
first image. I do love the masterful
strokes of the sumi-e painter, who,
with just a few rapid movements with an ink brush creates a fresh and startling
image. But then the next few stages of a painting often render it overworked or
muddy. It is only after this stage, when
all is ruined, when the painter returns again to his easel, that he can restore
the image and even go beyond restoration. If he is a great painter, the scars
of the overwork and the stains are almost transfigured. They’re not
obliterated, but made into things of beauty. They add a texture and depth I’ve
found no other way to accomplish. And the painting at the end is even better
and more beautiful than it was when it was fresh and new.
St.
Athanasius gives us this image of the repainted portrait, in his work On the Incarnation. He explains, “Even so was it with the all-holy Son of God. He, the
image of the Father, came and dwelt in our midst, in order that he might renew
mankind after himself, and seek out his lost sheep, even as he says in the
Gospel: ‘I came to seek and to save that which was lost.’ This also explains his
saying to the Jews: ‘Except a man be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of
God.’ He was not referring to a man's natural birth from his mother, as they
thought, but to the rebirth and recreation of the soul in the image of God.”
It
is in and through the birth of Jesus, which we celebrate today, that our
rebirth in the image of God is enabled. “Christ is born to raise up the
likeness that had fallen.”
His
ways of raising us up are marvelous. Wondrous are his works. He does not simply
restore us to our starting point like some video game character that gets an
extra life. As our almighty God, he could
do that. He can do anything. If Jesus breaks a Chinese tea bowl, he can restore it to unbrokenness. But I
think he prefers kintsugi. The power
of Christ is greater than the power of Tide bleach. He can restore to whiteness
a garment with any stain. But I think he prefers the craft of the dyer and the
coat of many colors.
When
he rises from the dead, remember, he still bears on his body the marks of his
crucifixion. And these marks increase and do not diminish the beauty of his
glorified body. By them, we are healed.
And
when today he becomes for our salvation a baby, he does not become the same
first-created Adam, unaffected by sin and suffering and death, but rather a new
Adam. He takes on all the fragility and neediness of a baby. He makes himself
utterly vulnerable and dependent upon his mother. As of today, the uncreated
God nurses at his mother's breast. And if he does not, he feels the pain of
hunger. He feels all the pains of life and will ultimately suffer even death.
Many
of us sometimes long to go back to the way things were when we were younger,
healthier, happier. We succumb to the bitter-sweetness of nostalgia, perhaps
especially at this time of year.
In
a similar way, maybe we wish we could go back to Eden. Maybe we get mad at Adam
and Eve for spoiling things for us, as if we wouldn’t have spoiled them for
ourselves, given the chance. Maybe we feel cheated of the simple life of the
garden, where we could walk with the Lord in the cool of the day. But God does
not send us back to Eden. He comes to us in Bethlehem. “Bethlehem has opened
Eden for us.”[3]
He raises up the likeness that had fallen, not by erasing the consequences of
our sin – our fragility and mortality – but by entering into them himself. He
raises up by coming down. By emptying himself and taking the form of a slave.
By becoming a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger where
animals come to feed. Our Lord becomes our brother and Mary’s son. And our
human nature is recreated in him.
Like
the kintsugi – broken ceramic joined together
with gold – he joins our broken humanity together with his divinity. He adds
something better to us than was there in the first place. He doesn’t just patch
us back together again as if with superglue, but makes us a new creation, even
better than we were in the first place. He doesn’t just take us back to the way
things were, but takes us to a new heaven and a new earth, more glorious even
than that first created. And that heaven
is a cave; the cherubic throne a virgin. And the manger has become the place
where Christ, the incomprehensible God, lies down.[4]
Jesus
Christ is born. He leaves his hiding place in Mary’s womb and enters the
cave. At this moment, for the first time
in history, human eyes behold the human face of God. And even animal eyes first
see the human face of God. The eyes of
all creation are opened for the first time since they were shut in Eden.
A version of this article now appears on Catholic Exchange
[1] Troparion of the Prefestive
Days of the Nativity
[2] St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation
[3] Ikos of the
Nativity
