A gay take on the traditional Nativity
by Jeremiah Bartram on 21/12/09 at 5:01 pm
In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for see – I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people; to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!” Luke 2, 1-14; reading for Christmas vigil, 2009.
Commentators
Luke cites specific rulers (Augustus and Quirinius), thus anchoring his account in history. However, the resulting date for Jesus’ birth (5-6 CE) is inconsistent with later dating of the beginning of Jesus’ ministry: it’s too late in time. Hardy notes that Luke is probably being imprecise with respect to time, and is more concerned to establish a reason for Jesus’ birth taking place in Bethlehem due to the census, than in dating the event.
The NRSV notes that “the designation of the newborn Jesus as Lord is striking, for that word in Greek (‘kyrios’) is the precise term used consistently throughout the LXX to translate the tetragammation, God’s holy and personal name”: yhwh in Hebrew.
Gospel for gays
For me, the traditional icon of the nativity offers the best path into the event. For a good example of this icon, try this link: www.orthodoxonline.com/images/nativity_of_christ.jpg.
The first thing that strikes us about this image is how stylized, how “unnatural” it is. A whole series of separate events is shown as if they happen at the same time: at the top, the angels are announcing the birth of the savior to a pair of frightened shepherds; on one side, the Magi are journeying toward Bethlehem, following the star which shines down on the infant. In the bottom right, two women are washing the newborn baby – while at the same time, he is lying in a box, wrapped in bands as in the gospel, in the mouth of a cave, while his mother reclines on a kind of giant sleeping bag beside and in front of him. The topography is desert-like, inhospitable. Rather than a stable, we see open countryside and, as I noted, the mouth of a cave (although a pair of domestic animals tell us that the motif of the stable has not been forgotten). Some figures are large (especially Mary); others are tiny – and that has nothing to do with perspective, and everything to do with their relative importance in the picture’s meaning.
Icons are silent stories, which convey important theological insights. You don’t refer to “painting” an icon, you “write” it: an indication of how much teaching is packed into those strange, sometimes contorted, and mysteriously beautiful images. (I’ve written two.)
In interpreting the icon of the nativity, I start with its central figure, the newborn Jesus. Why is he in a stone box, rather than a manger? Why placed in the mouth of a cave, colored black? And why isn’t he close to, or even held by, his adoring mother? She isn’t even looking at him.
There’s a reason for each of these features of the picture.
In traditional icons, the color black is never used, except to denote the absence of God. So by placing Jesus in the black cave mouth, the artist is telling us that he is the redeemer, he is the light in our darkness, that without him, the absence of God is total, while at the same time, darkness has not, and cannot, overcome the light of his presence (compare the opening passage of John’s gospel, the reading for the second mass of Christmas day).
And the box?
The iconographer has placed Jesus, not in a manger, but a sarcophagus, foreshadowing his death: a shocking and very unsentimental image.
In doing this, he is making a radical point: every other baby that enters this world is born to live, but this one – the Messiah, the Son of God – is born to die.
Mary is detached from him not because she is exhausted, not because she doesn’t love him, not because in the normal course of things she won’t suckle him and nurture him and play with him – but because here the artist is reminding us of his divinity. That’s why she is looking away from him: it’s a reference to the fear of God, the holiness and otherness of God: you shall not look on the face of God and live.
And Joseph is way off in the corner of the picture, looking gloomy, not joyful, while conversing with an old man in rags. Shouldn’t he have his arm around his wife? Shouldn’t he be meekly adoring the Son of God?
By separating Joseph from Mary, the iconographer is telling us that Jesus is not his child, genetically: that his male cock played no role in the conception of this child.
And, in a wonderful piece of psychological realism, the painter further emphasizes this point: the old man conversing with Joseph is the devil, the father of lies, who is trying to persuade him that Mary has sinned sexually, and this child is some other man’s bastard. (Icons are very realistic in their portrayal of our human nature and our human weaknesses.)
Joseph is being tempted, and he looks miserable; but he also wears a halo of gold – so we know that he will triumph over his doubts, and remain faithful.
Finally, the servant women washing the baby. Why are they in the picture at all (they’re not in the gospel, of course).
Again, this is an earthy image. They are washing the afterbirth from the newborn.
Why is this image part of the icon?
Because the artist wants to stress that this child, God-With-Us, is truly human, like us. He is not some kind of alien, whom angels deposited at the doorway of the cave. He is flesh and blood, like us; he developed in the womb, like us; however miraculously conceived, he was born in the ordinary way, through the birth canal of his mother – like us.
Thus, the icon brings together all the key theological understandings of the nativity. It’s a fascinating, multifaceted and challenging image.
I won’t belabor the obvious sexual reality: that the foundational story of our faith features a marriage that fostered and protected a child – but that child was not the product of what our church terms the “complementarity” between the male and female sex.
That is, Jesus did not result from the action of a penis in a vagina. God bypassed the ordinary male-female dynamic in this conception and birth. He rendered it redundant.
I promise, I won’t belabor the point: it’s Christmas.
But I have to at least pose the question.
If procreative sex was redundant in the birth of the Savior – and in what can only be described as the alternative lifestyle marriage of Mary and Joseph – why does our church so vehemently insist that cock-in-vagina unions are the only legitimate ones now?
Merry Christmas!
