Advent

There’s a genealogy in the stories about Jesus. A string of old Hebrew names and lists of men I’ve never heard of. Normally I skim over it, not really caring much about it at all. But lately, around this time of year, I have this picture in my mind, of Jesus the Messiah, as the Word of God that stood with his Father and the Spirit at the beginning of time when they worked together to create the world.

It’s a vision of a young, ageless being full of strength and purpose and determination. He takes the form of a man to enter history, and he’s full of metaphors from the old writers that tried to describe him. There’s an ancient winnowing fork in his work roughened hands, and sweat drenching his tunic from the work he’s been doing. He comes bounding through time, across the hills of centuries and running down the Mountains of Ages, agile and quick and focused.

As he moves through the world’s history, I watch as he scoops up all those he loves along the way. His winnowing fork is for the nations he passes through and the individuals he walks beside, working to free them from the shells that bind them and keep him hidden from their sight. Tossing the chaff and the constricting shackles that keep them from knowing who they’re meant to be into the air, and into his consuming fire. He does it with his own hands. Until his palms are bloody and scarred. Shoving up his sleeves. Bending to his task with an unending willpower. Unafraid to take the blame on his shoulders that inevitably comes from those who are hurting and scared before they come out of those shells. Willing to shoulder the responsibility of being the one that saves each and every soul. Wading into the pain, the blood of it drenching the bottom of his robes as he works – not ever distancing himself from the worst parts of how we feel abandoned, how we act out of our pain instincts and screwed up reactions in an effort to control and protect ourselves.

I watch as he moves through that genealogy. And underneath it too. Working in other genealogies that aren’t seen or numbered or named. Slowly and carefully, clearing that threshing floor like it’s the most important thing to not lose a single grain. Putting names in his family as he works with them to bring his Dad’s plan to light. And that genealogy is one full of contradictions. Those who chose to take his Dad’s name as their own are placed right beside and intermingled with those who wanted nothing to do with him. Those who went their own way and caused all kinds of damage to the world they lived in. Almost as if he could see what went on beneath that hurt – as if he was going to offer himself as their healer. As if he saw treasure in each name.

You know what else he’s done? He’s nestled outsiders in there. He’s gently scooped up Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba and Mary – the women who were unseen, the ones who were hurt, abused, both frail and strong in their stories. He wouldn’t let them be forgotten or misplaced. He wouldn’t, like the cultures around him, dismiss them as lesser.

He’s been working, and not the easy work of chanting “eeny-meeny miny-mo – this one stays and that one goes.” No.

He’s been doing the careful work of an artist, and a world class heart surgeon – one that we’d say was emotionally compromised because it’s his own family he’s working on. He’s handling us like one of a kind works of art that can break; the kind of art that’s housed in jars of clay that have cracks and leak all over the place. He’s doing delicate surgery on the kinds of hearts that can turn hard in a blink. That are full of soft fragility and yet still capable of pumping out brilliance.

It takes a different kind of speciality to put renewal and resilience into those kinds of art, those kinds of hearts. To help them shine without just taking over and fixing them to be a certain way. To not constrict or force but to free. And all the while he’s taking grace from his vast storehouse and shoring up the places of emptiness, the wounds of hate and fear. Not just whispering truth to each heart, but being it, a quiet presence that stays close through any kind of darkness or misunderstanding. It’s one of the many cool things about this being, this Messiah – his mix of grace and truth, his own blend of medicine. He lets it flow out of him and onto the ones he scoops up, over each new name in his genealogy.

That’s what I see in this advent season of waiting. That’s what I think of while I wander the streets of my heart, searching for him like the woman in Song of Songs, hoping to see him, yearning to find him – while all the while he’s coming through time, bounding across hills and crossing the valleys to get to me and to you. To scoop us up and knot us into the strings of his heart’s genealogy, the one that leaves a universe worth of room to be free and yet be fiercely guarded and cherished.

Can you imagine it? Can you see this being with his eyes fixed on you?