Episode Transcript
[00:00:10] Welcome to that Makes Total Sense, a podcast dedicated to exploring God's generosity and justice. I'm Alexis Busetti, a Christian, aiming to ask good questions and encouraging you to do the same.
[00:00:23] Every one of us is wired by God to live out generosity and justice, but the how sometimes eludes us. That makes total sense is a way for us to get together, posture ourselves as learners, and challenge one another to practice generosity and justice in a tangible way every day.
[00:00:46] So this Christmas season, I have been thinking about how super disruptive the birth of Jesus was and is.
[00:00:57] And I'll admit I think that's because there have been some disruptions in my life lately. And I want to be clear that by disruption here, I don't mean that in a negative way. I think a lot of times when we hear or feel or experience a disruption, or witness a disruption, even just hear that word, we think about that and automatically assume that it's negative.
[00:01:26] But it's. It's not always negative. In fact, a lot of times it can be really positive.
[00:01:32] I have a dear friend who refers to herself as a joyful disruptor. And I often think about that phrasing when I'm experiencing something disruptive and how that can actually be something that's really joyful and wonderful.
[00:01:49] So I think it's because I've experienced some disruptions lately that I was thinking about how the birth of Jesus was and is super disruptive. And I've been thinking about that this Christmas season.
[00:02:04] Um, but I think I. I don't wanna implicate everyone here, so I would say us, but maybe I'll say for me, sometimes in Christmas seasons that becomes something that is elusive. Like I. I forget about that. I. It's hard for me to remember that the birth of Jesus was disruptive or just how disruptive that was.
[00:02:27] And I think it's hard for me at least to remember to meditate on that disruption.
[00:02:35] Because when we're focusing on the birth of Jesus, it's often at Christmas time. And this story becomes like the most familiar story.
[00:02:46] And there are things just about the Christmas season that are really familiar to us because they happen every year.
[00:02:53] And.
[00:02:54] And I think sometimes it's easy to forget just how disruptive the incarnation really was and is meant to continue to be. Um, for me, I think sometimes I might skim through the beginning of Luke in my devotionals, or, you know, I'm hearing songs from pop artists on the radio in my car and there many times have lyrics about the birthday of the Son of God.
[00:03:18] I look at the Nativity scenes that I have scattered around my house. And all of these things are so familiar.
[00:03:25] And many times when familiarity takes over, we can forget how disruptive an event was that preceded that familiarity.
[00:03:37] So an example from my life right now is that we just moved, and this disruption of moving has actually kind of oddly quickly moved into a familiarity that I'm living with right now.
[00:03:54] So we didn't just move once. We actually moved twice this fall. First we moved into a new city, brand new city, into a rental, and then we moved again into a home that we purchased.
[00:04:07] So two moves for our family in a matter of just a few months. First to a new city, a few hours drive from the one where we were for 15 years.
[00:04:16] And it's also the most first actually significant set of moves in memory for each of our four kids. So it's a pretty big deal for us, and it's super disruptive. Again, disruptive does not equal negative.
[00:04:32] But I realized this week, as things were starting to slow down for me, finals were over, and I had a little more time just to be in our new space. You know, I didn't have a lot of pending responsibilities at that time. Christmas shopping had wrapped up for me, and I was realizing that my new space already felt really familiar to me.
[00:04:58] And then when I started to think about why that was, I think there's probably a lot of little reasons that add up to that familiarity.
[00:05:07] Probably the biggest is the fact that we.
[00:05:09] Even though we've only been in this space for, like, less than two months, we don't have any more boxes to unpack. So shout out to my sister there, the unpacking and organizing queen, who came in and helped us get the house ready when we moved in.
[00:05:26] But that's one. So it doesn't. I don't feel the disruption in, you know, kind of seeing the. The boxes that need to be unpacked.
[00:05:36] Also, we've done a lot here already, like, cooked and made messes and cleaned them up. And we've adjusted our routines to being here. You know, we take and pick up our kids from school, and we go to and from work from this new home base.
[00:05:53] The kids play outside, and they've made some friends, and we sip drinks on the patio.
[00:05:58] And also it's filled with our stuff.
[00:06:00] Like, most of it is the same familiar stuff we've had for years, some of these pieces for decades that really make it feel like home.
[00:06:11] In other words, when I look around on many days, I can feel the familiar and forget the disruption.
[00:06:21] And I think in Some ways that can be a really good thing. I think that kind of feeling of familiarity can help move us toward healing and hope for more good new things to come.
[00:06:34] But I also have realized that for myself, that familiarity has been something that hasn't served me well in every area of my life because it's caused me to miss and move on from some of the disruptiveness without really taking any account for how it's affecting me.
[00:06:57] Disruption, in this case with our movement, as I mentioned, has been good, but it's also meant loss in many ways at the same time that it's meant having new opportunities and fulfillments.
[00:07:10] And I'm realizing that I might be robbing myself of the richness of processing and accounting for all of it if I just let that feeling of familiarity take over.
[00:07:22] I think in many ways, the familiarity of Christmas can do the same thing for us if we're not careful.
[00:07:29] Amidst all the familiarity that I've named like hymns and nativity scenes, Bible stories, presents, friends, family, food, shopping, we can allow the disruption of the incarnation to go unnoticed or hidden amongst all the familiarity.
[00:07:48] But the incarnation of the Messiah, the birth of Jesus, is totally disruptive.
[00:07:55] Before I sat down to write this, I started thinking about Zechariah, John the Baptist, dad. And how disruptive these incarnational events were for him. So usually, I know when we read the Christmas story, especially from Luke, we start a little later. But you might remember Zechariah's part of the story begins early in chapter one, when he's working his priestly shift at the temple and he gets a visit from an angel.
[00:08:21] So Gabriel, the same angel who talks to Mary in the next scenes, tells Zechariah first that his wife is going to have a baby. And he totally wigs out and he starts asking questions about how that's possible because they're both too old. And he ends up literally speechless.
[00:08:40] Now, this news wasn't bad news for Zechariah, but it was disruptive.
[00:08:46] The text tells us that he and Elizabeth had been trying to have a baby for years, and they hadn't been able to up until this point. So his wigging wasn't because he was angry or disappointed. At least I don't imagine that it was. I think his response had to do with the fact that he was very quickly realizing, among other things, that really everything was about to change for him and his wife, Elizabeth.
[00:09:11] His whole married life, it had been just him and his wife. And now, after all of these decades together, they were going to welcome another human into their lives, into their homes, into their families and babies like they were about to have in their home. Babies are disruptive.
[00:09:31] Hear me when I say I've had four. They are wonderful and amazing, and they are also totally and completely disruptive.
[00:09:39] Recently we've had a few friends and some colleagues who have had babies over the last year or so, and I was reminded of that. I would say, ask any ecstatic but exhausted new parent, and I think they'll tell you their lives are wonderfully changed for the better because of these disruptive babies in their homes.
[00:10:03] For Zechariah, I think in the moments between when he hears the news and when his voice disappears, and even into the next few months, he's starting to contemplate just what this news, this disruptive news will mean for his life.
[00:10:17] The birth of Jesus, the incarnation of the Messiah, is and should be personally disruptive.
[00:10:23] Zechariah was totally shaken by the birth of his own son, John the Baptist, and he was, I don't want to say John was only. But he was only the predecessor to the Messiah.
[00:10:34] So if the news of one baby, who would grow up to be the announcer of the Christ, caused that much unsettling, how much more when he was joined by his relative Jesus, who actually was the Christ.
[00:10:53] The birth of Jesus was and is continues to be, should be, I'd say, disruptive to the status quo.
[00:11:02] A year or two ago, I recorded a reflection similar to this one dedicated to Mary's Magnificat, and I'll link it here if you're interested. But basically, the prophetic song recorded by Luke from Mary declares how socially disruptive she predicts, and I would say, and hopes her baby's birth will be when she visits her relative Elizabeth, that we just mentioned, Zechariah's wife and John the Baptist, pregnant mom.
[00:11:31] She sings, Mary sings, that rulers will be brought down from their thrones and the humble will be lifted up, that the hungry will be filled and the rich sent away empty, and that a promise from the God of Israel will be fulfilled. And in her baby, in other words, as we sometimes say of his kingdom, things will turn upside down because of Jesus.
[00:11:55] He will disrupt the status quo.
[00:11:59] The dynamics that Mary declares in her song are not commonplace in her world or in ours.
[00:12:06] But she has some sort of overwhelming confidence, I think, that the child she's carrying will be able to pull it off.
[00:12:15] And I think she senses, at least I believe she does, the disruption he'll bring, and is already bringing in that scene, not just to her family, to the world.
[00:12:27] The birth of Jesus is disruptive personally and to the status quo and also to our relationships.
[00:12:38] The incarnation is disruptive should be, I think, to how we interact with each other and with ourselves and with God.
[00:12:49] The birth of Jesus is disruptive because it proves God's closeness, God's desired intimacy with creation.
[00:12:59] It proves that embodiment is God's design, even if it sometimes feels less disruptive to feel in ways that are more detached.
[00:13:11] The birth of Jesus in his life as a human on earth doesn't just remind us that we should care for our flesh and the flesh of others, though it does do that.
[00:13:21] The incarnation was a decision and a set of acts performed by God, continuing into eternity, committing God's self to creation in ways that I don't think I'll ever be able to fully understand.
[00:13:37] One tradition that speaks to that reality is found through the biblical and Jewish feast of Sukkot, or booths or tabernacles, meaning tents.
[00:13:49] We probably all realize Jesus wasn't actually born on our calendar on December 25, and that date has a history of how it was decided.
[00:13:58] But there are other traditions and beliefs about what might be a more accurate or more meaningful time to mark Jesus birth.
[00:14:07] And one of those is to celebrate the birth of Jesus around the time of the Feast of Booths, which is included in a set of other fall feasts in the Jewish feast calendar, like Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. We even see this feast mentioned in John's Gospel in the seventh chapter, where Jesus makes appearances throughout the course of this week long commemoration.
[00:14:28] And it's there that he speaks one of the most famous lines to Christians that he will give us living water.
[00:14:35] There's so much in that chapter that it could be a completely different Bible study here. But where I'd like to draw our attention just briefly is that that feast of booze, as it is spelled out in the Torah, is intended to reinforce.
[00:14:52] Is intended to reinforce God's presence for generations to come. And particularly that God made the Israelites to live in booths when God brought them out of Egypt.
[00:15:05] And if we remember that time in Israel's history, we remember that God was with them when they were living in those booths or tents in some of the most tangible ways they had experienced in their history as a people with God traveling with them, represented by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.
[00:15:27] God never left them when they were in those tents.
[00:15:31] And John, who recalls Jesus time at the feast in the chapter seven of his Gospel, uses really similar language in the beginning of his Gospel when he offers the truth that the word Jesus became flesh and lived among us, and he uses the word what we translate there lived in English is the same word that means to pitch a tent so we might hear God. The word made flesh in Jesus came and pitched his tent with ours.
[00:16:08] Like God lived among the Israelites in the desert, Jesus lived among us, but this time, instead of being present in the cloud or the fire, he was present in a body just like ours.
[00:16:23] And this truth, I think, should be disruptive to how we go about our relationships.
[00:16:30] If God pitched his tent in Jesus above all things, just to be near to us, and if we really believed that and lived into that truth, I wonder how it might change the ways that we interact with God, how we interact with others, our neighbors, our family, friends, co workers, and even how we interact with ourselves.
[00:16:52] How would our understanding of embodiment change?
[00:16:56] And how would that understanding form and reform our relationships and how we interact with one another?
[00:17:06] So anyway, that is a little bit about what I'm thinking about this Christmas.
[00:17:12] The disruptive nature of that baby and how his birth, life, death, resurrection, and anticipation of the second Advent continue to disrupt how I live and how that disruption can continue to form me even within its familiarity.
[00:17:39] So thanks for listening.
[00:17:42] Merry Christmas to you and yours.
[00:17:46] The links for all the resources mentioned in today's episode can be found in the show Notes, Music and podcast production by Seth Buscetti. Be sure to give us a review on itunes and subscribe at your favorite podcast listening app. You can also Visit us at thatmakestotalsense.
[00:18:13] Ra.
