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Between bookshelves, windows and doors, there’s not a lot of spare wall space in my Spencer House office. But still a few treasures hang, including three religious images: Salvador Dali’s portrait of Christ between death and resurrection, my favorite image of the great 16th century Protestant Reformer, Martin Luther, and a small frame of Joan of Arc. Though this is not nearly as planned as it might seem, I suppose it is not coincidental either. They are certainly defining figures of my life. And now it’s Advent and, from one of those bookshelves, I am drawing some of Luther’s reflections on Christ’s entrance into the world.
How, I wonder, would Luther be heard to modern ears? I suppose he would be taken as diversely as the Christmas gospel narrative itself. Some believe in the heralding angels and the spectacular star. Some reject it as an unbelievable legend. Others return to it each year with loving nostalgia, while still others seek after it in yearning for such belief.
Much of the modern struggle with the gospel record of Christ’s birth is bound up in reconciling miracles and contemporary science. But Luther was not primarily interested in miracles. It was the human, not the miraculous, dimensions of the Christmas story that engaged him. In describing what Mary lacked in the stable, Luther drew detailed portraits of childbirth in a German home. His narratives were infused with deep human emotion – Mary’s perplexity, Joseph’s dilemma, the shepherd’s fear, Herod’s scheming. Above all, it was their faith that gripped Luther. The virgin birth appeared an insignificant miracle compared with her faith. He marveled that Joseph was able to recognize God’s word, that the shepherds could believe it, that the Wise Men could follow it.
Faith did not come lightly to Luther and he knew that it could not come easily to any of us precisely because God’s choosing in Christ’s birth was, indeed, inexplicable: Why should the God of all the universe care so much for us to lie down in a feeding trough under the shadow of Herod’s terror? That God would do such a thing, that God would come to us in our own flesh – compared to that, no other miracle really mattered. Here there can only be awe. And in that awe, we moderns join Luther and all those who have ever heard this truth and grace revealed.
This Advent may that awe be yours.
Advent blessings,
Susan
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