Redemption Means Permission to Belong

Nativity by Lyuba Yatskiv

The thing about the Christian Liturgical calendar is that it’s an annual mystery, revealing a new facet to me every time it comes around again. Advent starts today and is traditionally about the period of waiting for the birth of Christ, which totally coincidentally happens right after the solstice! JK, it’s very much on purpose.

But this year I’m asking two new questions; what exactly am I waiting for, and who am I waiting with? Both of these questions have been whispering ‘redemption’ in my ear.

First let’s start with Mary, the one we’re waiting with. Wow, has there ever been a more complex woman besides her? Well maybe the Magdalena, but let’s wait until Lent for that. Mother Mary was a teenage girl when she gave birth to Jesus, regardless of what you think about her virginity or her hymen (yes, there was a papal bull issued in 1603 about the current unbroken status of her hymen, declaring that Jesus birth actually sacntified said hymen, ummmm have you bros ever even seen a birth?).

As I said, MUCH is made of her virginity though the quaint phrase she actually said to the angel anouncing her pregnancy was that she couldn’t possible give birth because she “knows not a man.” And the word ‘virgin’ could mean a lot of different things. Lots to parse there and of course it makes me wonder if this clever virgin perhaps “knew” herself or a woman instead and wasn’t as pure as the vatican wants her to be.

Either way, it was a bit of a scandal for this girl to be pregnant. It usually is, though isn’t it? Not much has changed and I’m guessing Mary probably got as much derision as we modern folks give to pregnant girls today, regardless of the sacred circumstances.

So here we are in Advent waiting with this ancient girl who didn’t exactly consent to this pregnancy but just kind of gives the angel an “if you say so…” response.

Jesus is also many complex things to many people; that’s part of his generous mystery we have spent 2000 years discovering. And plenty of folks have discovered that him and God have made sort of an extravagant promise of life renewed, and even life eternal. Let’s focus on the renewed part for now, or dare I say *foreshadowing* redeemed.

First of all, it’s no accident that Jesus birth was placed on the calendar just after winter solstice when light and thus literal life begins returning to the northern hemisphere.

But then we have the life of this wild outcast; homeless, creating a community of chosen family, hanging out with lepers and folks who are disabled, prostitutes and disgraced women tending to his holy feet, definitely indegenous and fighting with the priests who were afraid the empire would squash their sacred religious practices, and also just kind of mouthy and rude. Not to mention very funny.

So knowing that Jesus often taught by example rather than lecture (though he lectured plenty too), what exactly was he teaching? It seems to me that starting with Mary herself, Jesus and God’s teaching were that no matter how far outside the circle of societal belonging you’ve been pushed, you’ll never be outside the circle of God’s belonging.

And this message was what was so egregious to the people of Jesus’ day. That this man could come and cast God’s light and presence upon those society had deemed unworthy, and redeem them. Not just in God’s eyes but in soceity’s as well.

Personally, this means to me that no matter what I’ve done in my life that anyone thinks makes me unworthy of love, respect, kindness, or simply belonging, well, it just means jackshit to God.

In other words, Jesus doesn’t care about who we love or have sex with, or what we’ve done when we were addicted to alcohol and drugs, or the gossip other people tell about us, or the healing waters we’re barred from by folks who don’t want to get them dirty.

In the eyes of this outcast born next to donkey poop, born to one who was both scorned and then imprisoned on a virginity pedestal, we are pure Spirit, beacons of God’s light foreverafter if we just do as Jesus did which is to say love the ones society has tossed out. (Actually we’re pure Spirit even if we don’t do what Jesus did, so no worries there either).

But Jesus showed us to love the ones we judge and gossip about behind our hands. Love the ones who’ve murdered and stolen and harmed. Love the sex workers, and pregnant teenagers, and undocumented workers, and refugees of any kind. And not just love them, but see that God casts Her circle of redemption - society’s redemption - with them at the very center.

This is true redemption and God’s gentle rebuke to us. This is allowing all people to be made new again, not in Her eyes but in our own and others. This is what I am waiting for this Advent; the one who will teach us yet again that nothing and no one is excluded from the realm of Spirit, and that no one on earth has the power to exclude me either.

You want life renewed and life everlasting? Then Jesus says redeem the ones you despise by including them as I have. Yes, everything gets to be included. Everything and everyone belongs. Can there be any greater more delicious scandal than that.