Luke 1:26-38
One of my least admirable qualities is that I hate to admit that I am wrong or that I don’t know something. For example, I love to play “Trivial Pursuit.” I have loved it since it first came out, back in the 70s. I used to get together with my best friend, Lori, and we would play. And I would usually win. One day we were at her house, sitting at the kitchen table, having another contest. I had earned all of my pie wedges and was trying to get into the center of the board to answer a final question and win the game. I finally managed to roll the right number on the dice and land in the center. Lori chose my worst subject, “Sports and Leisure,” as my category. I inwardly groaned. Who knew what kind of question I would get? She read the question on the card: “In water polo, how many players are there on each side?”
Well, I had no idea. I couldn’t even make an educated guess. But I didn’t want to surrender too easily, so I decided to stall for time. I asked, in all sincerity, “Counting the horses?” Well, Lori nearly fell off her chair she was laughing so hard. And the more she laughed, the madder I got, because I couldn’t figure out what she was laughing at. Finally, with tears rolling down her cheeks, she managed to get out, “Swim, baby, swim!” And it dawned on me. Horses. In water polo. You idiot. I still don’t know how many players there are on each side in water polo. And I really don’t much care. Because one of my blind spots is that I am practically unwilling to admit, “I don’t know.”
There is a scene in “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” when the Grinch has entered a Who house and has been stealing anything and everything related to Christmas from gifts and decorations to candy canes and food for the feast. He has stuffed it all in bags and tossed it up the chimney to Max, who has loaded the bags on the sleigh. Finally, the Grinch starts shoving the Christmas tree up the chimney. As he pushes on the tree, an ornament falls off and rolls across the floor, stopping beside the children’s bed, waking up little Cindy Lou Who. She comes out of her room and stands there watching the Grinch. Finally, she asks him, “Why are you taking our tree away?” Very quickly, the Grinch comes up with a lie: “The lights on one side aren’t working, so I’m taking the tree to my workshop. I’ll repair it there and then bring it back here.” He gets the little girl a glass of water and sends her back to bed, and then takes the tree and moves on to the next house. But perhaps this encounter has revealed one of the Grinch’s blind spots: deep down he knows that what he is doing is wrong, but his heart is too small to do him much good about it. He wasn’t seeing the entire situation clearly.
We all have blind spots, don’t we? We don’t always see everything as clearly as we should. It is all part of our being human. We sometimes make assumptions based on our blind spots that turn out to be dead wrong. And, much to our surprise, Jesus also had blind spots. Because Jesus was human. He didn’t see everything; he didn’t know everything. You might remember when he was lost in Jerusalem when he was twelve and it turned out that he had been in the Temple the whole time. His parents took him home, and it says that he grew in wisdom. He couldn’t grow in wisdom unless there were some things he didn’t already know. And in Mark, when he is talking to the disciples about the end times and when they will come, he says, “I don’t know. Only the Father knows.”
Jesus experienced everything we experience, our emotions, our limitations, our struggles. Jesus was fully human, just as he was fully divine, and sometimes it is the human part of him that we have a hard time grasping. Frederick Buechner writes, “The claim that Christianity makes for Christmas is that at a particular time and place God came to be with us himself. When Quirinius was governor of Syria, in a town called Bethlehem, a child was born who, beyond the power of anyone to account for, was the high and lofty One made low and helpless. The One who inhabits eternity comes to dwell in time. The One whom no one can look upon and live is delivered in a stable under the soft, indifferent gaze of cattle. The Father of all mercies puts Himself at our mercy.”
Buechner is touching on what Matt Rawle refers to as God’s blind spot: God’s greatest weakness is his love for us. That love is so powerful that it caused God to become completely vulnerable and utterly dependent, to be born as a baby. Max Lucado writes in his book, God Came Near:
Heaven opened herself and placed her most precious one in a human womb. The omnipotent, in one instant, made himself breakable. He who had been spirit became pierceable. He who was larger than the universe became an embryo. And he who sustains the world with a word chose to be dependent on the nourishment of a young girl.
God as a fetus. Holiness sleeping in a womb. The creator of life being created. God was given eyebrows, elbows, two kidneys, and a spleen.
He came, not as a flash of light or as an unapproachable conqueror, but as one whose first cries were heard by a peasant girl and a sleepy carpenter … Angels watched as Mary changed God’s diaper.
At this point in history, the person who best understands who God is and what he is doing is a teenage girl in a smelly stable. She can’t take her eyes off him. Somehow Mary knows she is holding God.
He looks like anything but a king. His face is prunish and red. His cry, though strong and healthy, is still the helpless and piercing cry of a baby. And he is absolutely dependent on Mary for his well-being.
It is amazing to think that our God loved us so much that he willingly took on the form of a little baby. I can’t begin to explain it to you. I have studied the Bible and theology for the better part of 42 years, but all I can tell you is you either believe it or you don’t. I happen to believe it. God – in Jesus – became one of us. Lucado writes:
For thirty-three years he would feel everything you and I have ever felt. He felt weak. He grew weary. He was afraid of failure … He got colds, burped, and had body odor. His feelings got hurt. His feet got tired. And his head ached.
To think of Jesus in such a light is … almost irreverent … It is much easier to keep the humanity out of the incarnation. Clean the manure from around the manger. Wipe the sweat out of his eyes. Pretend he never snored or blew his nose or hit his thumb with a hammer …
But don’t do it. For heaven’s sake, don’t. Let him be as human as he intended to be. Let him into the mire and muck of our world. For only if we let him in can he pull us out.
It is through God’s blind spot – his love for us – that God ended up doing his best work. It was through this vulnerability that risked itself that in the end brought us to him.
The Grinch also learned eventually from his blind spot. His heart did grow three sizes and he was able to realize that he had a blind spot when it came to Christmas and the Whos. And the Grinch returned all that he had stolen from Whoville.
We can choose to grow and learn from our blind spots, so that they do not control us forever. And we can be thankful for the blind spot that God had toward us, that vulnerable willingness to love us to the point of becoming one of us in order to save us.
