"Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Sceptre of the majesty of God, did not come in the pomp of pride or arrogance, although he might have done so, but in a lowly condition, as the Holy Spirit had declared regarding him."
Why does Jesus bother us? I suppose we could easily produce a litany of replies to that question. There are many teachings and activities which he did among humanity that cut deep into our hearts and spirits. However, the foundation of everything accomplished among us is the character of this unique individual.
The season of Christmas is Advent, where we center our attention on the incarnation of divinity into humanity. Christianity teaches that Jesus came as an example of how all persons should live. And yet his largest group of followers, the church, still has difficulty handling this. Here we are - two thousand years after the fact - with the same struggle of trying to understand what his coming really means.
How can we stoop down to look into a manger and bear witness to the self-humilation of our creator and sustainer all the while we are fighting for power, bickering over prestige, and clinching our fists around our earthly treasures?
We can observe our fallenness by recognizing this absurd state of affairs...
We can emphasize our fallenness by thinking that there is nothing wrong with it.
"Let us be imitators also of those who in goatskins and sheepskins went about proclaiming the coming of Christ..."
*quotes taken from The First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians, ca. A.D. 97
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