Mary, Did You Know?
I read it as a reductio ad absurdum.
Many Christian miracles can be read as such, and the theologically-minded individuals I grew up around were perfectly self-aware about this fact. There were many things wrong with the worldview I was fed as an adolescent, but at least it took itself seriously.
Too seriously.
The falsely dichotomous way in which it's framed by most of Christian ministers, culture, and believers I've encountered, one must either laugh it all off as the most absurd pile of bullshit ever to pose as reality, or one would wholeheartedly accept it in submissive posture and allow its incredible power and authority to consume your life. (Lunatic, Liar, or Lord?)
The baby boy will walk on water, he will calm storms with his hand. He will heal the sick, make the blind see, make the deaf hear, make the dumb speak. He will save everyone and everything, he will rule the world.
The beauty of this hymn is that it makes very blatant the extent of the tension between Jesus' humanity and supposed divinity, framing the story lyrically as though it were an attempt to convince Mary of something she would be unlikely to believe. That which is claimed within the "orthodox" - mainstream, Christianity-as-we-know-it Christian - faith is incredible news in every sense of the word.
Can we dare with this much passion to hope that everything we currently believe is wrong with the world could be righted? Could our lives be free of quotidian strife? Could a magic wand - or, a hand powerful enough not to need one - apocalyptically wipe away whatever shitty thing it is making different people hurt? Could we just stop dealing with politics and have a perfect ruler, the one and only literally perfect incarnation of the ancient divine king?
There is something to be said for the fact that we apparently need reference to the less than human - the blind, the deaf and dumb, the "sinner," the baby - to understand our appropriate posture in submission to the divine. We must invoke reliance on the same oppression from which we yearn for almighty rescue in order to feel the power of God.
This is not liberation.
The power of Mary Did You Know is that it makes you feel the power contained in the possibility that Jesus was an Other. That even while being the Greatest, he was also the Worst. That if Jesus could be in both places at once, it is possible for us to be. We are saved by his example, and by his presence inside the broken and the perfect at once. Gloria in excelsis deo! Agnus dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis. It is a chant of eternity. At once, a sucked-dry, empty, exasperated, powerless submission to something infinitely greater and a realization that this very submission grants passage into this greatness with the object of worship. Magic.
This apocalypse speaks nothing to the human condition. It runs toward greatness and then dives under the hem of its dress so as not to face the beauty and pain of kissing its face.
Perhaps the incarnation of God in a child says as much about the divinity of the child as the childishness of God.
Perhaps it says less about the salvation of the Othered than the extent to which it is an arbitrary and sacrilegious judgment to insult or devalue something for its childishness. For its blindness. Or deafness. Or dumbness. Or sickness. Maybe these metaphors are a tad ableist, ageist, for comfortable use.
I am completely unconvinced that the nativity is laughed at lightheartedly as much as it should be, and neither for most hardline atheists' (super obvious) reasons nor the reasons most pastors seemed to preach in my formative years. It's not about accepting and submitting to something that seems at first to be ludicrous. No! It's about coming to understand how extremely fucking ludicrous it is that we continue to try to submit to and worship gods that are projections of ourselves... and then changing. Integrating ourselves. Ascending to godhood, and removing from godhood its power.
What power could Jesus have to take away the sins of the world? If Jesus saves us, it is only in becoming an example of the stupidity of the idea of salvation. We are each a Jesus, we are each a God. It is an anticlimax, but it is the truth. Nothing magic has happened except the magic we create. We are the miracles we wish to see in the world, and those are the only miracles that exist.
Mary, be super depressed. Your baby boy is the closest thing to God you will ever see. Billions of people - more than grains of sand in the sea, more than stars in the sky - will form throngs around him, hoping that he will be the apocalyptic messiah they yearn for. First, it's because they want freedom from the Romans; then it'll be because they want freedom from themselves. Your baby boy will become the greatest idol ever to be worshiped, in spite of himself, and despite his failed antipharisaical movement and death as a criminal. Think of that as your one and only messiah. That crying shitstorm creature you're holding? That is you, and that's the great I AM.
Many Christian miracles can be read as such, and the theologically-minded individuals I grew up around were perfectly self-aware about this fact. There were many things wrong with the worldview I was fed as an adolescent, but at least it took itself seriously.
Too seriously.
The falsely dichotomous way in which it's framed by most of Christian ministers, culture, and believers I've encountered, one must either laugh it all off as the most absurd pile of bullshit ever to pose as reality, or one would wholeheartedly accept it in submissive posture and allow its incredible power and authority to consume your life. (Lunatic, Liar, or Lord?)
The baby boy will walk on water, he will calm storms with his hand. He will heal the sick, make the blind see, make the deaf hear, make the dumb speak. He will save everyone and everything, he will rule the world.
The beauty of this hymn is that it makes very blatant the extent of the tension between Jesus' humanity and supposed divinity, framing the story lyrically as though it were an attempt to convince Mary of something she would be unlikely to believe. That which is claimed within the "orthodox" - mainstream, Christianity-as-we-know-it Christian - faith is incredible news in every sense of the word.
Can we dare with this much passion to hope that everything we currently believe is wrong with the world could be righted? Could our lives be free of quotidian strife? Could a magic wand - or, a hand powerful enough not to need one - apocalyptically wipe away whatever shitty thing it is making different people hurt? Could we just stop dealing with politics and have a perfect ruler, the one and only literally perfect incarnation of the ancient divine king?
There is something to be said for the fact that we apparently need reference to the less than human - the blind, the deaf and dumb, the "sinner," the baby - to understand our appropriate posture in submission to the divine. We must invoke reliance on the same oppression from which we yearn for almighty rescue in order to feel the power of God.
This is not liberation.
The power of Mary Did You Know is that it makes you feel the power contained in the possibility that Jesus was an Other. That even while being the Greatest, he was also the Worst. That if Jesus could be in both places at once, it is possible for us to be. We are saved by his example, and by his presence inside the broken and the perfect at once. Gloria in excelsis deo! Agnus dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis. It is a chant of eternity. At once, a sucked-dry, empty, exasperated, powerless submission to something infinitely greater and a realization that this very submission grants passage into this greatness with the object of worship. Magic.
This apocalypse speaks nothing to the human condition. It runs toward greatness and then dives under the hem of its dress so as not to face the beauty and pain of kissing its face.
Perhaps the incarnation of God in a child says as much about the divinity of the child as the childishness of God.
Perhaps it says less about the salvation of the Othered than the extent to which it is an arbitrary and sacrilegious judgment to insult or devalue something for its childishness. For its blindness. Or deafness. Or dumbness. Or sickness. Maybe these metaphors are a tad ableist, ageist, for comfortable use.
I am completely unconvinced that the nativity is laughed at lightheartedly as much as it should be, and neither for most hardline atheists' (super obvious) reasons nor the reasons most pastors seemed to preach in my formative years. It's not about accepting and submitting to something that seems at first to be ludicrous. No! It's about coming to understand how extremely fucking ludicrous it is that we continue to try to submit to and worship gods that are projections of ourselves... and then changing. Integrating ourselves. Ascending to godhood, and removing from godhood its power.
What power could Jesus have to take away the sins of the world? If Jesus saves us, it is only in becoming an example of the stupidity of the idea of salvation. We are each a Jesus, we are each a God. It is an anticlimax, but it is the truth. Nothing magic has happened except the magic we create. We are the miracles we wish to see in the world, and those are the only miracles that exist.
Mary, be super depressed. Your baby boy is the closest thing to God you will ever see. Billions of people - more than grains of sand in the sea, more than stars in the sky - will form throngs around him, hoping that he will be the apocalyptic messiah they yearn for. First, it's because they want freedom from the Romans; then it'll be because they want freedom from themselves. Your baby boy will become the greatest idol ever to be worshiped, in spite of himself, and despite his failed antipharisaical movement and death as a criminal. Think of that as your one and only messiah. That crying shitstorm creature you're holding? That is you, and that's the great I AM.
Is it not written in your Law, "I have said you are 'gods'"? If he called them 'gods,' to whom the word of God came - and Scripture cannot be set aside - what about the one whom the Father set apart as his very own and sent into the world? Why then do you accuse me of blasphemy because I said, "I am God's Son'? Do not believe me unless I do the works of my Father. But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father.
- Jesus, John 10:34-38
I often think that Christians singing praise and worship are most akin to the priests of Baal, slashing themselves to rouse the attention of their God.
ReplyDeleteAlso, beautiful post :)