The beauty of Divine indignity

I think, whether you are Christian or not, the story of Christmas is deeply moving if you take a moment to really think about it. The claim of the Christian is that God—not one of many “gods” with some limited superpowers, some pride, and some sexual entanglements, nor some vague life force that powers the galaxy, but a personal King who made all and rules over all—clothed himself in the soft flesh of a baby and the womb of a young woman.

The stars announced his coming! Wise men who read prophecies brought expensive gifts! A king, threatened by the arrival of this new king, sought to kill him! It is easy for the Christmas story to emphasize these glories in the story as with blasting trumpets. GlooooOOOOOoooooooOOOOOOoooooOOOOOoooo-ri-aaaa!

Or perhaps, hushed reverence. Silent night, holy night. Peace on earth, mercy mild. Some of the most iconic images of Madonna and child often show both smiling beautific, barely-there smiles, eyelids lowered, shoulders relaxed.

But the real sounds of Christmas were screams. Screams of the stretching of exceedingly delicate flesh, of exhaustion and frustration from pushing through great pain, of a baby who needs something—maybe food, maybe less light, maybe shushing and rocking and bouncing… God only knows.

Doing childcare for many years has taught me a great deal about the indignities of babyhood. Smeared poop. Fussiness for nonsensical reasons. Spitting up. The inability to communicate.

There is something profoundly beautiful in how… not beautiful God became. In how little Jesus would appeal to us.

In a world that prizes power and wisdom and strength, God comes as a baby. Without losing his Godhood, he takes on the most pitiful, most weak, most undignified humanhood possible.

Philippians 2:5-8: Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, as He already existed in the form of God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied Himself by taking the form of a bond-servant and being born in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death: death on a cross.

Indignities are the truest love language, the measure of how much you love someone. For someone you don’t know at all, are you willing to clean up their vomit? Help them shower? Dress their wounds?

But for a child? For a spouse? For your parents in their old age?

Jesus suffered enormous indignities because he loved with an enormous love.

This Christmas, I encourage you to take another look at the beauty of Divine indignity. Look at the indignity of birth, of breastfeeding, of being unable to hold up your own head.

Look at the indignity of touching lepers, of having a prostitute publicly display affection towards you, of having known corrupt embezzlers among your best friends.

And then look at yourself.

I pray that my own resistance to humility might be broken. That I’d be like a servant, the lowest of low. That no job or person would be “beneath” me in my mind.

This Christmas, I find myself actively praying for downward motion in my life. I pray that the beauty of Divine indignity would make me more beautiful.

For He is worthy:

Philippians 9-11: For this reason also God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Help me to live like one bound to serve under an undignified King.