It’s still a scandal. I’d vote it the most scandalous event of the year. And it goes on all year round even though we often forget about it.

Others have called it, “the scandal of particularity.”

It’s the idea that God got down from a vague abstraction to earth in Jesus of Nazareth, born at a particular time in the fullness of time, kairos time, the right time and not chronological time or linear time. He was born in a particular place where it was questioned if anything good could come out of Nazareth. This Jesus lived a few short years, was brutally executed experiencing that he was utterly forsaken and even abandoned by God.

Immanuel – God with us.

This is God getting down and dirty – crying, sweating, bleeding, getting angry, praying for hard times to pass, wanting what he knew he had to do to mercifully pass him by.

What’s so scandalous about that?

Well, many of us like our gods and goddesses to pleasantly float around us or dine with us at an imaginary banquet of mythological insights. Jungian analysts can be prone to that if we drift into the archetypal and don’t attend to the guiding images of ordinary life. Analyst or not we tend to like vague abstractions calling our gods forces of energy, beauty, truth, love, goodness, hope and joy.

Who wants to hear a kid crying in a manger waking all the cattle? They’re bad enough on airplanes in the seat across the aisle.

Who wants to see a young homeless couple giving birth to a child on a pile of straw? If they had been a little more aggressive, they could have gotten some room in the inn. “No Vacancy” signs often lie. Joseph just wasn’t macho enough and Mary just needed a place, some place to painfully push Jesus out into a dark world.

We want our gods and goddesses abstract, out of the way, floating high above us, and available for some good literary reference.

Who are these travelers hunkered outside the Motel 6? Who is this child that already Herod is seeking to destroy? Who are these wise people suddenly spinning around in their tracks and heading for Jesus’ birthplace, bringing gifts, willing to kneel down before the One who could change a world into love of God and neighbor?

Even the animals seem restless before him as well.

Who has become enfleshed among us? And what’s the scandal involved in this child being born at a particular time and place to live out his humanity among us for a few years?

If God came down to earth in this child, then my body is good. It means I can’t pretend I don’t exist in this body. I will live and die in this particular body. We’re together for better and worse, our most sublime thoughts and the ache in our lower backs.

That’s good news for those with eating disorders who for many reasons deny that it’s okay to eat.  It’s good news for those who deny their sexuality.  It’s good news for those who can say: “Sex is enjoyable. I like it. I like feeling good. I like giving and receiving pleasure. God created us sexual beings.”

If God came down to earth in this child, then it’s also okay to cry, to be afraid, to feel our hurts, our loneliness, our sense of being abandoned and forsaken – yes, even by God. By God, it is okay to experience our full humanity.

In this child we experience God with us in our vulnerability. And so often we fear that. We, like Herod, want to take a sword to those moments when we feel life is too much. Cut them out of our lives and relationships. Or as we might say in a therapeutic setting we will deny, repress, suppress our feelings of helplessness.

Yet the Christ child says: “I am with you. I am Immanuel, God with you even in your most vulnerable moments when all seems out of control, and nothing or no one can save us.”

If God came down to earthiness in this chjld, then being macho as a man or woman isn’t enough. Brute power, heroic control of others no longer gets the highest ratings. Having a good or bad reputation, being young or old, male or female, no longer counts for much. Being well known, having a position of authority over others means very little.

No sense working harder to get closer to God. God, celebrated in this Christ child on this Christmas day, has come equally close to us all, for us all.

If God came down and is coming down to us during this Christmas season, then I hope I can get down to being more of the human being God intends me to be, here and now in this time and place. Perhaps, you will want to join me in that intention.