For this month’s bonus episode, Sy and Jonathan sat down to talk about how the incarnation relates to a lot of the themes we talk about at KTF Press. Christmas celebrates God coming close to the oppressed, enacting anti-imperial liberation, refusing to use worldly power as a foundation for his kingdom, and a lot more. Oh, and Jonathan does an Advent poem at the end, which is incredible as always. We hope you all are having a wonderful holiday season, and merry Christmas!
Mentioned in the episode:
The poem by Kaitlin Schetler
Oscar Muriu’s talk at Urbana 2009
Hannah-Kate’s Twitter account
Shake the Dust is a podcast of KTF Press. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Find transcripts for this show at KTFPress.com.
Hosts
Jonathan Walton – follow him on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Sy Hoekstra – follow him on Twitter.
Our theme song is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra – listen to the whole song on Spotify.
Our podcast art is by Jacqueline Tam – follow her and see her other work on Instagram.
Production and editing by Sy Hoekstra.
Transcript by Joyce Ambale and Sy Hoekstra.
Questions about anything you heard on the show? Write to shakethedust@ktfpress.com and we may answer your question on a future episode.
Transcript
Sy Hoekstra: … she says right up top in the Magnificat, “Who am I? The Lord has blessed me, and people will remember me for forever.” She very much understands her status now and the change in her status, and what that means for who God is and what he is trying to accomplish. It's just, it's so, it's interesting that it's so different than the Christmas story or the salvation story that so many of us grew up. But it's also something that immediately upon learning that she's pregnant, a 14-year-old girl understands [laughs].
Jonathan Walton: Yes.
[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “I need to know there is justice/That it will roll in abundance/ And that you’re building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]
Sy: Welcome to Shake The Dust: Leaving colonized faith for the Kingdom of God, a podcast of KTF Press. I'm Sy Hoekstra, here with Jonathan Walton as always. We are here today to talk to you a little bit about Christmas and the incarnation, and what it has to do with the stuff that we talk about on this show. Before we get started really quick, thank you all so much for subscribing. This is a subscriber only episode. We appreciate so much your support. Welcome to the new people who are here off the sale that we did recently. So just please remember to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at KTF Press, and subscribe and follow this podcast, whatever button your app has on it, a subscribe button or a follow button, hit that one for us if you don't mind.
If you can go on Apple podcast and leave us a rating and review, we would really appreciate it. That helps us out a ton. All right. So Jonathan, we’re talking about the incarnation today because it is Christmas time. Today, when this drops, it’s Christmas Eve. So let's just get started with a really simple question Jonathan. What to you right now is standing out to you, is compelling about the incarnation of Jesus and the advent season?
Jonathan: Oh man, so many things, especially trying to explain Christmas to a little girl who is trying to also understand what Hanukkah is and also understand what Kwanzaa is, and also understand why we celebrate New Year's and other people don't. Like what's distinct about this thing called Christmas?
Sy: Interesting.
Jonathan: What is standing out to me is the humanity of Jesus, in contrast to how, the way that we talk about him, is like we stuff him into the divine, and don't bring him into the humanity. Or we stuff him into humanity and don't, kind of the divine, they don't hang out with each other.
Sy: Oo, Elaborate.
Jonathan: All right. So there's this poem making its way around Facebook again, and it says a real scandal of the birth of God. And it starts out, “Sometimes I wonder if Mary breastfed Jesus. If she cried out when he bit her, or if she sobbed when he would not latch. And having had a kid, two kids and watching that intimate, hard process happen, it's like, yeah, Jesus was a person, but he was also God.” And then you know, Mary Did You Know? seems to, that song completely seems to dismiss the fact that an angel showed up and told her lots of things, and she burst into worship this song we call The Magnificat. Which it seems like we don't know what to do with the tension of that.
The humanity and the divinity and how those things interplay with each other. And there's another photo, or a piece of art that shows Joseph holding Mary's hand and she's in labor, pushing. So I just wonder, what if I was able to contemplate Christ as human and contemplate Christ as the son of God at the same time, and be able to hang out in that tension? Because in that tension is something I can't control. It's only something I can observe and appreciate as opposed to try to box it in a fixed value or put to my labelling.
Sy: Has thinking about that more like taken you anywhere?
Jonathan: What it's pushing me to, is to be okay with the wrestling and being okay with the wrestling. So Hannah-Kate @freedomsbride on Twitter, she posted, “I'm okay with wrestling in my understanding of the scriptures, because I’m confident in the one who gave them to us.” I'm okay with being confused by hard texts, because my security isn't in my competence, but in the one who is faithful. And I am more certain that God is real, he exists. He is present, he moves and all of that in the world by far. I am also more certain that I do not know everything about him or what he’s doing. And I think that this Christmas leads me to that. I am much smaller than I ever thought I was, much more insignificant and limited than I ever thought to be, or imagine myself, and that is okay.
Sy: Yeah. Those thoughts from Hannah-Kate. For people who don't follow her on Twitter, you should. Those thoughts are very hard one for her. She's a very public survivor of sexual assault and advocate for people who have been assaulted inside the church. Following her on Twitter is like watching her go through her journey. She's very open about it, and it's worth doing, if you don't know who she is.
Jonathan: Turn that question back to you, Sy. I would love to hear what's standing out to you this Christmas season.
Sy: Yeah, totally. So something I've been thinking about a lot, is maybe not surprising to people who’ve been listening to this podcast, but I have been thinking about the fear of being human that we talked about with Dr. Hardwick, and how we are so quick to dismiss and avoid and try and push away the pain and the difficulties that come with living in a physical, limited body. Obviously he, when we were talking, when we were having that conversation with him, we were talking specifically about disabilities and how people fear them, and how our fear of disabilities, and that's a reflection of our fear of being human. So what's been standing out to me, I think, is just the complete absence of the fear of being human in God.
Just the total vulnerability of becoming a baby and being subject to the everyday things of this world… I mean, natural disasters. Like tripping and falling could have killed Jesus like it could any of us, you know what I mean? And he was absolutely willing, he was able to become a human, which is sort of a remarkable thing in and of itself, but then was willing to do it. Wanted to do it in order to be closer to us, in order to save us, in order to bring his kingdom close to earth. And that, it's just, it's something that none of us could do, which is an obvious thing to say. Like, yeah, none of us as Christians are supposed to think that we could have saved the world the way Jesus could have. But it to me just emphasizes kind of his difference from us.
But then I kept thinking about it a little bit more. And in his becoming human, like you just talked about, he also experiences the fears that we experience. He experiences the temptations and the insecurities. I’m just thinking of the Garden of Gethsemane, and Jesus trying and asking God to, “Take this cup away from me. I don't want to go to the cross. I don't want to be executed or go through …” We don't know exactly what it was that he was afraid of. But he did not want to go through something because it was just, it was going to be horrible. And I think it is comforting to me to have both a God who understands that fear of being human that I experienced myself, and also like a fear that I have kind of pushed on me by other people.
He understands that and overcame it and understood what you get from overcoming it. And that what you get from overcoming it is the kingdom. Is eternal life is, is love and joy. Like for the joy set before him is why he endured the cross. All of that is wrapped up in the act of God becoming a baby, and I think that's just extremely powerful and something I've been thinking a lot about in the past couple of weeks.
Jonathan: Yeah. I mean, you, I mean, the stuff you just named is like, those things that are significant, but it also made me think about like, he subjected himself to invent the potential for infanticide, right? Like Herod said, “we're going to kill these children,”
Sy: right
Jonathan: And then subjecting himself to being a refugee. To not having a home. There's a lot about the trials of life that are mounting and Jesus knows all of them.
Sy: Right. So let's talk about this then Jonathan, what to you, hearkening back a little bit to our conversation with Dominique DuBois Gilliard, what is subversive about the incarnation of God?
Jonathan: Everything [laughs]. Everything means nothing. So, specifically, it's just not what the Jewish people are looking for in any way, shape, or form. It's what they want. Right?
Sy: What’s what they want?
Jonathan: They want liberation. They want the Romans out. They want their homes back, their life back to not be taxed to death. They want to have autonomy. They don't want soldiers abusing and violating and crucifying people around them. They don't want those things. Yet Jesus says, “I'm going to liberate you from … not that? From separation from me? from …” I mean, list out the things that Peter might've thought were going to happen before he picked up the sword and struck Malchus in the ear. But it's like, to think about what it would mean to be set free in Christ, but still be under Roman oppression. Looking at the person of Jesus in that day feels other worldly. If I'm Peter, I'm a lower, middle-class person, not educated, I'm a fishmonger, I hang out with dirty things, I smell the majority of the day, but I provide food for people, it's a good job.
Doing my thing, my dad is my, our family business. All of a sudden there's this person who comes that says, “You know what, everything could be made new.” And my everything is like, I'm not going to be subject to these systems anymore. I'm not going to experience that. And I don't know all the things that Peter experienced or witnessed, but the thought of … I'm sure he had a list of things as he talked with Jesus, became more and more enamored by him, and took more risks with him and for him and through him. All of a sudden now, this liberator who he, I would imagine he thinks is going to just overthrow Caesar and rule the world with him by his side, because Peter's always trying to get up in there. It's like all of a sudden he's going to be taken away by at least 150 soldiers.
And so it's like, yeah, he's just not here to, he's not, Jesus did not come to fulfill or perform my will and desire. He just didn’t. He came to do the will of the father. This is where I think some worship songs that we sing miss the point. You know, worship songs are great, but the songs that just completely revolve around us. Like, you were thinking of me on the cross and you were… I don't know if that's true. It might be. I mean, because God is able to think a lots of things at once. But in John 3:16, when he says, For God so loved the world, that word world is a Greek word, cosmos, which means God's ordered purposes, and that's why he died, because we were made to be in Shalom. I don't necessarily know or think, even though it's comforting to conjecture that like, oh, he was thinking of Jonathan Walton. But at the end of the day I'm like, it's actually more important that he was thinking of all of humanity. Because if he wanted to do what I wanted him to do, the world would not be saved. I would just be comfortable.
Sy: So this is related to what I was going to say, which I was thinking back Jonathan to a talk that you and I were both present for about 12 years ago at Urbana 2009, from a guy named Oscar Muriu, who is a pastor in Kenya. He basically gave a talk, the first like, I don’t know, five minutes or so of the talk, were him explaining how all of the ways that God went about saving the earth, were terrible from his, Oscar Muriu’s perspective [laughs]. How slow it was, how Jesus was a baby, how he wasn't, like there wasn't some big triumphal procession when he came. He was like, “I could have saved the world in like half the time that Jesus saved the world.”
Jonathan: Absolutely. His marketing campaign would have been out of this world, right.
Sy: Right. Exactly. Had no marketing or branding savvy. He basically concludes that all of the ways that we grab onto power to try and spread the gospel, and the kingdom and everything that we do in the church, all the ways that we seek after money and influence and all of that are, like run completely counter to the incarnation. To the idea of God coming as a baby, and how those … I don’t know. All those means, all those methods that we have tried to spread his word throughout the world, by the simple fact that God didn't do them, we can see kind of how disorganized, how disoriented, how confused we are. How easily we give into the ways that people try and spread their messages as part of the kingdom of earth.
Jonathan: Exactly. No, I mean, there's an old hymn that we used to sing called, “Yield Not to Temptation.” The idea that we are so tempted to false liberation, from whatever the thing is. Like I could get some morsel of satisfaction from this and some, cobbled together some sort of freedom from the suffering of this world or the trappings of life, whatever the thing is. If someone will promise that. And we see that in political speeches all the times from Trump or Biden or Clinton or Obama. There seems to be this promise of liberation or freedom from this existential angst or threat that we are carrying. Well, and it's tempting to lean into that. And Jesus actually rejects that when he rejects Satan, when in the tempting at the desert, right?
Sy: Yeah.
Jonathan: Anyway, that could be a whole nother podcast, but yeah.
Sy: It could. I agree with you, and this is actually, I talked about this in the episode that we did with Irene Chow. But this is actually pretty connected to the way that I personally became a Christian, and moving from having real objections to the idea of hell and punishment for something that we never would have done, that never would have existed if God hadn't created us in the first place, and he didn't need us. So I had all these objections to him kind of setting up this world where people could end up in hell. And the better question that I had, I never had to answer that question, but the better question I got that turned me away from that question was, basically based on this, based on the incarnation, based on the subversive, confusing way that Jesus goes about trying to save the world.
Because he has to suffer through it, because it is difficult, because he becomes so vulnerable, it kind of forces you to ask, instead of why would God create the world, there's like, why would God create the world, knowing what he had to go through? And that knowing, the fact that he knew that, that he had to suffer, that he had to become vulnerable, that he had to descend and lose privilege and lose power and all of those things in order to effectuate what he wanted to accomplish with the kingdom of God. That is a question that doesn't lead you away from Jesus, it leads you toward him. I think, I don't know, that that to me is always a very personally grounding aspect of the incarnation.
Jonathan: Absolutely. I mean, you, it sounds like you asking you the question, why would you do this to me? Then you're like, wait, why would you do this to yourself?
Sy: Yes.
[laughter]
Jonathan: Which changes it, right?
Sy: Yeah. I've also been thinking back a little bit to the conversation that we had with Rich, in our very first… no, our second episode, but the first interview that we did, you and I. His idea that the gospel is the announcement of the kingdom of God and the announcement of Jesus himself coming to earth. So not just salvation, he was like salvation is a part of it, but it's not the only thing. It is the announcement of the actual kingdom of God coming near. And what that means for us, and you pointed a little bit, or you alluded a little bit to this earlier. But Mary gets that immediately [laughs].
When the spirit, as the Bible says, enters Elizabeth, and she says to Mary, “Why am I so blessed that the mother of my Lord call on me?” I can't remember the exact words [laughs], but she then launches into The Magnificat, which has all of these lines about lifting up the humble and bringing down the proud from their thrones and filling the hungry with every good thing, and sending the rich away empty handed, and says nothing about the forgiveness of sins.
Jonathan: Right. It's true.
Sy: And it's like, she just understands what's happening to her on a level. On an immediate, intuitive level, kind of based on her position in society. She says right up top in The Magnificat, “Who am I? The Lord has blessed me and people will remember me for forever.” She very much understands her status now and the change in her status, and what that means for who God is and what he is trying to accomplish. And it's just, it's so… it's interesting that it's so different than the Christmas story or the salvation story that so much of us, so many of us grew up with. But it's also something that, immediately upon learning that she's pregnant, a 14-year-old girl understands [laughs].
Jonathan: Yes. That's where I think the idea of liberation was not far away from this occupied people. The idea of Jesus or the promise of a Messiah was not far away from these people. They wanted, we're waiting for God to come back. They were listening for that, the 400 years of silence and all those different things. They were looking for a Messiah, the one that was to come. It wasn't like, oh yeah, maybe he'll show up sometime. But these were active thoughts for a population of people that knew what that meant. So it could have been let's say like the Pharisees and the Sadducees, who spending time thinking about these things, all the way down to an illiterate 14-year-old girl. That like know, “oh, I know what that is.”
You know what I mean? And just as a tangent, that is very large. It's like one of the most subversive things about this incarnation, like is the, is our fathers use engagement with, love for, exaltation of women. It's not Joseph that gets the message, it's Mary. Zachariah did not believe it, Elizabeth did. Then you talk about the first evangelist was like the woman at the well. The first, the witnesses that testified to Jesus being resurrected, it's Mary. Like there's, the women are centered in these stories, in the scriptures, and they're named, and it is a, to go back to what you said before, it's how far we have strayed away from the subversiveness of the story to fit whatever narrative where, whatever narrative fits our needs for the day. When I say we, I use it very loosely because I ain't trying to do that.
[laughter]
Sy: Can I ask you, what have you told Maia about the incarnation? How have you explained Christmas to her?
Jonathan: Oh man.
Sy: Maia's Jonathan's five-year-old, if you don’t know.
Jonathan: We haven’t done the Luke 2 and all that stuff yet. The way that I've talked to her about Jesus is, in Christmas, is mostly through giving. So we give money every year as a family…
Sy: At Christmas?
Jonathan: At the end of the year, at Christmas time, yeah. This is the first year that Maia's kind of cognizant of it. So one of the organizations we support is the IRC- International Rescue Committee and…
Sy: Which settles refugees in the US.
Jonathan: Settles refugees in the US, absolutely. So I had some pretty, I don't know how young kids are supposed to be faced with these conversations, but we're having a conversation about the black national anthem and about slavery, and it just struck her. She goes like, “Will that ever happen to me,” that's what she said. I was like, “No.” I said, “We work really hard so that things like that don't happen to you or to anybody else.” And she's starting to understand that the world is not fair. So she's like, “Well, why doesn't this young girl in Ethiopia have enough food? And why doesn't this young boy, why is he in a camp in Syria? And why …?” And I said, and I talked about Bashar al-Assad. I talked about the war in Ethiopia. And the thing that I told her about Trump, is I said, “Maya, the problem that Trump has, is what he calls good is bad and what he calls bad is good.” I said, “That's the problem.” God says, do not exchange the truth for a lie, and don't call what's dark light and what's light, dark, you know? So that's how I explain these leaders to her. I said, “Some people are choosing to do these things.” And I said, “They want something more than they want God.” I said, “When that happens, we have to work hard to make sure that things that God wants in the world continue to happen.” And she gets that. She's like, “Oh, I want this kid to be able to go to school like me.” So the way that ties into Christmas, is that Jesus came so that these things might be fulfilled in full. So I say, “Hey, you can be sad about all these things right now, but Jesus came so that these… and then that actually ties into heaven, because in heaven these things don't happen.
It is all full and all good. Yeah. She's having a really hard time understanding right now that she is good, even though she makes mistakes. I can see it in her mind. She's like, she does something bad, we correct her and she cries. She goes, “I just think I'm a bad person.” And there's something beautiful about Jesus willing to come close to us and validate us. I think it's Sheldrake who said, if God was so ashamed of our bodies and humanity, he would have never wrapped himself in one. You know? Yeah, I'm really hoping she gets that.
Sy: Me too, and I bet everybody is, because that's adorable and sad and beautiful all at the same time [laughs].
Jonathan: The tension, right?
Sy: Yeah, exactly. Thank you for sharing that. I appreciate it. I think it's … I've never had to do that before, explain incarnation to a five-year-old [laughs]. So I just think the ways that people go about that are really reflective of their own discipleship. And I think that's a really interesting and cool way that you're trying to explain this and make it relevant to her actual experiences, like what she's going through, which I think is kind of the only real way to do discipleship.
Jonathan: Yeah. I'm bumbling along and all that, but I, trying to share with her just the beauty of it.
Sy: Okay. So the way that we're going to end this episode for you, Jonathan, he's done this on a bonus episode before, but he's going to do a poem for us. An advent poem that he wrote a long time. When did you write this one Jonathan?
Jonathan: I wrote this in 2007. Yeah It’s a long time ago.
Sy: Yeah, okay [laughs]. A long time ago. So before Jonathan takes us out on the poem, I just want to remind you all, please do follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @KTFPress. Please hit the subscribe or the follow button on your podcast player, go to Apple podcasts, leave us a rating and review if you can. Those things are really helpful if you have a couple extra minutes, and a little bit of Christmas generosity in your heart. If you wouldn't mind helping us out that way, we would really appreciate it. Thank you so much for listening, and here is Jonathan.
Jonathan: So In the morning, it's in the back of my mind ... by mid-day it's in the middle and by nighttime it's all I see with my eyes closed or open, because I don't want to miss it --- the moment when the east sky cracks and all that was taken is given back by He who made and gave it all away and gives and gives every good and perfect gift to us every single day -- to the faithful and the faith-less -- to hands held back and those extended --- to the priests and to the paupers, to the mockers and the scoffers -- to all He did come and is coming again and I can't wait ... to the ones who have been bombed and to the ones who dropped them, to those hard and guarded and those whose hearts are soft and longing for His coming---
so I'm praying for grace and patience that we might praise Him in the rain... and not run to the clubs or comforts and addictions, to not color reality with uppers and downers or things that keep us from feeling -- but instead run to the rock of our salvation, cling to the hem of His garment and say give me strength til I can see the days of revelation when every tribe and every nation will praise you in the heavenly places -- oh lord my God give us strength in our waiting, so that you might reclaim the pieces of your kingdom that the enemy has taken.
Messiah, you are coming but the time is not yet so give us faith to trust that our train has not left us behind and somehow we missed it --
because In the morning, it's in the back of my mind ... by mid-day it's in the middle and by nighttime it's all I see with my eyes closed or open, because I don't want to miss it -- the moment when the east sky cracks and all that was taken is given back by He who made and gave it all away and gives and gives every good gift to us every single day -- I don't want to miss it, and I just can't wait.
[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “And that you’re building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]
Jonathan: Yup
Sy: Alright
Jonathan: Let’s do it [clears throat]
Sy: You can’t hear that truck, okay. [inhales to begin speaking, and a loud truck horn blares]
[laughter]
Jonathan: On cue – [imitates truck horn]
Sy: You hear that – Yeah exactly. [laughs] Oh, New York …
