On December of 1989, President George H.W. Bush ordered the invasion of Panama to apprehend General Manuel Noriega and bring him to the United States to faces charges of drug trafficking. When the American troops landed, General Noriega went into hiding and it was widely speculated that he had disappeared into that tropical country's thick jungles. However, on Christmas Eve, he showed up at the door of the Vatican Embassy requesting asylum. The ambassador was about to turn him away when the embattled general pleaded with him, "All over the world, priests are preaching about how there was no room for Jesus in the inn. This is a chance for you to practice what your Church teaches." The ambassador recognized that it was Jesus visiting him that night, and, moved by his words, he allowed General Noriega to stay in the Vatican Embassy.
We call it the "scandal of the Incarnation." Even as Jesus' birth inspired awe and wonder in the shepherds, it provoked fear in King Herod and disdain in the religious leaders. God cannot become man; or at least not such a weak and poor man as Jesus was. It continues to be a stumbling block for the atheists of our day who state that if God does exist and if he did become a man, why would he not show himself more plainly? Why would he come among us as a baby? Our familiarity with the Christmas story has cushioned much of the shock that the Eternal Word would become a baby born into homelessness and poverty. But for anyone who would stand before a manger scene and take to heart its true meaning, it continues to be a stunning revelation of the depth and breadth of God's love.
We would like to think that we are different than the religious and political leaders of Jesus' day. We would like to think that we would make haste to the stable, take our newborn Savior in our arms and pledge him our eternal devotion. But our King appears to us in hundreds of scandalous ways throughout our lives just as he appeared in the form of a corrupt dictator twenty years ago at the Vatican Embassy in Panama. He can appear in the form of a disinterested teenager unwilling to acknowledge our hello. He can enter our lives as a pesky ex-husband late on his alimony check. He can visit us as a drunk uncle vomiting into the punch bowl at Christmas dinner. Or he can appear as an unplanned pregnancy. We might even turn out to be Christ to someone, not because of our goodness and talents, but precisely because we are a burden to them. Now that God has taken on our flesh, there are no bounds to the masks he can now wear.
Because of his love, God cannot stop tinkering with his creation. He cannot stop interrupting our history with eruptions of his grace and love. We must be ready, because he will make a cameo in our lives in a most unexpected way. We cannot bow before Jesus in the creche, and then reject him when he visits us in the flesh.
