“When did we see you naked?” Matt. 25:35-36

I love the manger scene for it’s sweet sentimentality, but not for it’s reality. It simply wasn’t like that! At least not initially. For as hard as Christians try to “dress up” Christmas—and dress up for it—the truth is that God comes to us naked!

The baby in Bethlehem was born naked. Just like every other baby ever born. The warm, fuzzy image of Mary wrapping him in “swaddling clothes” (some sort of rags, evidently) came after he passed out of her blessed womb and into this world. When He did He was covered with blood and mucus and meconium and amniotic fluid, just like every other baby ever born. Try to put that on a Christmas card! The only thing that didn’t cover him was sin (had to include that to appease the literalists that might be reading this). The baby Jesus was, quite frankly, a mess. A beautiful mess. But a mess nonetheless. It was a messy, messy birth. Naked.

It still rubs proper protestants, and perhaps other brands of Christians, the wrong way. There is an aversion to things having to do with the body. The worst sins in the opinion of the “religious types” and church leaders are sins of the flesh. Sexuality and such are the hot sins. Funny, Jesus doesn’t spend nearly as much time on those as He does on greed and being ungracious and judgmental of others—sins that are pretty much passed over by the majority of preachers and their parishioners. Ironically it is NAKED in the flesh that God comes to us.

He also died naked. I can’t think of any work of art or painting that portrays Jesus that way. But that’s the way he died. The Roman executioners were not concerned at all about being “proper” or trying to maintain a modicum of modesty. Jesus died naked, exposed for all the world to see. That’s how we see God, and how God is seen!

Not only in Christ Jesus, but in others. When we look at the poor, the hungry, the hurting, the homeless, the destitute . . . all those who are naked be it literally or figuratively . . . we are looking at God. We are seeing Jesus. Jesus makes that abundantly clear! Note here, He doesn’t ever say that He is seen in churches or in buildings or in rituals or in decorations or even in sacraments—those are dogmas and doctrines that have been developed. He does say that He is seen in people! In people who are hurting like He was hurt on the cross, and people who are homeless like He was in His birth. That is REALLY clear. So clear, in fact, that He connects it to eternal salvation. Read the rest of that part from Matthew. It’s impressive! The beatific vision can occur now, in the present, as God is seen through eyes of faith in nakedness! Not only His nakedness, not only the nakedness of others, but our own.
Here is where it really, really gets difficult for us! We desire to dress ourselves up for God. Ok, I won’t assume anything about you so I’ll speak for myself. I have done my best to impress God by trying to be something or someone that I’m not. I’ve hidden under the pastoral robes of self-righteousness. I REALLY did believe that God was impressed not only with my position but with my person as well. And you know, here’s the thing, dressing myself up not only prevented me from seeing myself clearly, I also couldn’t see God! He was hidden to me. It wasn’t until God started to strip me down, and expose who I REALLY am, that I began to see not only myself but also God.

And who am I? I’m a naked baby covered in all that beautiful messiness. And I’m a dying man being crucified daily not by the sins of others, but my own. But MOST importantly, I’m a dearly loved child of God. There’s an awful lot I don’t know about God—a realization that came after I got naked—but I do know this: God looks at me like Mary most certainly looked at Jesus, with adoration and adulation. God adores me! And God adores you! Just like we are. We are His beautiful creation! His dearly loved children. No dressing up needed.