It might seem odd to begin Lent with a painting of the Christmas-Nativity. Not at all. It's an image of the Incarnation. A young Carthusian monk wrote home telling his family that in the Charterhouse (a Carthusian monastery) his favorite feast day was Christmas, even though there was no Christmas tree, no gifts, no cards, no manger scene, no carols. "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us." That's the Incarnation. When I was a boy, those words signaled hundreds of people in a packed church to genuflect in unison as we recited the Nicene Creed. The Incarnation is for everyday — it's the Christian heartbeat. When I embrace the Incarnation, nothing is again the same.
Painted between 1888-1889, this work is a triptych — a painting in three parts. It is one way of showing the different aspects of the story and bringing them into a unified whole. Of the four Gospels, Matthew and Luke tell the story of Jesus' birth. That story has fascinated artists for centuries.
It is winter. At the center and looking through the open doorway beyond, we see the trees are bare. We might imagine we can hear the wind whipping through the place—a decaying barn or shed—an abandoned place. Mary is on a mattress that's been left on the floor. Not the kind of place one would hope to deliver a baby. The young mother is poor but not depicted as from the ancient world.
Mary is at the center. We know who she is as there is a pale aureole or body-halo around her. The Mother and Child are facing each other. Indeed, Mary's eyes are riveted on the child. Is he sleeping? Perhaps he's just been fed. Mary's hands are folded. She is the first disciple, teaching us from the start, that if we are to access the Glory, we must be people of prayer. What's the glory? That God is not fed up with us, gotten bored with us nor furiously angry with us, but has come down to be with us in our poverty and ignorance.
Notice that a great earth-colored cloak has been spread out over Mary. The Jesus-child is like a seed sprouting out of the ground of humankind. The lantern on the wall casts a glow. Jesus said, "I am the light of the world."
In the left corner there is a pile of rags where we see Joseph seated on the bottom rung of the ladder leading to the loft. Is he shown sitting at the bottom of the ladder because he is awaiting the elevation of his thoughts to God's thoughts? But for now he is perplexed, facing outside. He is trying to make sense of all this. There is the dawn sky. Joseph will come to an understanding (a dawning) sufficient for him to undertake the role of guardian and protector to both the mother and her child.
Remember the song of Zechariah (John the Baptist's father - Luke 1:78): "Because the heart of our God is merciful, and so the day will dawn upon us from on high, to shine on men who sit in darkness and the shadow of death, and guide our feet into the way to peace." What's this dawning? The dawning of salvation? What's that? The start of a new kind of human person. The dawning of a new way of being with God and one another.
On the left we see a little procession of shepherds. They are an image of humankind dressed in rags— humanity, old and stooped. They carry sticks as they stumble along—again an image of humankind navigating the rough terrain of history. History is fundamentally the telling of the human story from one war to the next. Looking like a ruined landscape, there is a wall of earth and roots behind them. A lantern has been placed on the path-floor as if the travelers have just arrived at the place where they've been told they'll find the child. The lantern reminds me of the paraffin lanterns Carthusian monks carry through dark corridors on their way to chapel where they pray together from 11 PM to 2 AM. While the world sleeps the monks keep prayerful vigil.
On the right there is a whimsical scene—child-angels sit on rafters, dangling their feet, singing their Christmas night song. As if they are corporeal, they have entered through the ruined roof. The angel on the far right holds the musical score. I especially like this piece of the triptych—a reminder to have some fun, that religion can get terribly bogged down in debates, fights, divisions, disciplines, punishment and institutional problems. I often have the sense that more than a few religious people believe that their work is to exhaust themselves in the effort to get to heaven. But it's really the other way around isn't it—the first movement (of our religion any way) is heaven's descending to be with us here below. The priest-poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote that in Christ, heaven has descended to us from above and that Christ would have come to us even if there had never been any great Adam and Eve fall. That Christ would have come, simply for love of us.
This story told by Matthew and Luke, and which Fritz von Uhde has depicted, is a very great drama. It is heaven's lesson of simplicity. God's simplicity. A divine-child crying for his mother's milk. No stripes on sleeves. No designating headgear. No colored capes, buttons and sashes. No decorations, medals, insignia. No titles. No initials after a name. No certificate-diploma wall. The simplicity of God!
O Jesus,
may we know you in simplicity,
as light —
of a new day,
of a new way.
even as we stumble along
a wrong path,
cold, dark and easily chosen.
May we find our way back to the light.
