God’s Christmas Kiss
It is Christmas Eve, the night when God comes for us, comes in the only way we could receive God-with-us.
If the infinite God is to reach us finite humans, there will have to be some translation, some accommodation. And all the work will have to be on God’s part.
There is an affecting story, told by the surgeon and writer Richard Seltzer in his book, Mortal Lessons: Notes on the Art of Surgery, about a young woman with a tumor in her cheek. In order to excise the tumor, Seltzer is forced to cut a tiny but important nerve which controls the muscles on one side of her mouth. The woman is scarred for life, her face slightly droopy on one side, her smile crooked.
Dr. Seltzer writes of his visit to her hospital room after the surgery.
I stand by the bed where a young woman lies, her face postoperative, her mouth twisted in palsy, clownish. A tiny twig of her facial nerve, the one to the muscles in her mouth, has been severed. She will be thus from now on. As a surgeon, I had followed with religious fervor the curve of her flesh, I promise you that. Nevertheless, to remove the tumor in her cheek, I had to cut the little nerve.
Her young husband is in the room. He stands on the opposite side of the bed, and together they seem to dwell in the evening lamplight, isolated from me, private. “Who are they,” I ask myself, “he with his wry mouth who gaze and touch each other so generously?”
The woman speaks:
“Will my mouth always be like this?” she asks.
“Yes,” I say. “It is because the nerve was cut.”
She nods, is silent. But the young man smiles.
“I like it,” he says. “It’s kind of cute.”
All at once I know who he is. I understand, and I lower my gaze. One is not bold in an encounter with a god. Unmindful of my presence, he bends to kiss her crooked mouth, and I’m so close I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate hers, to show her that their kiss still works.
I remember that the gods appeared in ancient Greece as mortals, and I hold my breath and let the wonder in.
So God comes to us, accommodates his lips to ours in the form of a human child, to breathe into us the breath of life, and, yes, to give us the kiss of joy and delight.
My sister had a tumor growing in her brain from birth and it kept growing and was pushing against other organs and had to be removed. Her partner was/is much older than she and we used to give my sister a hard time about feeding her partner mushed peas in her older years. Instead, the surgery damaged several major nerves in her brain that left my sister walking with a cane, loss of peripheral vision, and partial facial paralysis so the roles became reversed. Her partner was with her every step of the way and I am especially thankful this time of year that an angel is among us.
Thanks for that story, Matt–for reminding us to look for the angels among us.
David–the perfect Christmas story. Love came down at Chrstmas. Thank you!
Indeed. Merry Christmas.
I need that love so much! May this new born infant help my Godaughter who lost not only her father 10 days ago, but her husband to a heart attack during the night on Christmas morning.
I will pray for her, for me, and her mother to try to understand this terrible time. I pray to have some way to help her in the days ahead.
Ginny – and Joe as well.