The End of Hiding
In the tumult, excitement, and oddity of the Christmas story, it’s easy to overlook the unique timeframe Joseph and Mary were enjoying before everything changed. Joseph and Mary were pledged to be married. This was a highly exciting time. If you’ve ever been engaged, you know. If you’ve ever longed for a big day, a new start, a deep sense of companionship or family, you know. The amount of looking forward, counting down, anticipating, longing…it’s hard to overestimate how that kind of energy captivates and takes over.
After Mary was visited by the angel, said ‘yes’, and became pregnant, we discover that Joseph was submerged in a very different experience relative to Mary’s. The big day was coming and he was likely surrounded by anticipation and excitement from his friends, family, and community and within that kind of public and communal milieu, Mary tells him, “Joseph, I’m pregnant….the baby isn’t yours. It’s a crazy story. Hold on, let me explain.” You see, at some point, the events unfolding before him were crushing, confusing, and humiliating. Before Joseph knew God was involved, he likely felt God forsaken.
Understandably, all of this was too much for Joseph to take in. The text tells us in the in-between-time of finding out about Mary being pregnant and not understanding the meaning of what had taken place, Joseph was planning to dissolve their engagement. He was planning to break it off. The text also tells us that Joseph was a righteous man who did not want to embarrass Mary or expose her to a brutal public shaming, so he sought to dissolve the relationship as quietly as possible.
I picture Joseph during this time as a man who looked wounded, lost and confused. He probably tried to go about his usual routine only to come up short staring off into the distance. His conversations with people probably gave off the impression he was hiding from something and not at home with himself. His sleep was likely choppy. His world had been flipped upside down.
Joseph wrestled with a lot of questions during those in-between-days but I think, in his context, one of the most painful and difficult dynamics could be summed up this way: his situation didn’t look good. For men in his setting, a culture steeped in honor and shame, how things looked was how things were. Joseph’s status, the way he saw himself, the way others looked at him was about to change dramatically for the worse and there wasn’t much he could do about it. His only solace was found in trying to stay quiet and out of sight. He found temporary comfort in hiding.
Making sure we look good is a way of life that eventually becomes exhausting and brutal. This is a difficult, ugly thing to face but it’s real so let’s not pretend. We live in a world that values and celebrates people when they keep things looking good. We also live in a world that discards people when they don’t.
I’m thinking of Instagram and the ways we’re learning that once a young girl is lured into playing the game of keeping things looking good, the cycle becomes unsustainable and often leads to depression. And it’s not just depressing for the ones who don’t get the likes…it’s depressing for all who feel trapped in the grind of maintaining a particular image.
I’m thinking of a heart-breaking story I heard this week that unfolded in the 80’s…a story of a married man with kids, a committed Jesus follower, who lived a complicated and conflicted existence. He identified, in secret, to being same sex attracted, yet felt he couldn’t find a community of people where he could step forward, be known, and receive the support and acceptance needed to find a path of congruency and transparency. Sadly, he carried his questions and confusions in private and died of aids in a time period that demonized men like him. Like so many others, it could be said he died of secrecy, fear, and shame. Given what he saw happening around him, he concluded that he would be discarded if he were known, so he suffered in silence.
I’m also thinking of myself and the ways this cycle of trying to look good keeps me from experiencing love and acceptance. When I play along with the idea that I’ll be loved and accepted if I keep things looking good, my words and movements become more like performances than expressions born of authenticity. When I buy into the notion that how I’m seen is determinative of my value and standing, I limit the possibility of being known for who I really am and in doing so, limit the reach of love. Ironically, when I’m most interested in being seen as good by others, I’m also most prone to hiding.
Left to ourselves, this cycle of image management is exhausting and brutal. To address this by saying ‘let’s just be real, let’s not live our lives for how things look’ is one thing and it might be a helpful start in the right direction but it’s not enough, it’s woefully inadequate…it assumes we can find peace by removing the problem. But, we need something far more than that. We need new ground to stand on that provides a healthy way of relating to ourselves and others. We need grace.
Grace is what we need but it’s often in such short supply, it’s hard to even know what it looks like or how it works. In a culture obsessed with making things look good in order to find acceptance, grace is very hard to understand. Why? Grace isn’t something you get ready for. Grace isn’t something you posture or position yourself to receive. Grace is the gift of being held and included when your back is against the wall, when you can’t make it look good, when you’re in a spot that feels like death to be seen by others. The heart of the matter is this: we experience grace within the context of being seen and loved precisely when we don’t look good, not after things are cleaned up. Joseph, in a moment he never could have anticipated or arranged, was invited by the grace of God to know he was loved and accepted right in the middle of a situation that looked bad. He was invited by the grace of God to experience love beyond fear in a situation that didn’t have an easy explanation in his community. He was invited to discover that God was with him even when he looked bad, which, it turns out, is a life altering discovery. The power and mystery of grace is experienced when we are fully seen in a bad spot and loved anyway rather than discarded. Not loved after we make it right or after we make it look good. Loved anyway.
Advent invites us to base our lives on the grace of God rather than how things look. This story invites us to come out from under the burden of managing how we are perceived. That’s where Joseph was, and if that’s where he had stayed, the story wouldn’t have ended well. But something else happened, a breakthrough took place. In a dream, Joseph was visited by the grace of God and let in on the reality of what was really taking place, which was this: God was breaking into our world in a very weird, disruptive and unusual way. Once Joseph saw the presence of God in his circumstances, he was invited to step out of fear and hiding and into love—he was invited to embrace his life, to become at home with himself and his situation.
We live in a world where maintaining an image feels normal…even reasonable. It’s hard to imagine a different way. Yet, when the grace of God breaks through, the status quo is exposed for what it is…exhausting. When we see things clearly we realize it’s not the grace of God that’s unreasonable, it’s remaining under the exhausting and brutal burden of trying to look good.
In what ways are you tired of trying to look good? Maybe it’s the image of the mom successfully holding one million things together? Maybe it’s the image of the successful man on his way up? Maybe it’s the image of always being invited to the party, looking good and having lots of friends? God comes to us today, through this story, precisely in the places we feel exhausted, worn out and scared and tells us we don’t have to live under that pressure anymore. The grace of God, which we could never prepare for, comes, joins us in the dark and invites us into a new beginning…a beginning that starts with the end of hiding.
— Josh VonGunten
