We’ve reached the end of the Christmas season. Today, Luke’s shepherds and angels yield to Matthew’s magi with their exotic gifts. Tomorrow is the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord. On Tuesday, with a sigh of sadness or possibly relief, we return to Ordinary Time. As we put away our nativity sets, it may be comforting to remember John’s description of the Incarnation, which needs no crèche to hold it:
“And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” (John 1:14)
Often, nuances of familiar passages can reveal themselves in unfamiliar translations. Using Bible Gateway, I discovered that the Orthodox Jewish Bible (a 21st century English translation drawing on Yiddish and Hebrew cultural expressions) tells us that “the Dvar Hashem (Word of God) made his sukkah among us.” This is a poignant image for those of us blessed to live in Jewish neighborhoods, where even Catholics know it’s the Feast of Sukkot because of the sukkahs that spring up in nearby yards—or, for the yardless, on decks and balconies.
My favorite translation, however, may be the Message Bible’s chatty paraphrase: “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.”
What each of these translations captures in its own way is the startling proximity to which God committed in the Incarnation—experiencing life among and as one of us. This has me musing about times when I have experienced the goodness of proximity with others, or what I’ve taken to calling The Grace of Pajamas.
Three times during this season, Porter and I have awakened in someone else’s home—with family over Christmas and New Year’s weekends, and now in Boston, at the home of fellow pilgrims from our Ignatian Camino. As fun as it is to talk on the phone or go out to dinner, there’s nothing quite like sharing space: encountering sleepy relatives or friends over the coffee pot, experiencing their morning routines, cooking together, visiting the local shops that mark their days, accompanying them on their favorite walks or to their beloved place of worship. There’s a quality of conversation that unfolds over time, an intimacy that grows from the simple sharing of life.
Such opportunities are as golden as they are rare. We can’t do it with everyone; a certain threshold of comfort precedes the invitation to pajamas. But these encounters point—as all good and beautiful things do—to an everyday truth. In Jesus, God has taken on flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood. God shares life with us not just in the special times, but especially in the ordinary ones.
The One who made us and loves us and knows us better than we know ourselves promised to be with us always (and thus in all ways). We don’t need to clean up for God. We don’t need to put our face on. We just need to say, Welcome!
In this new year, as you go about the ordinary routines of your days . . . coffee pot, meal prep, dishes, laundry, work, errands, rinse, repeat . . . may you know God’s startling proximity, trust God’s abiding friendship, and experience the grace of those divine pajamas.
Christine Marie Eberle 