Let me begin with a wonderful quote from a recent newspaper article by Ian Corbin. “The anthropologist Margaret Mead was once asked to identify the earliest material sign of human civilization. Obvious candidates would be tool production, agricultural methods, art. Her answer was this: a 15,000-year-old femur that had broken and healed. The healing process for a broken femur takes approximately six weeks, and in that time, the wounded person could not work, hunt of flee from predators. He or she would need to be cared for, carried during that time of helplessness. This kind of support, Dr. Mead pointed out, does not occur in the rest of the animal kingdom, nor was it a feature of pre-human hominids. Our way of coping with weakness…is what sets us apart as a species.”
The language of Advent and Christmas will be all around us this month. We are focused on the birth of Jesus Christ over 2,000 years ago, which by faith, we profess to be God’s incarnation among us on earth. It’s true that 2,000 years was a very long time ago; but it’s also true that human beings developed and evolved for thousands of years prior to that first Christmas in Bethlehem. As much as we see the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus as the pivotal moment in history, it is important to remember how even that special event needed to be carefully prepared by a loving God.
Before Jesus, there was a time of turmoil, of world power shifting between Assyria, Babylon, Greece, and Rome. Before that, there were city-states rising and falling around the shoreline of the Mediterranean Sea, with the tribes of Israel ruled by prophets and kings. Before that, there were times of nomadic wandering from the Mesopotamian river valley to the land of ancient Palestine—a time shaped by the stories associated with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses.
And before that? The biblical record at that point becomes fuzzy. It tells sagas about creation, a huge flood, and a tower of Babel that led to people being scattered over the face of the Earth. Yet even those narratives affirm that God has been at work throughout the history of humankind.
If Margaret Mead is right, then our way of coping with weakness and acting compassionately toward one another is what sets us apart as a species. Fifteen thousand years ago, hominids cared for one of their own with a broken leg—giving protection and providing care to one made vulnerable by mishap or age. What can we do today so that our modern human species might be known by the same quality?
That is a critical question at Christmastime. The incarnation of Christ was the fullest expression of God’s compassion for us—a pattern of love that stretches back to our earliest days as a species and that stretches forward to whatever horizon lies ahead of us. For in the fullness of time, a helpless child was born; a Savior was entrusted to us. May we honor the love at the heart of the Christmas miracle by “paying it forward,” by responding to the needs of those around us with compassion, care, and gratitude. For that is what makes us truly human and reflects the image of God.
—Randy Bush