Choosing Vulnerability
Advent- Week 2
Human babies are wildly vulnerable little creatures. We can’t hold up our heads. We can’t feed ourselves. We can’t walk for a long time. There is a little spot at the top of our heads where you can just poke our brains. Creator’s choice to arrive on earth as a human baby is still something I find quite mysterious and weird.
When I’m trying to shake loose from the interpretations of the Bible that I grew up with, I will step back and imagine Jesus’ life as performance art. The cross. The time in the desert. Making men feed thousands of women and children food. It helps my imagination activate and shake loose of the rigid interpretations I was given.
Being born as a baby is such an extreme and extended piece of performance art. Because it is so vulnerable. Jesus is so vulnerable. So at the mercy of his parents, the violent regime he was born under, the sicknesses of his time.
On March 21, 1965 at Carnegie Recital Hall, Yoko Ono staged a performance art piece called “Cut Piece” that has implanted itself into my imagination ever since I saw it. The premise is simple and well described here.
Ono near the beginning of the performance, which can be viewed HERE.
“Ono kneels on an empty stage with a pair of scissors in front of her. She says nothing except to outline the parameters of the performance- the audience members are welcome to come on stage one by one, cut off any piece of her clothing and take the piece back to their seat as a souvenir; the ending of the performance is decided by Ono in the moment. At first, the audience is hesitant- they come up and cut small pieces of her shirt or skirt and hastily return to their seats. However as the performance goes on, they become bolder. A man comes up and cuts off the front of her bra, and another cuts off the strap- at this point Ono brings her hands up to cover up her body. It continues like this for some time before Ono ends it.
This performance is meant to bring the audience into the work itself and have the artist and the audience interacting on an intimate level. Art to Ono is no longer about the artist giving the audience the established, final product. It is instead about the audience influencing the art.”*
When I think of the birth of Jesus, I think of Ono’s performance art piece. I can not watch her performance all the way through, because it makes me so uncomfortable. She is so vulnerable. And you can see that the audience members, and particularly the men, are enjoying the opportunity to cut off the clothing of this Japanese woman as she sits in silence. Her vulnerability is palpable and disconcerting.
Ono further into the performance piece.
I feel the same way about Jesus as baby. He is so dependent and vulnerable, it can be distressing to watch. “This performance is meant to bring the audience into the work itself and have the artist and the audience interacting on an intimate level. Art to Ono is no longer about the artist giving the audience the established, final product. It is instead about the audience influencing the art”. If you apply this description to Jesus’ choice to live as a human, it refreshes the intimacy of each human interaction.
Part of what has robbed us of this vulnerability is theologies of predestination and ideas like omnipotence. These theologies make every outcome a forgone conclusion, and Jesus is performing. But now he is not performing true vulnerability, he is pretending to have emotions, while living in the safety of forgone conclusions. This theology positions Jesus as an actor, one who is pretending to be a human, but is actually an all knowing being wrapped in a flesh costume. An actor who has read the whole play, and must now pretend that something is at stake.
The vulnerability of Jesus’ choice to become a baby, is obscured by institutional Christianity which has replaced vulnerability and Jesus’ humanity- with absolutes, rigid dogma, control, and an obsession with power. Institutional Christianity loathes true vulnerability.
We must now choose what we think is happening in the story. Is the art of Jesus’ birth that he is truly vulnerable and present and human? Or is it that he is very good at acting human, but inside it is all pretend?
I personally don’t accept the theologies that everything is set, decided, controlled, destined. I think they are patriarchal frameworks interested in control and too afraid of the possibility that Jesus was here, living the true authentic vulnerability of being a human.
Jesus doesn’t stay aloof. He doesn’t start as an elder, a teacher, a leader, or even just as an adult. He lets his tiny baby self be tossed around by terrorizing edicts to murder infants, the displacement of being a refugee in Egypt, the day to day need to be fed and nourished, cared for, and raised. Advent is the time to ponder the implications of this choice.
The world is a harsh place and it can make us callous. It can scar us and wound us. It can teach us to raise a thousand defenses to feel protected. But this bizarre and radical piece of performance art by Jesus, which leaves him at the mercy of the “audience” for decades, confronts that tendency. It speaks to that part of me that is wounded and tired. That part of me that would choose anger as the container for my hurt. Or shit talking. Or silence. It invites me to stay open and tender- even if it is only to witness Jesus choosing this radical and bizarre act of vulnerability.
*Article by Meg DiRuggiero on Bates.edu
