Stealing Jesus
Posted on December 17, 2013
This is a piece our Executive Director, Vangie Rodenbeck, wrote a few years ago at Christmas. It is a reflection on disability, the spirit of the holiday season, and our reaction to hardship as believers in Emmanuel – God with us.
Living day to day on the “autism spectrum” has changed our life. We have been forced to view each encounter and situation through a neurological lens. Questions like, “How will this event smell or sound?” and “How will his eyes process this event?” and “What hidden senses will be triggered by this event?”, are paramount to our success. And when I say event, I mean something as simple as a trip to the grocery store. Life is complicated.
So when we were on the way home from church last Sunday and I received a call notifying me that our home had been burglarized, we entered a trauma mode. Knowing where all of his possessions are is very important to Noah. Realizing that someone had 1). Entered our home in violence and 2). Possibly moved or touched some of his possessions or 3). Possibly stolen some of his possessions was traumatic. When Noah encounters a trauma his brain responds by shutting off what it perceives as non-essential functioning until the shock wears off. In most cases, Noah becomes a “selective mute”. While this once lasted for hours or days, now I can usually bring him around within a 60-minute period. All the way home I tried to equip Noah in these exact terms; “It’s alright because there is nothing they could take that we can’t replace. It is alright because the dogs are safe. It is alright because the police are there. It is going to be alright…”
He was eerily quiet as we got out of the car and proceeded into our home. At once, he began rummaging through his room in order to mentally catalog his prized possessions. Suddenly, he came running out into the living room. He made a beeline for the antique hutch where, just the night before, he had arranged our Nativity. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him snatch something and hold it tightly to his face. Then he ran to me and spoke the first words he had said since our trauma had begun: “Mom, it’s going to be alright because, look, they didn’t take our Jesus!” Then he unwrapped his small fingers from around a manger with Baby Jesus inside. “They didn’t take our Jesus, Mom! It’s going to be alright!”
I must confess, to this point I had been inventorying my biggest losses – my laptop and our 36-inch television. Suddenly time stood still for the police and other persons in the room as we realized there are some things that cannot be stolen. Later that evening Noah was headed out the door with his father to go and see Santa. He stopped at the threshold and turned to ask, “Hey Mom, I know everything is alright but I can I take Baby Jesus with me? I just want to hold him extra close for a while.”
While I had planned to chain my replacement laptop to my person, Noah was more concerned about holding Jesus more tightly. More than just a preoccupation with the arrangement of the Nativity, Noah saw the need to carry a part of it with him. I believe that, not only does Noah see his world Christologically, but also as a part of a bigger story. His responses to what others view as crisis and hardship consistently stun me into silence.
It’s not unusual for the autistic individual to maintain a different and fixed perspective on circumstances. For my son, this happens to include the idea that some situations are not about him. Maybe it is because he has been so trained to be continuously aware of his environment and his response to them. Has this taken him out of the center of his universe and somehow placed him on the outside looking in? I don’t know the answer and probably never will. In any case, it is clear that Noah knows his story is part of a bigger narrative.
Stanley Grentz maintained that knowing our place as a part God’s kingdom in relationship to the narrative of scripture is key to our theology. He writes,
“Narrative thinkers reminds us that we must view theology in terms of its relationship to the story of God’s action in history.” (Theology for the Community of God)
Being a thinker that is able to view their part in any circumstance as a smaller part of a greater work changes their entire perspective. Furthermore,
“….the revealed truth of God, which comes to us fundamentally in the narrative of God’s actions in the world, forms the ‘basic grammar’ that creates Christian identity…Rather than merely being a product of our experience, as certain strands of liberalism tend to argue, in an important sense this truth of God, this retold narrative, creates our experience.”
It is an identity crisis of sorts I suppose. Who are we? Why are we here? What is our purpose? Does God have a plan for my life? What does the Bible mean to me? Can all of those stories mean something today? How can I draw meaning from this book? All of these questions function in the same way. They ask “Who am I in the bigger story of the world?”
When I was in children’s ministry I had a phrase I said so often that the kids could mimic me with lethal accuracy. When I’d pick up my Bible I’d begin by saying, “This is God’s Book, the Bible…” Then they’d join in and finish the line: “and every word in it is true. It is one big story from beginning to end about how God is crazy in love with us!” More than just a collection of stories on par with Hans Christian Anderson, these stories are about us. They are the beginning of a narrative of which we are a part. When we see our lives as a continuation of God’s work since the creation of time, we should have an identity crisis. Grentz wrote, “The biblical narrative forms the foundation for a conceptual framework by means of which we view ourselves and our experience of the world.” No longer can we experience relationships, hardship, joy, adversity, hope or suffering without realigning our focus.
For some reason, this is Noah’s primary perspective. He is centered by the concept that he is a minor character in a larger drama that unfolds throughout time. In this instance, it manifested itself in a tight-fisted clinging to the manger. By wrapping his heart so fixedly around Christ, a violent invasion seemed nothing more than an affirmation of God’s story.
So for everyone who is wondering how we are making it – me and Noah and doing okay! After all we know our story. And they can’t steal our Jesus.