God With Skin On

Christmas reflections on the gift of the Incarnation

The Incredulity of Saint Thomas - by Caravaggio

“Put your Finger Here”

Whenever I look at The Incredulity of Saint Thomas by Caravaggio, I admit, I find myself feeling slightly put off by the scene. Thomas’ close proximity to Jesus side, pressing his finger into the opening in Jesus’ flesh, even Caravaggio’s depiction of the skin slightly stretching as Thomas really presses to be sure God indeed has “skin on.”

I feel uneases as I look at it.

As I examine the piece, there is something in the back of my mind shouting, “get your finger out of there! You have no business getting that close to God!”

Yet Jesus himself invites Thomas to be that close, to see that God indeed had skin on.

“Put your finger here, and look at my hands. Put your hand into the wound in my side. Don’t be faithless any longer. Believe!” (John 20:27).

I find it fascinating that Jesus does not say to his disciple, “you must come to a spiritual understanding by searching the scriptures and praying that you believe.” Jesus instead says, “touch me.” There is something visceral in God becoming human and inviting human touch. It seems wrong.

We often have good reason to think it is wrong. Many do not have good experiences with touch.

Those who have been harmed, physically or sexually.

Those who have experienced touch as manipulation or control.

Those who have been raised in Christian environments that minimize the need for appropriate affection between parent and child or even between friends.

All of these environments can cultivate in us a suspicion of any invitation to touch God.

Yet Jesus knows only how to redeem touch.

Jesus, the incarnated Word of God, knows how to present Godself as flesh that redeems even our suspicion and fear of touch.

The invitation to touch Jesus is healing.

Caravaggio reminds us that God is kind and is willing to be experienced through touch so we too can believe. We need moments of confirmation like Thomas, to know that God is with us.

It is no less than Jesus invites us to expect of God.

God With “Skin On”

When I was a teenager, my family walked through a very trying season when my dad was abruptly let go from his ministry job for inexplicable reasons.

It was unjust, painful, and scary. It was also right before the holidays.

Without realizing it at the time, this experience would shape my theology in profound ways. It taught me that the way God chooses to be revealed to us is often with “skin on” and that, just like Jesus with Thomas, I should expect it to be this way.

One month during this trying season, we were not going to make the mortgage payment. I was just old enough to be aware of mortgage payments and electric bills, but young enough to feel powerless to do anything about it.

I remember my mom sharing her prayers with us. She was begging God to help us and said one day in prayer something to the effect of, “God, these are the moments when we need to know that you are real, like you have skin on!”

A few days later, we got a call from a friend of a friend of a friend who had randomly heard about someone struggling to make a mortgage payment around the holidays.

My mother answered the phone.

The man told us he wanted to pay our mortgage that month. After the initial surprise, he explained that he felt led to do it because “sometimes we just need to know that God has skin on.”

Stunned.

The man who called was not a person of significant means, he drove a truck for a living, but he did love Jesus, the God with skin on.

The Word Without Words

I’m more convinced than ever that we need experiences of God “with skin on,” in order to know that we know that we know that God loves us and is with us.

Christmas brings this reality front and center.

It brings to our attention the irony of God with skin on. Where God would not only enter the human condition, but would become vulnerable to humans.

That, “the Word became human,” meant that the Word would have no words to tell his mother when he was hungry. Quite a vulnerable experience. What must that have been like for the Word?

What must that have been like for Mary, who nursed Jesus, cleaned his poop (however they did that in the first century), and tried to figure out what the Word needed without words, only cries?

It surely was part of the pondering she did in her heart (Luke 2:19) as she tried to make sense of everything Gabriel, the shepherds, wise men and Jesus himself would say and do.

“The Word became human,” meant that Thomas could see and believe through pressing his finger and hand into Jesus’ hand and side. He could experience that God was with him. What must that have been like?

My mother and our family, removed from Jesus’ physical body, but also very close to it through the church, found ourselves experiencing God with skin on through another Christian: one who had met the Word who once had no words.

All of this is part of the Christmas reality.

That we are drawn close to a God revealed in the human flesh of Jesus is exhilarating and terrifying, awe inspiring and scandalous.

But it is also the point of Christmas.

Christmas is the dawning of God with skin on. The age when God comes close and invites us in all our humanness to experience God like my family did, like Mary did, like Thomas did.

In ways that may seem incredulous and inappropriate, but are exactly what we need in to believe.

Quite honestly, the weight of life is too much for anything but having a God with us who has been revealed with skin on. To show us that we are loved. That we can be cared for in our darkest days. That we can be healed of the vilest touch.

The good news of Christmas is that God has skin on. He has invited us to come close. To put our fingers into the flesh of Christ, so-to-speak, and believe that God is with us.

Amen.