Osler's Razor

Advent calls us to do something I am terrible at: to still ourselves. I am someone who usually has a lot going on, often at the same time. That tumult to me is blood coursing through my veins, keeping me alive. But I know that there are times to be quiet and wait. So I struggle to do that, and sometimes I succeed.

Last week, I went for a walk and looked in through a window in a house. There was a kitchen and a little living area with a couch. A woman was chopping something in the kitchen, and a man was reading a book to a child on the couch. I tried not to stare, but it was compelling. It was their home; they were doing the things you do at home. As I reflected later--in a moment of quiet--on that scene, my mind went someplace unexpected. I suppose that does happen when we still ourselves.

It was this: One thing we don't know anything about is Jesus's house as an adult. Isn't that kind of weird? He traveled a lot, of course, and is often described visiting others and staying with them, but not until this week did I even wonder if he had a home and what it would have been like. When he retreats to quiet, it is to the wilderness. When he dines with others, it is at someone else's house (ie, Martha and Mary) or outside (the breakfast in John 21) or in a kind of meeting hall (the Upper Room).

I suppose he might have been homeless, in a strict sense.

Or, I suppose, in just the normal sense.

And that changes everything, doesn't it?

How much lower could Jesus's status have been? Homeless, poor, at odds with the religious authorities, without possessions to speak of, at one point an infant whose parents sought asylum, and eventually imprisoned and killed-- that is the position God gave to his son.

Shouldn't that tell us what it is that is important, where virtue can be found? Or, at least, what we should not scoff at and denigrate?

To those who think that the worthy are marked by wealth: why, then, is this our savior?