I came across this passage the other day. It’s also from The Hungering Dark by Frederick Buechner. I didn’t quite finish the book because I wanted to pass it on to a friend. But not before scribbling down a few more wise words:
The vulgarity of a God who adorns the sky at sunrise and sundown with colors no decent painter would dream of placing together on a single canvas, the vulgarity of a God who created the world full of hybrids like us—half ape, half human—and who keeps breaking back into the muck of this world. The vulgarity of a God who was born into a cave among hicks and the steaming dung of beasts only to grow up and die on a cross between crooks. The vulgarity of a God who tampers with the lives of crooks, of clowns like me to the point where we come among crooks and clowns like you with white paint and a brush of our own and nothing more profound to say, nothing more precious and crucial to say finally than just Yes, it is true. He does save—Jesus. He gives life, he makes whole, and if you choose to be, you will be with him in Paradise.**
I just consulted with my good friends Merriam & Webster for a good definition of “vulgar.” Among the possibilities are ordinary, relating to common people, lacking in taste, ostentatious or excessive, offensive, and profanely indecent. I knew there were at least a few possibilities but that is quite a range.
When reading, I had to stop and think about this passage. In context, what seems to me to be standard definitions “ordinary” or “profane” were not making much sense. But I kept thinking. “Ostentatious,” “excessive” and “offensive” give these thoughts a profound and deeply beautiful meaning. God ostentatiously throws color on the sky each morning, God excessively and persistently keeps breaking through the darkness of this world, God offensively upends the world order with Christ’s love and grandiose grace.
God doesn’t make earthly sense. And God is vulgar in the best way. Offensive, excessive in display, ostentatious, on occasion profanely indecent, extreme, brazen, grandiose, showy. I don’t understand God. I enjoy marveling at the mystery that is God. God relates, provides, cares, and loves in excessive and ostentatious ways. These actions are not carefully measured out; they are luxuriously and abundantly given because after all, grace is excessive and vulgar. Maybe it is time to learn how to be a bit more holy and vulgar at the same time.
**Pg. 67 in The Hungering Dark by Frederick Buechner (San Francisco: Harper & Row Publishers, 1969).
[a]live life 