Jesus Is Unashamed to Take Awkward Family Christmas Photos

Have you ever heard the phrase “awkward family photos”? They are exactly what they sound like.

We have friends who take awkward family photos every year and include them on their Christmas cards. Thankfully, my friends are self-aware of their own awkwardness. For them, it’s become a game to see who can figure out what movie or cryptic pop culture reference they are trying to spoof.

Of course, sometimes people take awkward family photos, and they are very much not self-aware; they don’t realize how goofy the photos look. There’s even a company that monetizes the awkwardness by selling awkward merch.

This discussion makes me think that Hebrews 2:11 is a meaningful reflection for Christmas. Speaking of Jesus, the author writes, “He is not ashamed to call them brothers.” Who are these people that Jesus is unashamed to call his siblings? It’s not the photogenic professional models Jesus loves. He welcomes the awkward and the outcast, the sinful and the sad.

In many ways, the Old Testament can be seen as a massive coffee-table photo book. Sometimes the photos are stunning. But for any Old Testament family with a decent collection of pictures, there are—without exception—some awkward family photos. We read about priests and kings, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, who we’d be ashamed to claim as family. Would Abraham have stuck Lot’s picture on his fridge at Christmas? Would you?

And as I read the New Testament, especially the stories in the Gospels, and see the kinds of people Jesus befriended, I think, “Well, this could be volume II in that coffee table series.”

Jesus befriended Jewish tax collectors, the equivalent of those who worked in organized crime. It would be one thing for a Gentile to join the mob, but for a Jew to do that to other Jews was much worse than awkward. And yet, right there in the photo of the twelve leaders is Matthew. 

I think of the sick and suffering who constantly clung to Jesus. He befriended blind men, women with bleeding issues, and lepers with skin diseases that healthy, ordinary people wouldn’t come within twenty yards of, let alone post a selfie with online.

One time, while Jesus was at a dinner party with wealthy, pious religious leaders, a wayward woman came and anointed Jesus’s feet with her tears and her hair. It’s one of the most awkward stories in the New Testament, yet Jesus seems to be right at home. On social media, people would call the video cringe.

Think of the children who came running to Jesus. Again, this doesn’t hit us the same way. Oh, of course, Jesus loves the little children, we think. We sing songs about it. And he does love children. But you’ll remember that when the children tried to come to Jesus, the disciples shooed them away. Surely, Jesus has more important and less noisy people to spend time with. Adults, you know, have more to give Jesus than little children do, those who can only give Jesus their need and their curiosity.

Consider the shepherds out in the fields. Their job required them to be there, but honestly, nobody really wanted to be with them because they were so rough. Still, the angels came to them first, announcing good news of great joy for all people.

And on the cross—while he’s dying in the most shame-filled way to die—Jesus befriends a criminal.

All this befriending, essentially taking awkward family photos, turns the real Christmas story into a confrontation with what we might simply call a “nostalgic Christmas” or “sentimental Christmas.” Don’t get me wrong. I love Christmas lights, cookies, presents, and parties. I love the rose-colored feeling of the way things used to be. But the real Christmas story shows how God came to live with us—not the us as we wish we were, but the us as we really are.

In this way, the real Christmas story also becomes another story of confrontation in a way that the sappy Christmas story never would: The unholy us must confront the holy God. And that confrontation quickly reminds us, if we’re honest, that we need a real savior.

This Christmas, remember that Jesus is the savior for the person riddled with doubts. He’s the savior for the one with a crumbling second marriage. He’s the savior for the dad who works too much and drinks too much and doesn’t know yet how to stop. Jesus is the savior for the woman who had an abortion years ago but is still too ashamed to mention it in her Bible Study. He’s the savior for the religious churchgoer exhausting herself trying to maintain her perfectly manicured moral image. Jesus is Immanuel, the real God with the real us—a story so unlikely and awkward that it becomes beautiful again.