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| When God Got Naked Ever since six unemployed steelworkers tossed their knickers and dropped their drawers in The Full Monty (1997), getting naked has become an acceptable — if not slightly risqué — form of fundraising for charity. Now, it’s no big deal if I have a cheesecake calendar pinned to the wall within eyeshot of this laptop—as long as the women posing are not the Girls of Toronto, but instead, the Widows of Altoona, raising money for The American Heart Association. Women have been taking off their clothes, bumping and grinding, since man invented the pole. But it wasn’t until The Calendar Girls (2003) that women in their 13th stage of life saw this as a moneymaking and fun-raising opportunity. I thought this fad had petered out until I read recently about The Bullish Babes 2005 Calendar which features the Bullish Babes, an investment club of little old ladies who live in Vatican West, aka Colorado Springs. But these aren’t the only women who bare to be different. More than 100 of these calendars are churned out worldwide every year. Women in Germany put out such a calendar for a children’s charity called Caritas. Female wool spinners in Maine sold more than 13,000 copies of their calendars. One group of women known as the Great Old Broads produced a 2003 calendar, “A Celebration of Mature Women,” for LifeSpan Services, Inc. Of these women, the oldest “old broad” was 100, a German pole vaulter in the 1929 Olympics. In Winchester, Indiana, officials are planning to tear down Randolph County’s historic old courthouse. Not if seven cantankerous old ladies have anything to do with it. Over their naked bodies. Seven women, aged 70-90, hope that the proceeds from sales of their calendar which will go into the Save the Courthouse Fund, will help preserve the 19th-century structure. So, what’s good for the goose ... now men are doing this. In Nebraska, for example, you can buy “The Men of Tilden” calendar. These men look like David Kelly who played Michael O’Sullivan in Waking Ned Devine (1998), and Grandpa Joe in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005). Here’s a guy who, if you saw him in Ned Divine riding naked on the back of a motorcycle, has the torso of a rubber chicken — with apologies to the chicken. If God had wanted us to go naked, we would’ve been born that way. Mark Twain, I think. Wait. Um... If God had wanted us to go naked, he wouldn’t have let us invent bib overalls. Or, didn’t you hear the collective gasp when Kathy Bates stepped into the hot tub with Jack Nicholson in About Schmidt (2002)? Will someone in the Senate please ask Supreme Court nominee [at press time], John Roberts, to explain his take on old people posing naked in calendars? These calendars illustrate what nonprofit organizations are beginning to understand: When people give their money to a charitable cause, they still like to get something in return. The altruism is limited and conditional. Witness the phenomenal success of the Live Strong yellow bracelet. Buy it for a buck and the money goes into the Lance Armstrong Foundation, a nonprofit organization. Some do-gooder groups offer polo shirts, notebooks, bumper stickers, golf balls, baseball caps, pens, mugs and other perks in exchange for volunteer work or cold cash. Have you noticed that 7 out of 10 cars have some kind of ribbon pasted to the trunk of their car? For years, evangelists have been offering books, CDs, tapes and more to their viewers who give $25, $50 or $500 to their programs. Give $2 million to a seminary and get a chair endowed in your name or that of a loved one. The naked truth is that we rarely give anymore — with no expectation of a return. Even charity has become a quid pro quo billion dollar business. Except perhaps when the offering plate comes around. Even then, aren’t there some in our congregations who think that their pledge is a pass key to position, influence and power? You know what I’m talking about here. And what congregation can fund its mission without pulling a few more dollars out of their people by offering bake sales, silent auctions, spaghetti dinners and the like? Utterly selfless giving. It happens, of course. But it’s rare. And it’s something we should talk about. But for now, let’s just remember the time when God got naked. That’s right. Naked. Vulnerable. And God did it with no thought that anything might come of it. Humans are humans after all. And God was right. Christ Jesus, him we crucified, “though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death — even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:6-8). During Advent, only a few weeks away, we see God plunging through the calendar of history as a naked Child, a gift of peace to a strife-filled world, a gift of hope to a world of despair, a gift of light to a people who sit in darkness, and a gift of salvation to a world helplessly lost. God, who is in need of nothing, doesn’t need a response from us. But it would be appropriate for us to act in a way that is worthy of the naked Incarnation: To put on the clothes of generosity, charity and goodwill; to give (money, time, service) without “recompense of reward”; to recall the traditions of our ancient faith that calls us to give alms to the poor and to remember the “widow and orphan in their distress.” In other words, when we see the orphan, the poor, the homeless, the needy, to assist them in their need and thereby put clothes on a naked God, and a vulnerable child.
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