christmas Column 2011

American like to prattle on about being religious or spiritual, but less than half of us go to church on Christmas. For those who do deign to enter the doors for worship, we can almost be guaranteed that we will hear the Luke’s Christmas story with the shepherds. If you miss it at church, you may have heard it read by Linus in a Charlie Brown Christmas. We don’t really hear it, as we often know it almost by heart. So, let’s slow it down a bit today.

Luke had a decided, subtle political agenda in the birth story. he starts out by listing the political powers of the world of Jesus. None are aware of his birth. By the time of the gospels, Roman emperors had adopted a variety of titles. The angels take those very titles and apply them to Jesus. Even the angel chorus has political overtones. The host of heaven was usually God’s military arm. Now they have been transformed into a choir for peace.

Shepherds could have been the last people who many would imagine being the only witnesses to the birth of Jesus, as they had approval rating roughly at the level of the current U. S. Congress. Under the nose of the “1%” the representatives of the bottom of the “99%’ get the word. What wonders lie at our feet unnoticed? What Christmas miracles are implanted within us and are nurtured or left to wither?

Incarnation then takes place in good walk away from Jerusalem’s temple and palace. Instead of a royal robe, the baby is laid in a manger. A feeding trough would hold the one called the Bread of Life. At First Presbyterian, the stained glass interpretation of Christmas has a manger superimposed over Bethlehem, so it connects earth and heaven.

We just read a children’s book in church, father and son. It’s set on Christmas night with Joseph looking over the sleeping baby and worrying, like any new father, but with the questions taking on special enormity. How will he teach the alphabet to a child who also is of the Creator who “whispered words to millions.” How could he tell a joke to someone who knew them all? Admittedly, it’s putting theology and poetic language in the mouth of Joseph, but he serves as a good mouthpiece for our quandaries in considering how the “fullness of God” could dwell in a baby who would grow, develop, and learn just as any baby would. How could we speak of the Creator of all, the divine Word/Plan/Logos of John 1 be a creature as well? Surely the Incarnation means God with us, Emmanuel. the astonishment is that it is more than saying Yes to us, as Paul said, but that that God is present in the human condition in Jesus.

For Luke, Mary, not Joseph is center-stage. At the end, she takes in what the shepherds say to her and treasures them, she who sang of great reversals of rich and poor in her Magnificat in the previous chapter. Again, we hear that she pondered words in her heart. The word in Greek is closer to an internal debate or discussion, with a sense of sifting evidence, of shuttling ideas back and forth. I wonder if she pondered why no choir was there at the manger. Did she have a notion that her son would call himself the Good Shepherd?

My prayer is that our eyes are open to some of the hidden wonders of life here. May we take those and connect to Christmas miracle. May the Christmas spirit live and develop within us, as did the babe of Bethlehem.