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I am happy to report that this week I got an early start on fulfilling my 2008 covenant with Redlands UCC! For next year, I have covenanted to read at least one theologically-oriented book every month, and my choice for this month was the newest text by Jesus Seminar scholars Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan. Just out in time for the holiday season, their book is entitled, The First Christmas: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’s Birth. In characteristic form, Borg and Crossan contextualize the birth stories of Jesus within the historical-political context of the oppressive regime of the first-century
Roman Empire
. They make the claim—over and over again, using many illustrations—that the birth stories about sages and shepherds, angels and stars, a manger in
Bethlehem
and escape into
Egypt
, all these stories are neither fact nor fable, but are rather best experienced as parable.
Now we Christians know parable! We love the parables Jesus used to teach great themes of faith and justice, of peace and compassion. We recall with vivid imagination the road down from
Jericho
to
Jerusalem
and the imaginary Good Samaritan who traveled that road only to find his life’s mission beaten and awaiting a helping hand by the side of the road. We love to hear about faith that is like a mustard seed, or God who is like a woman searching for a precious lost coin, or life that sometimes is like a group of workers in the field who get paid the same wages whether they arrive at 8 in the morning or 5 in the evening. We know that truth is communicated in these parables, even as we know that the question of whether they are fact or fable is an irrelevant one to be asking. Who cares whether there really was a particular Good Samaritan or a beaten man? The truth of the matter is that the gospel calls each of us to aspire to that two-fold job of quiet giver and grateful receiver. Who cares whether or not we could ever find the actual broom used by the woman sweeping to find her precious coin? The truth of the matter is that, like that woman, our loving God will never give up looking for us when we are lost. Yes, we understand parable and the profound, life-changing meaning it contains.
Yet, when it comes to those beloved Christmas stories, in order to believe in their inherent truth, we seem to need to pull out the almanac and research the exact date of that alleged astrological miracle in which a star moved across the night sky and then unexplainably stopped right over the place where the newborn Jesus was lying. I recall one of my favorite professors of Christian scriptures, Dr. Bill Richardson, whose face became radiant when he opened our young eyes to a scholarly work claiming just that!
By moving us beyond the question of fact or fiction, and encouraging us to see these birth stories as parable, Doctors Borg and Crossan are inviting us into the realm of story—the realm where life’s meaning is made more clear…the place where all effective transformation occurs. Parables are narratives, stories, and as in all stories, something happens in a parable. People do things in parables. But, as the authors remind us, “…no one worries about whether the events in parabolic narratives are factual. Parable as a form of language is about meaning, not factuality…” Parables thus have a “more-than-literal” meaning; they use a metaphoric language that has the capacity to carry a surplus of meaning. And it is in the meaning of any parable that its real and transformative truth lies.
Further, Borg and Crossan invite us to see these parables of Jesus’s birth as historical—as set within a particular first-century context, and deriving meaning for us today based on that specific ancient context. As historical metaphoric narratives, the birth stories we have come to love and about which we sing during this joyous season of the year, are easily understood to be like the parables Jesus would later tell. They are subversive stories. Borg and Crossan write, “…they subverted conventional ways of seeing life and God. They undermined a world, meaning a taken-for-granted way of seeing the way things are. Jesus’s parables invited his hearers into a different way of seeing how things are and how we might live…” As invitations to see differently, these stories were and are subversive… Told late in the first century by the faithful followers of Jesus, the stories of his birth subverted the dominant vision of their day by asking these revolutionary questions:
- Who is the “King of the Jews”? Is it Herod, as his given title would require? Matthew’s story of Jesus’s birth tells us that Herod is no king; Herod is worse than the old Pharaoh of Egypt. He is the lord of oppression and bondage, the monarch of violence and brutality. Herod slaughters babies and is cunning and deceitful. Rather, through these stories in the first two chapters of Matthew, the author claims beyond all doubt that Jesus, not Herod, is the true King of the Jews.
- Who is the Son of God, Lord, Savior of the world, and the one who brings peace on earth? Within the prevailing Roman imperial theology of the first century, it was the emperor, Caesar, who was all of these. But “NO!” Luke’s story sings out from angel choirs in the skies. Those titles and that status do not belong to Caesar, but to Jesus. This tiny vulnerable baby, this unlikely itinerant preacher and compassionate healer—not the mighty emperor—is the embodiment of God’s peace on earth.
- Who is the light of the world? The dominant Roman culture answered that question with a resounding, “The Emperor—the son of Apollo, the god of light and reason and imperial order!” Matthew’s author begs to differ by offering to twenty centuries of readers that the light of the world is Jesus, the one who was executed by empire, the true light to whom is drawn wise travelers the world over.
By asking these revolutionary questions and by responding through the parables of the birth narratives with their now-so-familiar images and icons that decry the violent and manipulative power of the
Roman Empire
, the stories of that first Christmas become both personal and political. They speak boldly of personal and political transformation. They are comprehensive and passionate and dramatic visions of another way of seeing life and of living our own lives. They confront what we assume to be normal—for example, that peace through violence is the only reasonable peace—replacing it with a vision of peace through justice and peace by means of vulnerability. These stories take on the empire’s notion of and investment in coercive power and turn it on its head by challenging us to understand that God’s power is never, never, through a forceful divine thumb placed on our compliant human heads.
By means of a baby in a manger and poor unmarried parents who dare to dream and to see God’s radiance magnificently displayed in the night sky, these stories call us to affirm also that Jesus is the Son of God (and the emperor is not), that Jesus is savior of the world (and the emperor is not), that Jesus is Lord (and the emperor is not), that the Jesus way is the way to peace on earth (and the emperor nor his Empire are not).
What of these birth stories today? Set as they are in the context of two ancient prophecies from Isaiah and Micah, these stories further invite us at Redlands UCC to grasp the very relevant truth that just as God was with the house of David some 2,700 years ago, so is God with this house today…for a baby will be born and his name will be Emmanuel, which means, God is With Us. Just as God was present and active to bring new life in
Bethlehem
, which means House of Bread, so does God want to be actively working through this house and through us as its inhabitants to bring bread enough for all. For there—and here—in ancient
Bethlehem
and in modern
Redlands
, God will stand and feed all the flock with the food and drink of peace.
First-century assumptions and political realities were this: the
Roman Empire
was always about peace, but always about peace through victory, peace through war, peace through violence. The alternative to this vision—as daring as it is revolutionary as it is dangerous to proclaim again in our time—is that the world as God intends, with the values of this grown-up Jesus baby embodied now in each of us, is a world in which the metaphor of empire is replaced by the metaphor of family. Here, in this family, based on Jesus values of compassion and healing, of love and kindness, peace is achieved, not through violence, but through justice, through bread enough for all. This new vision—made more vivid by angel choirs and a field of shepherds, and by the singular Christmas tableaux of characters we’ve all come to recognize in whose eyes are reflected the light of a once-distant star—this new vision of peace through justice for you and you and you and me is a vision that requires programs and processes, strategies and tactics, wisdom and patience.
John M. Buchanan, long-time editor and publisher of the bi-monthly journal, The Christian Century, reminds us in the December 11th edition, “…the original Christmas gift was certainly impractical—a baby, born in a cow stall. What people wanted was a king like David who would unify the nation, rally the troops, drive out the occupying Romans and reestablish the monarchy. That’s what a Messiah is supposed to do—make things right by defeating God’s enemies, establish a new order of things based on real power. And so, when the gift was given,” Buchanan muses, “nobody much noticed. God’s gift of love was not what people expected or wanted at the time—or want now, for that matter, when the air is full of rhetoric about a clash of civilizations, a world conflict in the name of competing ideas about God, truth, goodness and justice. We’d prefer a God who confirms our own ideas and who puts our opponents—who we assume are God’s opponents also—in their place. That original gift [continues to] challenge us in profound ways…”
The uniquely Christian idea—beginning with these dramatic stories of Jesus’s birth—is that the essence of God is not the power we either expect or want. The surprising, absolutely shocking truth of the birth narratives is that God’s essence is not power at all, at least in the traditional sense of power that molds and shapes an object against its will. Rather, God’s essence is love…love that is vulnerable…love that suffers pain when we are hurting…love that forgives us when we don’t live up to our own high standards…love that cries with us in the middle of the darkest night and that rises with us to greet a new day…love that offers a glimmer of starlight to guide us through the unknown and travels with us like the wisdom of the ages wrapped in royal garb. This absolute truth of God’s love provides foundation for our living today just as certainly as that metaphoric hay provided a pillow for the tiny baby Jesus.
Throughout the stories of Jesus’s birth we see two competing visions—clashing and bargaining—just as they continue to vie for position and influence and adherents today. The Roman vision incarnated in the divine Augustus Caesar was peace through victory. The Christian vision incarnated in the divine Jesus was peace through justice. The terrible truth is that our world has never established peace through victory. Victory establishes not peace, but lull. Thereafter, violence returns once again, and always worse than before.
This last Sunday of Advent is a time of pondering the past and repentant changing for the future. Do we think that peace on earth comes from Caesar or Christ? Do we think it comes through violent victory or nonviolent justice? The stories of the birth of Jesus offer us a choice of how to live personally and individually, nationally and internationally. Fundamentally, these stories and the holiday they have begotten, are not about tinsel and mistletoe but about what means we will use—today and tomorrow, individually and as a nation—what means will we use toward the end of a peace from heaven in our lives and upon our earth.
We who have seen the star and heard the angels sing are called to participate in the new birth and the new world proclaimed by these amazing stories. So, friends, join those figurative shepherds in looking up and seeing God in the stars. Join them as they make their dramatic journey and give thanks that the power that truly changes a person resides not in the halls of greatness but in a stable bereft of all but a humble feeding trough serving as a baby’s bed. Even if you’ve never carried a tune in your life, let your heart and soul and mind sing with those metaphoric angels on their mission (and yours) of sharing the miraculous good news of God’s love for all people. Ponder with Mary and dream with Joseph as they begin to imagine a world of peace through justice…and then, tentatively, confidently, with joy in your eyes, reach out to bring the reality of God’s peace through justice to just one other human in your life. Dance from the lineage of David through his house of bread. Dare to pull pieces from the walls and roof and offer that bread of life to all you meet. Let us go forth from here to be Christmas Christians—in fact and in truth!
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