I love the Christmas Story....
I love the Christmas Story, the Nativity of
Christ. The television version of Shepherds watching their flocks as they sat
in snow up to their bums and the angels singing and the mountains vibrating
with the sound. I also get that this is
sound bite material. And if you are a
huge fan of the nativity story, perhaps this better be a posting that you miss.
The
entire story of the Census, and Joseph and Mary going to Bethlehem the City of
David does not match the historical data of the time. And thus, the city may
not have been full, and there was probably room at the inn. There are a number of attempts to reconcile
the discrepancies. The one that strikes
me as being the most truthful is that it creates a better narrative. After all, much of the bible attempts to
point to a truth greater than the circumstances it records.
I have included the link to the Wikipedia article
I think what actually happened was much more poignant.
A teenage girl who was knocked up by
someone other than her fiancé was taken to a distant city to have her
illegitimate baby. Remember, though they
may have stopped killing non virgin wives on the doorsteps of her parents,
being pregnant outside of marriage was intensely shameful. So Mary, being impregnated by God, was
actually an embarrassment to the family.
The belief that she had conceived via the Holy Spirit must have been a
huge test of faith. But there they were,
secreted away, in Bethlehem, the City of David.
For
me, this resonates so much better. All
through Jesus ministry on earth people were expecting that the Kingdom of God
be established in power and glory and violence.
Yet, time and time again the Kingdom of God was revealed quietly, even
with humility, in personal encounters with Jesus.
I
am a Christian because the entire story, as I understand it, makes sense. Christianity is the only religion I know of
in which we do not behave our way to God’s grace, it is bestowed upon us. And the nativity story, as warped as I see
it, answers the question. How would God
come to earth?
We
have this expectation that God would come to earth with a great show of his
power. That we would be left with little
doubt that we had seen unshielded divinity.
It would be reminiscent of God and the Burning Bushes, but on a grander
scale.
But it seems to me, that God had a
different plan.
I think in our efforts to glamorize the
gospel, we wind up diminishing the power of its message. In the telling of the gospel we see a god who
comes to earth in the humblest of human form. A god who is willing to meet
human kind where they are at, but with a twist.
If
I was God, and I came to earth, I would come in all my power and glory, and you
would bow before me or I would smite thee.
God came to earth and was totally dependent. the triumphal entry of God
was heralded not so much by angels singing as the plaintive cry of a baby.
1 Corinthians 1:27 – 29 But God chose the
foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the
world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the
despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so
that no one may boast before him.
As a starting point the Nativity Story
creates a foundation of understanding of God.
In the story of the Christ-child one comes to understand that God
reveals himself by the ordinary, if not ignorable, people and events. The story reveals that God came to meet us in
the midst of our humanity, and he still does.
Repeatedly through his ministry he reveals himself to people in peculiar
and unexpected ways.
The
celebration of Christ coming to earth should not be focused on questionable
events that happened millennia ago. The
celebration is that he still reveals himself to people. Often those who we think he shouldn’t reveal
himself to, and in ways we think he shouldn’t use. And he still reveals himself to you, and to
me. The challenge of the season, I
think, is to give up my ideas of what God should be like. For it seems to me God has a different plan.
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