If we want to be part of these events,
Advent and Christmas,
we cannot just sit there like a theatre audience
and enjoy all the lovely pictures.
Instead, we ourselves will be caught up
in this action,
this reversal of all things;
we must become actors on this stage
For this is a play in which each spectator has
a part to play,
and we cannot hold back.
What will our role be?
Worshipful shepherds bending the knee,
or kings bringing gifts?
What is being enacted
when Mary becomes the mother of God,
when God enters the world
in a lowly manger?We cannot come to this manger
in the same way that we would approach
the cradle of any other child.
Something will happen to each of us
who decides to come to Christ’s manger.
Each of us will have been judged or redeemed
before we go away.
Each of us will either break down,
or come to know that God’s mercy is turned
toward us…
What does it mean
to say such things about the Christ child?…
It is God, the Lord and Creator of all things,
who becomes so small here,
comes to us in a little corner of the world,
unremarkable and hidden away,
who wants to meet us and be among us
as a helpless, defenceless child.-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “the Reversal of All Things”
Another Christmas has come and gone, while many Canadians are celebrating the real holiday, Boxing Day, with the “sweet deals” of salvation.
Yet, in Christianity, it should mean more than a crass exchange of credit card-financed debauchery. This much is obvious. It should mean the old school “good will towards men.” As the blog-prophet Ted Schmidt reminds us, Charles Dickens always understood the meaning of Christmas:
“Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”
So says the Ghost in Dickens’ Christmas Carol.
Dickens’ ghost, with its virtues, contrasts directly with “business”, meaning Scrooge. Scrooge’s business is accumulation, not justice or love associated with so-called Christian charity. The “spirit of Christmas” for Dickens, was spiritual, not material, and therefore held the meaning of Christmas against the obvious excesses of the British Empire and Victorian London.
There is much said about the commercialization of Christmas. Conversely, there has been much said about the secularization of Christmas, which frankly, doesn’t help Christmas resist commercialism or oppressive fundamentalism. I’m not talking about secular people who celebrate the holiday as a time to be with loved ones and reflect on peace and turkey. It is the shifted meaning of Christmas from a fundamentally important and meaningful holiday at the end of the year, to an excuse to spend extravagant amounts of money while missing the point.
There’s a story behind the holiday, and when we forget where our stories come from, that’s when we either spiral into abject nihilism or cling to the text-as-worship or fundamentalism. The Christmas story for much of North America is about buying and turkeys–little room for the story of Christ–which is a story of liberation. Conversely, to read Christmas as a celebration of the “birth of our Lord,” with that supposedly historical event as the important element in the story, you miss the whole point. Jesus was born in a Roman-controlled backwater, much like what we would call the “third world” today. King Harod–the Roman-backed vassal ruler of Palestine–immediately orders the baby to be killed. Why? Because Jesus was a nice guy who said nice things? Highly unlikely.
Harod orders Jesus to death because Jesus is a threat to Harod. Jesus is a political threat to Harod’s power and consequently, Rome’s power. Now, Palestine wasn’t officially a Roman colony. It just so happened that there were legions on the ready at the coast, ready to spring into action at the first sign of “disorder” within their sphere of influence. Jesus is ordered to death by Pilate, the Roman governor. Is it the fact that he’s a nice guy preaching you to love everybody? Deepak Choprah has been spared the wrath of the Bush administration thus far, so it seems unlikely that this would be the case. Or could it be that Jesus was preaching a non-violent revolution that would see the first one last and the last one first in God’s kingdom?
If that much is obvious, why the sappy story of the manger? Because God has entered the earth in the form of a defenseless child. Free of ideology, full of innocence, desiring nothing more than to be in communion with, to be close to, his mother. In contrast with Jupiter (or Zeus), the high God of Rome (and of justice) who violently overthrows his father, Cronus, for the kingship of the Gods. Cronus, of course, overthrew his father Ouranos for kingship of the universe before that. A God incarnated in the world in the form of a poor child born in a manger is a stark contrast to the glorious birth of the imperial gods. Not only that, but later on, that God incarnate takes the title “Son of God,” appropriating the title given to the living god of Roman mythology: Caesar.
This was not anything new for the writers of the Bible, as the area we now know as Israel and Palestine has always been the central point of conquest for neighbouring empires like Egypt, Babylon and Alexander–then Rome. Moses was born a slave and brought his people out from under the yoke of Pharaoh and Moses never reached the promised land; an inappropriate end for a heroic figure worthy of imperial theology. The Gospel writers of the New Testament wrote the character of Jesus into their tradition as a way to creatively counter the might of the latest empire to displace the Jews. This is the good news.
Yet, while examining the Bible, many who call themselves Christians do not acknowledge this fact. They forget, much in the same way that the commercializers gloss over the true meaning in order to move products. They do not understand that the Christmas story is an act of imagination that offers an alternative story to the dominant discourse of the “masters of the universe.” If they did, they would then understand that Christmas is a time for imagination, where we envision a God very different than the gods of the powers. In the manger, and in the life of Jesus, that God is shown in all truth–a non-violent God of love, justice and liberation that reiterates the promise of Psalm 82 and “all the foundations of the earth are shaken.”
Joy to the world. Merry Christmas and Peace to all.
