Christmas Sunday, “Angel
Dreams: There’s Lying Not Just in the Manger”
We all know the Christmas angels tell the
shepherds to go to Bethlehem to find the Christ child, Divine child, Human
child, wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger. We are saying
this morning, as an angel comes back to warn Joseph of Herod’s plot to
destroy that same child, there’s “lying” not just in the manger! In fact,
there’s lying about the whole Christmas story. Caesar Augustus, who orders
world census and taxes to tighten the empire’s grip on its subject peoples,
lies about the Christmas story. He claims the right of divine birth and
world saviorhood for himself. Much of the language ascribed by the gospels
to Jesus’ birth is seen in its time to be subversive of Caesar’s claims. In
fact, the word “gospel” itself, “evangel,” is liberated from the language of
the emperor’s triumphant return from war! Jesus comes humbly, bringing just
peace.
Clearly Herod lies about the Christmas
story, telling the wise men, the magi, he intends to honor the one they say
has been born a new “king of the Jews.” Herod himself is a puppet-king,
more loyal, in effect, to Rome than to his own people’s interests. Romans
were an occupation force in Palestine, with all that that implies yet
today. Jewish resistance was steady and grew for 50 years before Jesus’
birth. Historian Josephus reports an uprising about that time for which the
Romans crucified 2000 Jewish rebels! No wonder Herod sits so insecurely on
the throne. No wonder he strikes, we would say, preemptively against any
rumored successor. Truly, the Christmas story marks Jesus from birth a
political fugitive, entrusted to the care of subversive parents, informed by
subversive angels. Throughout the Christmas story, from the annunciation,
the angels take the path of most, not least, Jewish resistance to Rome!
Slowly but surely the church itself comes
to lie about the Christmas story. With Jesus’ execution by the Romans as
subversive to the state, the Christmas beginning foreshadows Easter’s end –
the manger in the shadow of the cross. Yet the church makes a deal with the
state early on to deflect blame for the crucifixion, which only Rome could
order, onto the next King Herod and the Jews. Author James Carroll, writing
of “The Politics of the Christmas Story,” observes, “Eventually, Roman
imperialism would be sanctified by the church, with Jews replacing Romans as
the main antagonists to Jesus, as if he were not Jewish himself.” That
dastardly trend in church teaching continues in forms yet today.
In recent weeks Fox newscaster Bill
O’Reilly has organized against what he calls an assault by secularists on
Christmas. As he said to a Jewish caller: “You have a predominately
Christian nation. You have a federal holiday based on the philosopher
Jesus. And you don’t wanna hear about it? Come on – if you are really
offended, you gotta go to Israel then. . . . America is Christian. . . . You
know, the majority can be insulted, too. And that’s what this
anti-Christmas thing is all about.” William Donahue of the Catholic League
adds, “Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in
general and Catholicism in particular. It’s not a secret, OK? They like to
see the public square without nativity scenes.” I see such language as
threatening Jews, among others. The threat to Christmas, as I see it, comes
exclusively from us -- from the church!
We started lying about the Christmas
story early on. Today we speak and try to act as if religion and politics
somehow can and do have nothing to do with each other. We accept
spiritualizing, sentimentalizing, commercializing, consumerizing of the
Christmas story, to the point where our generic hope for “peace” (no matter
how well intended) excludes awareness of such details as the political
infanticide in today’s gospel. James Carroll, who has written extensively
on the church’s anti-Semitism, goes on to say, “The baby Jesus was
universalized, removed from his decidedly Jewish context, and the
narrative’s explicit critiques of imperial dominance and of wealth were
blunted.” Clearly, the Christmas story is written to be explicit good news
to the poor, the excluded.
That, says Carroll, is how “Christmas in
America has turned the nativity of Jesus on its head. No surprise there,”
he adds, “for if the story were told today with Roman imperialism at its
center, questions might arise about America’s new self-understanding as an
imperial power.” Are not new equivalents to the Christmas story likely
emerging, here and around the world, today -- amidst occupation and
oppression, imprisonment and impoverishment? Are not new attacks on Jews
once again deflecting our own call to careful attention and thoughtful
analysis?
First, we need hear Isaiah this morning:
God reveals God’s self to the Jews in their bondage to Egypt, which very
story Jesus and his family are sent by the angel to reenact! God acts
graciously in all history, showing forth great mercy and steadfast love as
“one who saves,” -- the very name given “Jesus!” -- to all peoples “in their
distress!” Not even messengers or angels, proclaims Isaiah, but God’s own
presence saves us! God’s love and God’s pity redeem us! God lifts us and
carries us now as God did in the days of bondage in Egypt! God always has
been “political,” subversive, revolutionary, in and through us! In and
through any who are so poor, so weak, ostracized and so marginalized as to
find no hope other than hope in God! God turns first to those with nowhere,
no one, to turn to.
Even after this King Herod’s death, --
when these radical angels who guard us and announce alternatives to our
fears, speak to Joseph again, -- Joseph avoids the more imperialized areas
of Jerusalem to bring Jesus up in Galilee! That region is despised for its
race-mixing rebel-making, so Jesus will be dismissible as a Nazorean, of
whom nothing much “good” might be expected! “Can anything good come out
Nazareth?”! Where might that place be by political and religious reputation
today? San Francisco?! Just asking. Glide Memorial?!
Help me now. The “good news” the host of
angels bring on Christmas Eve celebrates “Glory to God in the highest
heaven, and on earth peace among those whom God favors!” Those who are
kindly disposed and of good will toward God! Those most in need, most
desiring, of God’s “favor,” such as special-assignment angel Gabriel finds
in Mary: “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And
now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him
Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and
the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will
reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no
end!”
Of course, nothing “political” to that
promise! Just the throne of David and the eternal reign that Herod, and so
many kings since, only “dream of!” So when Jesus comes to preach for the
first time in Nazareth, according to Luke, he reads Isaiah 61, “The Spirit
of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the
poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of
sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free.” Then Jesus, in keeping
with “ev-angelic” telling of the Christmas story, concludes, “to proclaim
the year of the Lord’s favor!” Jesus leaves off from his preaching Isaiah’s
next line, “and the day of vengeance of our God.” Then Jesus rolls up and
gives back the scroll, sits down, and declares, “Today this scripture has
been fulfilled!” If we were to put that “Christ” back into
“Christmas,” we would bring down not only this one but every government, and
the corporate interests for which they stand!
I am so glad this congregation is one I
would call not so much an “either/or” congregation as a “both/and”
congregation. We are able to live among multiple stories, many viewpoints
and voices, at once. We do not feel so compelled to call for absolute
choices: Our way or the highway! We seem to be able to go with the living
word of a living God to a living people called to a living salvation. We
know we will be discovering new meaning to that as long as we live and love
God! God and we are making life up together as we go along! Is that right?
As Julia Hartwig puts in today’s Words
for Meditation, the poem entitled, “Who Says,” – When innocents are being
massacred, the church that tells the truth of the Christmas story writes
about innocents being massacred! Of course, flowers are also blooming,
birds are also rising in song, and lovers are twining in love’s embraces.
But a church that is telling the truth of Jesus’ subversive birth, life,
death and resurrection puts first things first. We do not sweat the small
stuff. If children are being harmed, and mothers are screaming in anguish,
that is the first thing we need to know. That’s what calls us to rally at
the capitol in Carson City for children in poverty February 21!
Sisters and brothers, nearly 900 American
children now have lost parents to the war in Iraq. More than forty American
fathers now have died there without ever seeing their children. Four
year-old Jack Shanaberger tells his mother, “I don’t want to be a daddy
because daddies die.” And even six female soldiers have died leaving a
total of ten children motherless. That is a part of the truth of the
Christmas story. And that is not even counting Iraqi parents and children.
I am so grateful to this congregation for inviting the stories of “Stille
Nacht,” and of the homeless community, and of Narcotics Anonymous, to be
told so freely, so fully in our space this Christmas week. All are part of
the truth about Christmas!
Rabbi Michael Lerner writes this week,
with the voice of a modern angel, --
There is a beautiful spiritual message
underlying Christmas that has universal appeal: the hope that gets
reborn in moments of despair, the light that gets re-lit in the darkest
moments of the year, is beautifully symbolized by the story of a child
born of a teenage homeless mother who had to give birth in a manger
because no one would give her shelter, and escaping the cruelty of Roman
imperial rule and its local surrogate Herod who already knew such a
child would grow up to challenge the entire imperialist system. To
celebrate that vulnerable child as a symbol of hope that eventually the
weak would triumph over the rule of the arrogant and the powerful is a
spiritual celebration with strong analogies to our Jewish Chanukah
celebration which also celebrates the victory of the weak over the
powerful. And that’s the
truth, so help us God. Amen.
John Auer, Pastor
