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Meet Father KempChristmas Eve – 24 December 2009
In a recent Christianity Today there was an intriguing article titled “The Darker Side of A Christmas Carol” that began with these words, “[Charles Dicken’s Christmas Carol is]a much-loved holiday story. Part of its charm is that it immerses us in a Victorian-era Christmas, replete with frosted windows, mistletoe, plum pudding, and jolly good cheer. But Dicken’s classic also continues to capture our imagination because of its portrayal of a social and economic world of great inequality and deep suffering. It’s a world more brutal than we sometimes image, and one that in many ways is not too different from our own.”[1] The author’s thesis is clear, if we only read joy, mirth and Victorian Christmas splendor out of Dicken’s Christmas Carol we have missed the point: Christmas if full of joy, mirth and splendor in spite of the oppression, suffering and rejection plaguing the world. The same could be said of the first Christmas story, the birth of Jesus. Those pseudo-pious tendencies causing us to turn a blind eye to the oppression and suffering in Dicken’s Christmas Carol also blind our eyes to the oppression, suffering and rejection surrounding Jesus’ birth.
In fact, St. Luke begins this story stating that something was wrong with the world: the opression of Rome, “And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.” We would like to think St. Luke is talking about a mundane and painless census, like the one our nation will have next year. However, this was not mundane or painless. This decree was about money and power, it was a decree stating that Caesar Augustus is your powerful Lord who can tell what to do and if you want him to be benevolent you will have to pay. Furthermore, census’ in Israel were never mundane. In II Samuel, King David, out of pride and vanity, decreed that there would be a census in Israel and this resulted in a devastating plague. In addition, the Jewish historian Josephus, records another Roman census that sparked a military revolt in Israel. This census was not about checking a few boxes of a pamphlet and putting it in the mail, this was about Caesar forcing you to travel hundreds of miles on foot so that you could pay him tribute. Thus, St. Luke begins his story of Jesus’ birth stating that something is wrong with the world; it is in the tight grip of oppression.
However, the oppressive and ruthless Romans are not the only thing wrong with the world. There is something else wrong, something far worse, God’s people have no room in their lives for their Messiah, as St. Luke records, “because there was no room for them in the inn.” Concerning this disturbing sign, someone has said (better than I ever could): “The conventional Christmas nativity play has Joseph and Mary arriving in Bethlehem late at night, with Mary already feeling the labor pains, reaching for the gas and air, and wondering why the epidural hasn’t been invented yet. Then we see Joseph going from innkeeper to innkeeper, pleading for mercy for his belabored wife, and being told that because of the census every motel is booked up for miles around. At last one of the innkeepers has a heart and puts them in the stable. But little or nothing of this is in Luke’s story. It’s all our embellishment. What Luke tells us is that Joseph and Mary went to Bethlehem. It doesn’t tell us that Bethlehem was heaving with business. It doesn’t say Mary was already deep into her third trimester. She and Joseph may well have been in Bethlehem a while. Luke just says “while they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child”. Luke takes the time to point out that this was her firstborn son. In other words, as for many women in those days and even today, this was the most profound moment of her entire life, the moment when she gave birth to her first child. And what kind of hospitality did she get, in the city of her husband’s ancestors? Zilch. The child went in the animals’ feeding trough. … This is putting the most vulnerable person in Bethlehem in the most dangerous place in the whole town.”[2] This verse directs us to a chilling dark side of the Christmas story: God’s people, those who claimed to love and worship the true God,[3]those who offered the proscribed sacrifices and prayers in the temple, were not ready, they were not willing, and they were not looking for their coming Messiah. The world’s problem is not just cruel and oppressive emperors masquerading as gods, the world’s problem is also that God’s own people have hearts so cold and so loveless that nobody in Bethlehem, the city of David, would open their doors for a pregnant woman. A problem with the world is that God’s people who have prayed and fasted for the coming of their messiah reject him at his birth.[4] The world has no place for Jesus.
However, if I only told you about the oppression and rejection of the Christmas story, I would certainly be an Ebenezer Scrooge. Which is why G.K Chesterton said, “Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive frame of mind; … joy is the uproarious labor by which we live by.”[5]The Christmas story is also a story of deep, glorious and unfathomable joy. First, there is the angel Gabriel and the hosts of heaven announcing Jesus birth as the greatest moment of joy the world has known. In fact, the our word “Gospel” is the same word translated as “good tidings.” Jesus’ birth is good news of great joy because he is Israel’s messiah, the saviour in whom we find redemption, who is Lord and King of the world, a king to whom Caesar must bend his knee! Second, not all Israel rejected Jesus, the shepherds listened to the angels’ message and sought him in haste. It is almost certain that the shepherds near Bethlehem were tending the sheep, which would be offered as sacrifices in the temple. One would expect that the shepherds who tended the sheep, which atoned for the sins of the people, would be held in high regard, but this is not the case. It was impossible for the shepherds to keep the ceremonial law living in the wilderness, so they were shunned for their perpetual ceremonial filthiness. Furthermore, their profession also attracted notorious thieves and liars, who were so notorious that their testimony did not count in a court of law. Yet it is to these men to whom the angels appear, it is these men who rush to see Jesus and it is these men who spread the good news that Israel’s long-expected Messiah has been born. Here is something amazing, something joyful. The word angel simply means “a messenger.” After seeing the baby Jesus, the shepherds spread the news of his birth, they became messengers. So we could say that the baby Jesus transformed shepherds into angels.
Not much has changed in the world since Jesus’ birth. The world is still full of oppression and God’s people are still have no room Jesus. However, something has changed, God became a man and was born in Bethlehem and was wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger. As a result of that little baby, all those who are shepherds, those who recognize their own inadequacies and failures can be transformed into God’s messengers, transformed into angels and that is certainly good news of great joy.
[1] Lisa Toland, The Darker Side of A Christmas Carol, “Christianity Today,” December 2009, pgs 44-49.
[2] Sam Wells, What Changes – and What Doesn’t, A Sermon preached in Duke University Chapel on December 24 2006 by the Revd Canon Dr Sam Wells.
[3] Indeed some were willing to demonstrate their “love” by killing any and all Gentiles!
[4] However, before pride begins to creep into our hearts we must remember that those living in Bethlehem were people just like us. They were decent people who tried their best to love God with all there heart, mind and soul and their neighbours as themselves. No, we are no different than those in Bethlehem, who first rejected Jesus, casting him out of their homes and into a stable.
[5] G.K Chesterton, quoted by an anonymous writer in The Joy-Driven Life in “Christianity Today” December 2009, pg 53.
