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SERMON - December 24, 2011

Rev. Kevin E. Johnston

“Bringing Christmas Down to Earth”

 

Readings

A story from Luke’s account of Jesus’ life:

This is how the birth of Jesus came about:

About that time, the Roman Emperor, Caesar Augustus ordered a census to be taken throughout the Empire. This was the first census when Quirinius was governor of Syria. Everyone had to travel to his own ancestral hometown to be accounted for.

So Joseph went from the Galilean town of Nazareth up to Bethlehem in Judah, David's town, to be registered. As a descendant of David, he had to go there. He went with Mary, his fiancée, who was pregnant.

While they were there, the time came for her to give birth to a son, her firstborn child. She wrapped him in a blanket and laid him in a manger, because there was no room in the hostel.

That night, there were shepherds camping in a neighbourhood field, having set night watches over their sheep.

Suddenly, an angel stood among them and Divine Light blazed around them. They were terrified.

The angel said, "Don't be afraid. I'm here to announce a great and joyful event that is meant for everybody, worldwide. A baby has just been born in Bethlehem, David's town, the Anointed One! So go, and see! This is what you're to look for: the baby will be wrapped in a blanket, and lying in a manger."

At once a huge angelic choir singing praises joined the angel: Glory to God in the heavenly heights! Peace be to all people, and all creation!

As the angel choir withdrew, the shepherds talked it over. "Let's get over to Bethlehem as fast as we can and see for ourselves what has been revealed to us."

They left, running, and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in the manger.

They told everyone they met what the angels had said about this child. And all who heard the sheepherders were impressed. Mary kept all these things to herself, holding them dear, deep within herself.

The shepherds returned to the field, singing and dancing and letting loose. They were excited about everything they had heard and seen. It turned out exactly the way they'd been told!

Let us hear what the Spirit is saying to the Church.

May it be so.

A Giving Time
by Virginia Becher
( Shine On, Star of Bethlehem/ 41-42)

Advent is a twinkling time of stars and candles,
of bright Christmas lights in city streets.
Advent is a time of light,
to celebrate the light that the Christ brought.
Christmas is a giving time of presents and cards,
of mince pies and shared Christmas lunch.
Christ as is a time of gifts to celebrate the gift the Christ brought.
This twinkling, giving time is full of promise, expectation, hope
as we celebrate the big surprise: God’s greatest gift – The Christ.
But do we look for new surprises?
Do we look for God amongst our gifts and Christmas lights?

 

The Message

This is no time for a child to be born,
with the earth betrayed by war & hate and a comet slashing the sky
to warn that time runs out & the sun burns late.
That was no time for a child to be born, in a land in the crushing grip of Rome;
honour & truth were trampled by scorn- yet here did the [Christ] make [that One’s] home.
When is the time for love to be born?
The inn is full on the planet earth, and by a comet the sky is torn-
yet Love still takes the risk of birth.1

“Maybe Christmas doesn’t come from a store. Maybe Christmas … perhaps … means a little bit more”, quips the Grinch in Dr. Seuss’ famous tale.

Most, if not all, of us have heard the story Alex and Geoff shared with us many times during our life. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if many can tell it “by heart”, as it were, because it’s been part of our “reality” every year.

But it’s just a story. And perhaps some I’m a heretic when I say this. In many ways, I am. Heretics are people who deviate from the norm. The word “heretic” comes from the Greek term meaning “to choose.” Heretics choose a different path that differs from the rule. So I suppose that I am indeed a heretic. And I’m ok with that, because it’s easier to follow the crowd and accept what others say at face value, instead of venturing off on our own to discover what is and isn’t, what does and doesn’t work.

That said, we all know that many churches are no longer “what was”. It’s been that way for decades. People have told me over the years, “It just doesn’t work for me. I’m not “there” like I was when I was a kid and believed everything others told me.” And I get that. I get that because, for me, “I’m your mother and I said so” never held much water – if at all.

But if we’re engaging our brain at any level, we’ll soon realize how far-fetched this “story” appears. I’m not sure about you, but the whole thing reeks to me of Cecil B. DeMille and Steven Spielberg. And supposedly, it all took place some two thousand or so years ago. It’s true. It really happened, “just like that”. Supposedly.

Interestingly, “the story” is a concoction, or creation, if you may, by the writers and communities known as Luke and Matthew. The first “Christian” writings were letters from a man called Paul to various emerging and developing faith communities in Asia Minor, dated to be composed between the mid-to-late 30s and early-to-mid 60’s of the first century CE, after the death of Jesus. And what we call the Gospels were not assembled until thirty-to-sixty years after that. The only mention of an earthly, human Jesus that Paul makes is in his letter to the Galatian community, where he wrote that he was “born of a woman”2, just like any other human being. Mark, the first of the gospels to be penned, makes no mention of any out-of-this-world surreal Jesus’ birth story. It is only after Mark did any birth story come to light. And as Luke and Matthew came into being thirty to sixty years after Jesus had died, it doesn’t take a degree in rocket science to realize that these stories are just that. Stories. Not history. Not “real life” events of long ago. They are much like the myths and fables that come to us from Aesop, Grimm, and even Dr. Seuss. Yet even so, they have a reason and a purpose, as well as life-truths, for us even today.

The so-called “literal” interpretation of scripture arose from Protestants who insisted on its authority as apposed to that of the Pope. It’s a rather recent way of seeing things. It’s not how things were viewed historically from the beginning, but a rather recent phenomenon that came out of British and American Protestantism in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Its founders reacted against liberal theology, asserting that the inerrancy – the errorlessness – of the Bible was essential for “true” Christianity. And as an organized movement, it began in the 1920s within Protestant churches in the United States.

Remember that Paul-guy I mentioned earlier? In his letter to the folks in Corinth, he wrote, “When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things.”3 And I find it very interesting that, even though we no longer believe the many myths and fables we were fed as “truth” when we were young, many adults continue to insist that the stories we find within the sacred writings to be “truth” – albeit their own. There’s no room for “other”. Which, for me, is really sad.

So then, what is the meaning and purpose of this Christmas, Jesus, story then, if it’s nothing like what we’ve always been told by “the Church”? I mean, is it all hogwash and bull? Or is there something else that we’ve never been made aware of? Is this story no different from other tales we were told when we were children, only to discover there was no truth in them as well?

When [we] recall that the birth narratives of Matthew and Luke are non-historical, made up as they are of [religious] legends and Midrashic-type invention – whose highly symbolic and spiritually meaningful character must…be stressed – …what we are dealing with in the Gospels are literary editions of allegorical and mythical themes that have a history of their own, but contain little history themselves. All the legends about virgin birth, a star in the east, …wise [ones] bearing gifts, the evil power that tries to take a special child’s life, and angelic messengers have…been enacted many times before in the myths of Egypt and other places…”4

The form of storytelling known as Midrash comes from the Jewish rabbis as they attempted to make sense of their religious texts.

And “as one reconsiders the conflicting nativity stories…the resolution of the allegorical birth of the Christ into the delivery of a literal baby in a localized, historical Bethlehem has kept the rest of humanity from realizing the true meaning of [what is often called] the messianic fulfillment. … Among other things, this has meant that the true, inner meaning of the annual celebration of Christmas for each individual…has been lost. … [And] nowhere is this … decline more visible than in what has happened to the religious treatment of Christmas.5

The story is … about the birth, in the heart of every human being, of the Christ…a supreme telling of the central myth of all religion – the incarnation [or mutual indwelling] of the divine into human flesh.6

Yet, sadly, the “church” for the most part has had us check our brains at the door before entering for much too long. Congregations have asked me, “Why hasn’t anyone told us anything different before? Why haven’t we known about the other side of the page?” Well, quite frankly, I cannot answer for anyone else but myself. Perhaps “the church” – its ministry persons of many varieties – was afraid. Afraid, maybe, that once its people were made aware of another point of view, it would no longer have “control” over them any longer. It’s also a proven fact that, throughout its existence, “the church” as quashed, vilified, ousted, and even killed its own all because of somehow having the need to “contain” whatever “truth” is. Many ministers have been afraid to find themselves in the unemployment line come Monday morning if they disclosed different interpretations. And I’m sure there are all sorts of other reasons and excuses for this. However, again, “because I told you so“ doesn’t always come up to snuff. At least, if we’re honest, we’ll admit to that.

Did you know that “You are the way that God is…in the world, when you are fully awake to your humanity[,]…constantly rising above [whatever life circumstance comes your way?] When we meet [together] in [a] space [like tonight], we create a Christ consciousness that transcends any circumstance, place or time. Christ consciousness can never be contained to any one person, one story or one religion. If it divides people and leads to hatred, it is a false [one]. If it unites across all manner of difference, then it is a true Christ.”7

And so the question I put forward this evening to you, on Christmas Eve, is this: “Is there a way [that we might] embrace the Christmas story that is true to the origins of the Jesus story, [and] affirms diversity and universal values…?”8

Matthew Fox, former Dominican priest, and now serving in the Episcopal tradition, writes that: “It is not enough to celebrate the Cosmic Christ as “the pattern that connects” and the “bearer of coherence” as expressed in Jesus. There is a real sense in which the Cosmic Christ is not born yet. Even in Jesus the Cosmic Christ has yet to come to full birth, for those who say they believe in Jesus have scarcely brought forth the Cosmic Christ at all on the mass scale that Mother Earth requires. One might speak, then, of the already born Cosmic Christ…who we see only “in a mirror and darkly” (1 Cor. 13:12) and of the not-yet-born Cosmic Christ…who is the Christ of justice, of creativity, of compassion in self and society that yearns to be born and is eager to be born in us.

“What good is it to me,” Meister Eckhart asked, “if the son of God was born to Mary 1400 years ago but is not born in my person and in my culture and in my time?” . . . The name “Christ” means “the anointed one.”

[And] all of us are anointed ones. We are all royal persons, creative, godly, divine, persons of beauty and of grace. We are all Cosmic Christs, “other Christs.” But what good is this if we do not know it? . . . We are all called, like the Cosmic Christ, to radiate the divine presence to, with, [and] from one another.9 

[Did] you know that it is possible to combine religious and secular Christmas scenes in tasteful ways? We don’t have to give up Christmas. Perhaps we just need to understand as the Grinch came to understand, that Christmas can mean more, so much more than we ever thought. It can even include the daily details of our lives.10

The…Jesus [story] was only ever intended to be read as a story, as poetry, as metaphor. … Literal Christianity has served to indoctrinate millions of people over thousands of years that one man, Jesus of Nazareth, could save them from this life and for another world. It has excluded all other religions and all other expressions of the Jesus story as story.11

I Am what comes before sand and sandstone, chickens and eggs.

I am the unproven truth on which all proofs depend.
So why this stirring, this painful urge to emerge through the cosmic pelvis?
Why this wanting to breathe thin air, to play in the dirt, to shave wood, to cleave to flesh?
To make friends I could lose, to share love that could break,

to mingle in blood and spit and mud?
On this side I am a wingless angel, floating, sustained by all that surrounds me,
breathless in bliss, in timeless sabbath rest.
On this side, I am someone else's idea. All that without will or effort is, I Am.
Out there are choices to be made: laments or laughter, caresses or crosses.
Out there are surprises – unspeakable, ineffable ecstasies.
Out there is a Way, narrow or wide, slippery or safe?
Out there I dread, but yearn to go.... Out there is Christmas.12

This Christmas, let us reclaim the universal Christ…reclaim the tradition that was begun in poetry because poetry was the only way the early followers of Jesus could capture their profound experience of their hero. They told the story of Jesus’ birth as if he was a pagan God, [the word pagan meaning a peasant, a person of the land], with all the details familiar to Egyptian mythology and Hebrew story telling. That’s all they had; their experience, their dependence on the earth and their story telling.13

Let us reclaim the universal Christ because the story speaks to the Christ in you and in every person no matter what religion or background. [It] speaks to a universal longing for rebirth in the midst of the darkest crisis.14 It’s an energy, a life-source, from “the One in whom we live and move and have our being”15 that comes as gift not only to humans, but to all creation.

[You see,] this universal, pagan, Christmas story has so much to offer the world in terms of unity and healing. We could do so much more with public spaces than perpetuate an unbelievable, literal Christmas story. This is about the healing of the world, instead of division. There is so much at stake, and there is so much to be gained by telling the universal Christmas story. The Christ story is every person’s story. [So let’s] reclaim that story and allow the celebration of Christmas to reenergize our life and heal the world.16

For in so doing, we can be part of bringing Christmas down to earth, where life happens, and where the story makes sense.

And may it be so.

 

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