Photo credit: Carla J Roth
Isaiah 9.2-7; Psalm 96; Luke 2. 1-14
“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light” (Isaiah 9. 2a)… “And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth” (Luke 2.7).
WHAT DOES Christmas mean for you? We will each have our own personal answer to that. For some it means a good deal. For others, a bit of a break – if they’re lucky – and not a huge amount more.
For many it is an occasion of family gathering and joy. For others it is a time marked by loneliness or loss. Amidst the tinsel, the magic, the mythology (and, yes, an orgy of consumption) there are, for a few of us, mixed emotions about this Season of Goodwill.
The emphasis of the readings, carols and prayers shared on this Holy Night is rightly on song and celebration, peace and possibility. But there is no escaping the fact that the light we desperately need in a darkened world is a ray of hope born not of some easily-won comfort and joy, but out of varying degrees of pain and suffering.
This evening, if you read the news, you will know that the traditional birthplace of Christ, Bethlehem, lies under siege on the occupied West Bank, while many of his followers live in fear or are making desperate plans to escape. Manger Square, formerly a tourist hub, is largely silent as the town marks its second Christmas under the shadow of seemingly endless slaughter and destruction in Gaza. In the real world, rather than in one of make believe, what possible hope can people facing the terror of war and oppression – or, more personally, for some of us right now, grieving and sadness – find in the story we tell about salvation?
This is not a new question. The prophet Isaiah, writing eight centuries before Christ’s birth, was part of a long tradition that anticipated a strong deliverer. This rescuer from God would restore peace by overthrowing the Babylonian tyrant Cyrus, who was holding the Judeans captive and in exile. We Christians read Isaiah’s words in the light of the birth we celebrate tonight. But it is important to note the differences as well as similarities between Isaiah’s longing and Luke’s story.
In the gospel of Luke, the context is also a desire for deliverance. While the historical details of the census under Caesar Augustus and his delegate Quirinius are disputed, the meaning is clear. The Empire wishes to know who and what it controls in order to strengthen its economic and military domination over the territory and the people it occupies.
For those living under occupation, the hope had been that God would provide a kind of ‘kinsman redeemer’, a Messiah who could overthrow the yolk of oppression and restore peace by force. Isaiah talks of a Prince of Peace, yes, but also, by implication, a strong leader. Peace through strength was, it’s worth noting, the slogan of the tyrant Cyrus and the Roman Emperor Augustus, too.
What comes to pass in that barn in Bethlehem is something rather different, however. God’s answer to the people’s prayers for deliverance is not a mighty warrior, but a defenceless baby. The heralds of the Christ-child are not the rich and powerful, but a bunch of lowly shepherds.
Now of course the narrative symbolism of those shepherds, as well as the location of Christ’s birth in Bethlehem (for what it’s worth, the more likely location would be Nazareth) is all about linking the figure of Jesus with the long lineage of Davidic kingship. But this Bethlehem child is as unlike traditional ideas of kingly rule as you could possibly imagine.
Indeed, Luke quietly and subversively presents the arrival of Jesus as being in direct conflict with the Imperial cult of Caesar. It was the birthday of the Roman emperor-god Augustus which was routinely proclaimed as “good news for the whole world” – namely, the world held captive by him. By contrast, the angelic messenger in 2:10 announces Jesus’s birth as “good news for all the people” and “those whom God favours” – that is, a message of liberation for the occupied. (To really understand the gospels, it is necessary first to understand Roman imperial theology.)
Jesus will go on to make it clear that the meek, not the mighty, will inherit the earth. His companions will be the poor and disreputable, not the rich and respectable. His destiny will be a mocking crown of thorns and execution by the state, not a Royal crown and laurel. His last recorded words to his followers will be “put away your sword”. His triumph will not be an avenging crusade, but the nonviolent vindication we call resurrection. That is, God’s unfathomable gift of new life beyond what we currently know as life and death.
Conventional human ideas about God have often involved the projection of our fantasies about dominance onto the divine. We have concocted a bullying old bloke in the sky dishing out approval and disapproval in a slightly grudging and often rather vindictive fashion. But what if God is actually not like that at all? What if the source and destiny of our life comes close to us not as the promise of wealth, success and might, but in the total vulnerability of a small child born in obscurity? What if all our ideas about solving the world’s problems (and justifying ourselves) through wealth, success and might are, in fact, a lie?
The God revealed to us in the Christ-child is the ultimate embodiment of the power of love overcoming the love of power. That sounds nice, but according to the normal way the world works, it’s nonsense. Surely, it is those with the most money and weapons who will inherit the earth, not the meek? Isn’t it bigger elbows we need to get on in life, not gentler hearts? Isn’t it celebrities and billionaires who merit publicity and admiration, not troublemakers from Nazareth who hang out with homeless people, with undesirables and with refugees?
The real challenge of Christmas is not whether we can believe six impossible things before breakfast about elves, or Santa, or angels, or donkeys or mangers. It is about whether we are willing to invest our whole lives, in whatever way is possible, in making this crazy story about a life-changing birth make sense. In daring to love where hate rules; in daring to forgive when only bitterness seems appropriate; in daring to resist injustice when shrugging or giving up feels so much easier; in taking sides rather than taking flight; in working for peace through peace, when the logic of war as the only path to victory seems unassailable.
None of that, I hope, will take away the magic and sparkle of Christmas, which is something we also need in times of darkness and despair. But we should surely not walk away from the crib tonight, we who have ventured into church, without realising that what is at stake in the Nativity story is about so much more. It’s about what path we will choose in life as we venture out into the cold night air. Will it be one where fear and loss continues to haunt us? Or will it be one where we can work and pray together? One where we can learn how to allow the vulnerable love of the Christ-child to have the first and last word in shaping our actions towards neighbours and strangers, friends and enemies, others and ourselves, alike?
Mary the mother of Jesus pondered such things in her heart and treasured them, Luke says. May it be so for us, too, in the deep fabric of our daily lives, and in whatever small way is possible for us. And may you and those you care for be wrapped in the swaddling clothes of Christ’s revolutionary love at Christmas, now and always.
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© Simon Barrow is a writer, researcher, activist, theologian and poet. He was co-director and then director of Ekklesia from 2005 – 2024. His latest book is Beyond Our Means: Poetry, Prose and Blue Runes (Siglum Publishing, January 2025). This is a sermon preached for Midnight Communion at St James, Leith, on 24 December 2024.