Christmas: the promise and the powers
John
Proctor reflects on the Christmas Gospel readings
The Christmas
stories seem to transport us into another world, far from our present
experiences in the twenty-first century. Yet when we scratch beneath
their surface, we find some familiar concerns, and the shadows of powers
and personalities that we recognise very well. In different ways the
gospel accounts of the coming of Jesus speak back to forces and fears
that are very much alive in our own day. We look at three themes, from
the openings of Matthew, Luke and John.
Matthew:
Jesus and war
Matthew rolls out
the red carpet. The start of his gospel shows Jesus as a royal figure, a
new-born king. Genealogy, prophecies and a star light his way into the
world. The trouble is that Judah has a king already. ‘In the days of
Herod the king, wise men came and asked, “Where is the one born king?”’
(2.1-2). There is obviously one king too many, and we fear that there
will be no easy contact between them. Herod and Jesus move around like
kings on a chessboard, always keeping a little distance apart. They
cannot safely come together.
In many ways
Herod the Great was a successful king. Visit the Holy Land today, and
the relics of his construction projects are everywhere. He built in
quantity and style. But all this depended on ruling very firmly and
taxing his people hard. Herod was remembered as a nasty piece of work.
His career had begun in war, and right to the end he was insecure and
violent, and fearful about possible successors. So the royal CV includes
a long list of victims, often from within his most intimate circle:
brother-in-law Aristobulus; wife Mariamne; sons Aristobulus, Alexander
and Antipater – these three in the last few years of his reign. And
Matthew’s Gospel reflects just this side of Herod, when it tells of his
frantic and brutal efforts to kill the baby Jesus. The massacre of the
innocents would have been very much in character.
So when Matthew
presents a stand-off between Jesus and Herod, a tale of two kings, this
is more than a personal clash. It is a clash between two sets of values,
two ways of being royal, between the power of terror and the prince of
peace. The kingdom of God stands for a different sort of strength to
Herod’s. Jesus’ rule will be a counter and contrast to his.
Herod died. But
his successors still stalk the earth. Much of the world’s living is
shaped by violence and anger. Some of our partner churches have terrible
tales to tell, and it is easy to believe that the great powers in the
world are wrath and war. But Matthew’s Christmas story reminds us that
this is not so. The Herods die. And the Christ lives.
Luke: Jesus
and wealth
Luke too tells
the Christmas story as a tale of two kings. There is a clue in the
angels’ words: ‘Good news .. a Saviour .. peace on earth’ (2.14). This
was the sort of slogan the Roman Empire loved. They wanted their subject
peoples to appreciate their rule. ‘Good news’ they called it, when an
emperor came to the throne or won a battle. ‘Saviour’ was part of the
state ideology; this was what an emperor was for, to bring wholeness to
the peoples of the earth. And the spread of peace was government
propaganda: ‘we are here to help you.’ But how many of Luke’s early
readers would have ventured a wry and discreet smile, as they heard the
same words used to praise a different king?
Of course the
emperor gets a mention in the gospel: ‘a decree went out from Caesar
Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.’ The NRSV Bible says
‘registered’, but the King James Version has ‘taxed’, and this captures
the point of the exercise. The Romans counted people in order to charge
them money. That may be why ancestral links mattered – the person who
had title to the land was responsible for its dues. This is the rule of
global economic power, the long arm and grasping hand of international
mega-business. Rome was a great economic plughole, where a few lived in
luxury, from the wealth of the world. Joseph and Mary were getting an
opportunity to contribute.
But just wait,
whispers Luke’s story. There is a new king on the block. The time will
come when his decree goes out, a decree not of grasp but of gift. There
will be true good news, not ruled by legion and law but by the greater
power of love. You see it at the very end of Acts (Luke’s second
volume), when Paul preaches in Rome ‘openly and unhindered’. The new
king’s message has arrived in the emperor’s backyard, a word of
compassion rather than of constraint and control.
Luke’s tale of
two kings reminds us, if we ever doubt it, that money does not make the
world go round. Tax and trade speak loud. Often they tip the property of
the poor into the pockets of the rich. But they do not always speak
true. For there is another good news, a generous gospel, that lifts up
the humble and casts down the proud. And when we fear the power of
economics, of prices and levies that hurt, and of coveting dressed up as
international friendship, the Christmas gospel points to another set of
values, and to a God who gave himself. The manger is greater than the
market.
John: Jesus and wisdom
John’s Gospel
reaches back to the beginning of time: ‘the word was with God and the
word was God ... and the word became flesh’ (1.1, 14). One modern writer
describes ‘word’ as a bridging term, connecting two very different
cultural worlds.
For the Jews it
had a biblical resonance. The start of Genesis sounds in John’s opening
verses. There is an echo too of passages in Israel’s wisdom writing,
which tell how God’s eternal wisdom shared in all his creative work.
‘Jesus is God’s wisdom’ is the message beneath John’s text. God’s
purpose and good intent, God’s artful shaping of all that is, God’s
gracious expression of his creative love, took flesh in Jesus, and
showed us the life of God. So when John called Jesus ‘the word’, he was
saying – to those with biblical ears to hear – that the wisdom which
patterned creation, and gave life its power and beauty, was present in
Jesus.
John’s Gospel
could also speak to the Greek world of his time. For ‘word’ was an
important term in some currents of Greek thought. For them it was the
guiding and governing principle of all that lives, which set the
universe in order, shaped and sustained human reason, and pulsed as the
heartbeat of nature. ‘The word’ was almost, but not quite, a personal
creator God.
I wonder if there
is a distant parallel between this Greek notion and today’s immense and
impenetrable realm of electronic information. We live in a world of
databases, banks of fact, permission and knowledge that order your life
and mine. These are not really alive; nor are they human. Yet they
animate, explain, declare and define. They put meaning into our lives,
and shape our thoughts. They sometimes know more about us than we know
ourselves.
And John’s Gospel
says that there is one place where we are known with absolute clarity,
and one wisdom by whom we truly know God’s world. The reality at the
heart of things is not a pulse or a processor, but a person. The word
has taken flesh, full of grace and truth. Jesus defines and explains our
humanity. In him truth is linked with the love of God. And into his
faithfulness, his life of commitment and care, God invites us.
The Revd Dr
John Proctor is a tutor at Westminster College
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