Some
years ago I was able to visit the land where Jesus was born. One of the places
that I really wanted to see was the a place called “The Church of the Holy
Sepulchre” which covers the place where Jesus died on the cross, where he was
laid in the tomb, and where he rose from the dead. I knew from my reading that
this was almost certainly the authentic site. That archaeologists and
historians were agreed that in the context of first century Jerusalem this
place worked better than any other as the place which marked the location of
the events it commemorated. But when I got to the church I found it a huge
disappointment. The trouble was that two thousand years of history had happened
in that place and the things which I wanted to see - the original tomb, the
hill on which the cross had stood – had been overlaid by the devotion of
centuries. The tomb had been covered with marble, the rocky outcrop in which it
had stood had been cleared away. Walls had been built and covered with pictures
and the pictures covered with silver and gold. The reality still lay somewhere
underneath but centuries of good intentions had buried it.
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Christmas
can be a bit like that too. Most people know that it’s got something to do with
Jesus, and quite a few know it celebrates his birth but I think we sometimes
forget how many of the things we associate with Christmas really have little to
do with the original event.
The
most recent accretions come from Victorian and Edwardian times. The fellow with
the Red clothes comes from this time and owes much of his popularity to an
advertising campaign by the Coca Cola company. The importance of Christmas as a
religious festival was much undermined during the of the reformation and it is
Charles Dickens who is credited with popularising most of the modern customs.
The tree, the reindeer and all of that don’t have much to do with the original
Christmas.
But
then, neither do many of the things that we think really must go back to that
first Christmas night. The donkey, for example, who features in so many Christmas
songs and poems is nowhere to found in the Bible. He, with the Ox owe their
presence to Saint Frances who placed the first Christmas crib in a church as a
way of sharing the story with the poor and uneducated. There must have been
some animals there, else why have a manger, but just what they were we don’t
know
Even
the stable at the back of the inn are rather dubious. The Bible does tell us
that Jesus was laid in a manger because there was no room in the inn, but that
word in Inn could be better translated ‘Guest Room’. In the houses of the poor
there was only one room but a slightly more prosperous household would have
two, one for the family and one for guests. A night the family animals would be
brought inside the house at night for safety and to provide warmth. A platform
at one end of the room would provide sleeping space for the family and on the
edge of that platform was the manger, the food trough for the animals. One way
of reading the story of Jesus birth is that he was born in the family room of
the house because the Guest room was full and that Mary laid him in the manger
as the safest and softest place for him to be.
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I’m
not trying to be a spoilsport. I know that many people have come love the
Christmas Card depictions of the stable scene. And like the accretions in the
church of the holy sepulchre the accretions which gathered round Christmas have
been put there with the best of intentions to make the story more attractive
and more interesting. Take them away and it becomes just a story of an ordinary
baby born in circumstances not much different from any other. And that, of
course, is the point. Jesus was born in circumstances not much different from
the general run of humanity. What makes his birth special is not the things we
depict on Christmas cards but the one thing we cannot, that this child was God
born as a human being, taking on himself our flesh and blood to open the way
for us in our flesh and blood to share eternity with him.
---
Maybe
we need, this year, to look beyond the accretions to see the reality beneath.
2011 has not been a good year for many people and if the predictions of
doomsayers come to pass 2012 will be worse. Pretty stories will not give any
help as we face the grim reality that lays before us, only the truth will
sustain us. And the truth is this. The child that was born in Bethlehem was God
born among us. For most of his life he lived obscurely and unnoticed but at the
age of thirty he began to preach, and to teach, and to heal. A band of
disciples grew around him and he finally attracted the attention of the
authorities who swatted him like an annoying fly. He was crucified – a
agonizing death – and buried in a borrowed tomb; and two days later burst out
of the tomb and lit a fire which has never been put out. Convinced that he had
conquered death and every force which makes us less than human, less than
children of God, his followers carried the message about him to every corner of
the word; proclaiming that one day he would return and the whole earth would bow
before him. That the world would be turned upside down, that the rich and
powerful would be cast down before the poor and lowly, and that Justice and
Mercy would reign forever. And proclaiming that right now we could live in the
light of that future coming by living lives of justice and mercy today.
Now
that is a story to sustain us whatever tomorrow may bring. The story of God
with us.
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