Christmas is not for children

Christmas is not for children. This observation seems at odds with the sights and sounds that have blitzed our senses in the shopping malls over the past few weeks, with children lining up for photos with Santa Claus and suggestions of both the cute and the glitzy manger scenes. 


The source of our confusion and our inability to grasp this reality lies in the fact that the Christian Church's celebration of the feast of the Incarnation has become completely overlaid by a celebration of family driven by the unrelenting consumer logic of late capitalism. Christmas for us is about family, therefore becomes centred on children, creating an immense source of pain for those whose families are dysfunctional, those who are single and separated.


A look at the readings for the Christmas service that I attended in Canberra yesterday will start to make the point about how little the whole festival is about family, middle class selection and generally having a good time. The reading in the lectionary for the Old Testament for Christmas morning strikes quite a different note:



The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness,
on them has light shone.
You have multiplied the nation;
you have increased its joy;
they rejoice before you
as with joy at the harvest,
as they are glad when they divide the spoil.
For the yoke of his burden,
and the staff for his shoulder,
the rod of his oppressor,
you have broken as on the day of Midian.
For every boot of the tramping warrior in battle tumult
and every garment rolled in blood
will be burned as fuel for the fire.
For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given;
and the government shall be upon his shoulder,
and his name shall be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Of the increase of his government and of peace
there will be no end,
on the throne of David and over his kingdom,
to establish it and to uphold it
with justice and with righteousness
from this time forth and forevermore.
The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this. (Isaiah 9:2-7 ESV)



This is an account about politics and government. The debris of warfare and battle will be burned up and destroyed and what we are to look for beyond that is one who will bring a reign of peace, characterised by justice and righteousness. This is  a perspective that is supposed to frame the discussion of the Gospel reading in Luke 2 on Christmas morning, but I suspect usually doesn't. It certainly didn't at the church service I attended. The passage takes away any excuse for a sentimental account of the significance of the birth of Jesus and places it in a context of empire and exile.


As it is if you manage to ignore the political frame of God's project for the achievement of peace and justice in Isaiah, the account of the birth of Jesus in Luke Chapter 2 opens with a clear account of the political context. Debra Dean Murphy from the Ekklesia Project makes this very clear in her lectionary reflections on this passage:

In Luke, we glimpse what the tyranny of the imperium romanum meant for its subjects, especially those on the margins of empire geographically, ethnically, and religiously. In verses 1 through 5 it is clear that the events leading up to Jesus’ birth were no picnic – nothing like the familiar, beatific stuff of greeting-card sentimentality. Rather, despots and oligarchs populate the scene and the treacherous journey to the stable – labor pains upon labor pains – includes refugees on the run, authorities asking for papers, and risky border crossings.   

We can miss this, of course, and often do – especially when we rush to the later, more palatable and more accessible passages of Luke’s narrative. The Christmas pageant version of verses 8 through 14, for instance, has long colonized our imagination, with toddlers in bathrobes and bed sheets, coat-hanger halos on their wee heads.

But as Dorothee Soelle once observed, “the boot of the empire crushes everything in its way in the narrative from Bethlehem to Golgotha.” The terror of the shepherds was real and, as those among the poorest of the poor, the glad tidings they received from the angels (in whatever form these heavenly messengers appeared to them) signalled something of the radical politics of the infant king and his own future dealings, as one among the poorest of the poor, with the imperial powers.(The Logic of the Incarnation)

Tom Wright spells out the contrast between two kingdoms that Luke sketches in his account of the birth of Jesus:

Luke's scene ceases to be a romantic pastoral idyll, with the rustic shepherds paying homage to the infant King. It becomes a clear statement of two kingdoms destined to compete, kingdoms that offer radically different definitions of what peace and power and glory are all about. 

Here is the old king in Rome, turning 60 in the year Jesus was born: he represents perhaps the best that pagan kingdoms can do. At least he knows that peace and stability are good things; unfortunately, he has had to kill a lot of people to bring them about, and to kill a lot more, on a regular basis, to preserve them. 

Unfortunately, too, his real interest is in his own glory. Already, before his death, many of his subjects have begun to regard him as divine.

Here, by contrast, is the young King in Bethlehem, born with a price on his head. He represents the dangerous alternative, the possibility of a different empire, a different power, a different glory, a different peace. The two stand over against one another.
Augustus's empire is like a well-lit room at night: the lamps are arranged beautifully, they shed pretty patterns, but they have not conquered the darkness outside. Jesus' kingdom is like the morning star rising, signalling that it is time to blow out the candles, to throw open the curtains, and to welcome the new day that is dawning. Glory to God in the highest-and peace among those with whom he is pleased!

You see the two empires squared off against each other toward the end of John's gospel, when Pilate confronts Jesus with two questions: Don't you know that I have the power to have you killed? And, what is truth? That is the language of kingdom, power and glory that the world knows.The Most Dangerous Baby

Why Samuel Wells ponders do we turn Christmas,  into an event that is really just for children? After all ... 

 this is a story about political oppression, harsh taxes, displaced people, homelessness, unemployment, vulnerable refugees and asylum-seekers. That's the danger of performing it in a place like Delhi and having it acted out by adults who themselves know the very real possibility of any or all of these realities. We might have to recognize what it's really about.

And the truth is, we don't want to think about such realities. We don't want to think that our own political system and the demands of our own economy could have comparable effects on far-flung places to those brought about by the Roman Empire and its client regimes all those years ago.

We don't want the cozy Christmas story besmirched by such tawdry human and political realities. We don't want to spoil things by thinking of the oppressed - and more than that we absolutely can't face the possibility that we might be counted among the oppressors.

So we get youngsters to perform our nativity plays. We talk about how magical this season is. We say "Christmas is really for the children." How ... convenient. Christmas is really for Grown-Ups

If it is for children we can then evade all the hard and the difficult questions that follow if we read it for the hard disturbing tale that it is. We are then faced with the call to discipleship, the call to follow, to become people who are on the Way, no longer at ease with the world in which we are so deeply invested. And we in our churches provide a chaplaincy service to a society, giving a religious veneer with our affirmation of the importance of family and personal generosity to those who live and work on the margins every day of the year.

I got given this year the DVD of the movie Of Gods and Men, the disturbing story of the monks in the Atlas Mountains of Algeria who made the choice to stay and accompany the people in the local village in the midst of a dirty war between the Army and Islamist guerrillas. This story I think provides a parable of the Incarnation, of the costly choice of identification with the pain and brokenness of the world. As a parable of the Incarnation it makes it clear why Christmas is for grown-ups and not for children.

Have churches in Australia "got over "christendom?

You would not want to conduct a prosecution on the basis of media reports, even if the report did appear in such a sober paper as The Canberra Times. Well more sober than say, The Daily Telegraph, or The Herald-Sun. However, the report on Christmas messages from church leaders, buried on P.9, of the December 17 edition, under the heading "Churches address contentious issues", rises some interesting questions of some theological significance about how churches place, or perhaps better, imagine themselves in addressing  Australian society, in a time after Christendom.


My suggestion is that the church in Australia has not yet really "gotten over" Christendom and is still assuming a location in society that gives it a particular position of power and responsibility for sustaining the social order. The news report gets to the heart of the issue with the observation of one church leader that "... rather than legislating morality the Church could help to unite society" and is followed by the comment that ...the gift of the Church is ... being the voice of Christ, especially to those who feel alienated from or dispossessed of the gifts that this nation has.


The comment about the Church "uniting society" betrays a lingering Christendom mentality in which the church and state are still linked together to uphold the social order, even if the church does not wish to proceed by way of legislation in achieving its goals. While it is one step away from the original Christendom arrangement, the next part of the statement assumes that there is still an important degree of linkage between church and state and that the church will play a "conserving" role in society as a chaplain to support the social order as it is. The observation about the Church being the voice of Christ "to" the alienated, assumes that the Church is in a position of power and can speak from that position "to" those who are on the margins as an upholder of social order and a source of "values", a term that usually remains curiously undefined. Everyone is in favour of "values", aren't they?


Unfortunately, the church leaders who were responsible for producing these statements have not, in my view anyway, being paying enough attention to the readings for the third Sunday in Advent. These readings are particularly unsettling to any presumption that the God that the prophets of Israel presumed to speak for can be easily corralled into support of  asocial and economic order in which it is business as usual. If God is in favour of "values" then they are very specific and disturbing values, not likely to be enthusiastically embraced by those entrenched in positions of authority. and power.


The readings from Luke and Isaiah caste into severe doubt the presumption that God is interested in upholding the social order as it is. Indeed they suggest that  those who wish to align themselves with God's activity will be unlikely to be found acting as chaplains to a society devoted to consumerism in its early twenty-first century manifestations.


Take the reading from the prophet Isaiah:

The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; to provide for those who mourn in Zion-- to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit. They will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, to display his glory. They shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations. 

For I the LORD love justice, I hate robbery and wrongdoing; I will faithfully give them their recompense, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them. Their descendants shall be known among the nations, and their offspring among the peoples; all who see them shall acknowledge that they are a people whom the LORD has blessed. I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, my whole being shall exult in my God; for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord GOD will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations. (Isaiah 61: 1-4, 8-11)

That doesn't sound a lot like a recipe for maintaining the social order and business as usual to me, while the declaration by Mary, recorded in Luke's Gospel is positively rabble rousing in its political and social implications:

My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly;he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever. (Luke 1: 46b-55)

Yes I know these passages are read in the churches, but the problem is that they are read by the those of us who are in positions of relative social and political power, and economic and social comfort. We carry the assumptions a hangover from Christendom about the social location of the church and its responsibility for maintaing social order. As a consequence we remain largely oblivious to the way that our location in the comfort of middle class Australia obscures the radical and disturbing call of the passages. 

The voice of the churches in Australia will only start to take on the disturbing character of the prophets and Mary in addressing the world around us when they can begin to imagine themselves as being "other" than the chaplain to the state, and without the perceived responsibility for maintaining the social order and thereby supporting business as usual. When the churches can recover their identity as witnesses to the upside-down disturbing kingdom that Jesus came to announce and inaugurate, then they might begin to speak not "to", or even "for" those who are on the margins, but "from" the margins, as a community that has begun to practice justice, and depends for its life upon the faithfulness of a merciful, remembering God, not the support of the state and alignment with the "powers that be".

Christmas as revolution

A reminder as I move into this new year from a christmas sermon by Simon Barrow:

... the Christ who is born quietly, humbly, almost insignificantly on this Holy Night speaks first to ordinary people – like you and me. He begins his revolution by disturbing our certainty, giving us hearts of flesh rather than stone. Then he invites us to join a small company of friends who will go into the world’s darkest places, not with weapons of war and large corporations (as we have seen in the region of Jesus’ birth in recent years), but with something much more costly.

I am talking about simple but life-changing actions like forgiveness, hospitality, reconciliation, the sharing of goods, and human solidarity – what the Bible calls love of neighbour: treating the stranger and even the enemy as you yourself would wish to be treated. This is the way of the Prince of Peace whose coming we celebrate.

What is true of Christ’s challenge to the way we live, the way we relate to each other and the way we see things is also true of the way we understand faith and the way we perceive God. In an often bruised and hurting world, in the midst of the doubt and confusion we all feel, where is God to be found? Not in opulent palaces, not in remote splendour, not in complicated formulas – and not (if you read the gospels) with those who go around boasting about how ‘spiritual’ or ‘religious’ they are, either. That is some comfort to those of us who count ourselves neither especially smart nor notably righteous!

Instead, according to the topsy-turvy Good News announced to those shepherds, the ordinary working people of the time, God is to be found in the most unlikely of places: in a stable, off the beaten track, and in the vulnerable flesh of a baby born on the edge of empire, miles away from the rich and powerful. It is this Jesus, now lying in a cradle, soon mixing with the crowd, and eventually confronting one of the murderous crosses we have built in the world – it is his life which truthfully embodies who God is, what God is like, and what God’s agenda is about.Cradling a Revolution

Peace on Earth? A Christmas reflection

Gene Stoltzfus, a founder of the Christian Peacemaker Teams, reflected this week on"Peace, War Nobel Prizes and Justice" on the acceptance speech by Barak Obama of this year's Nobel Peace Prize. The full speech is available at: http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/10850.

A couple of paragraphs near the near of the speech I thought were a challenging and helpful basis for reflection as run up to the season of Christmas in which a key element of the announcement of the messiah relates to the call  "Peace on earth".

For many peace people, church members and third world nations, Obama’s speeches on Afghanistan and his acceptance of the Nobel prize, despite their eloquence, were a disappointment. This was the moment when I realised that my long term hope for ending the practice of war, in say a century, will require harder, more focused work than ever. I believe I can use this experience as a time to bound forward. The speeches remind me that the Lamb of God, with even wider reach in the stretch for justice, can overcome the god of empire that imposes chaos and destruction under the guise of democratic order.

The speeches remind us that fundamentalist preachers or pundits are tethered together with the liberal establishment on the question of war. Both stumble through various versions of just war ethics as the Predator drones drag us into a scary future. Above all, the speeches remind us of the very limited options that are available to an imperial President in matters of peace and war. This is the moment to pull up our pants, turn off the TV, awaken our imaginations, listen to God’s spirit of compassion for all human kind, and get on with our work.

Some of us will be called to unexpected sacrifice of time, career, and life itself. The goal of a world without war is worth all of the sacrifice of a great army of unarmed soldiers. This dream of a nonviolent world may be the only realistic vision now, despite the fact that our leaders doff their hats to just war. The renewal of our spirit will come one step at a time in fresh and even larger ways as our spirits are awakened to the politics of renewal and hope, a politics, like Jesus himself, that is never dependent upon a president who is often powerless to transform an imperial culture that devours good policies and strong words.

The universality of this season’s mantra, “Peace on Earth, Good Will Towards People” is a good place to start and it gets the best angels involved. If the mantra is going to bring down the institution of war, we had better be prepared with discipline and armfuls of imagination infused with love. When we are called idealists, we do well to give the realist answer, all of creation is groaning for something better. That is where we will put our energy.

Ekklesia on Christmas

Delayed reference to a couple of columns on Christmas from Ekklesia. Links to the full columns. Always worth a read.

Simon Barrow on "Rescuing God from our attempts at Belief"
http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/8223
The God who is portrayed in the Gospel stories about the birth of Jesus is indeed a stranger to dominant ideas about divinity ...

When human beings go about making gods to worship, they are able to do so only as projections of their own image. This is particularly true of the infantilising cosmic tyrant who haunts the imagination of those who would use faith as a self-asserting weapon, and those (like Richard Dawkins) who see this kind of false deity as the be-all and end-all of God-talk.

The god of human imagining is, as someone once put it in my hearing, “a person like us, only much bigger and able to do anything at all.” In contrast to such fantasy, the God whose nature and purpose is disclosed in the flesh of Jesus is neither a metaphysical proposition, nor a cosmic being nor an unassailable entity. God is, rather, unconditioned and unconditional love – a reality beyond definition, description and specification, but revealed in the truth of self-giving.

As recent tragic events in Britain have confirmed, a small child is dependent and defenceless. The story of Jesus is of a birth into obscurity at the edge of Empire in debatable circumstances and of dubious parentage.

Moreover, this child grows up to become someone who defies the attempts of religious and political authorities to capture God for their own purposes. For them, unbounded grace and healing for the ‘impure’ is too much to bear. He is subjected to a criminal’s death and his vindication is not by might but by the gift of life beyond captivity.

There is no way that this picture of God can ever ‘fit’ in with our conventional expectations, religious or otherwise. The god of human construction operates through inviolable fiats, inerrant texts, incomprehensible commands and unquestionable ....

We are faced with a ...God beyond all our concepts of ‘god-ness’, being found not as an alien intruder, a competitor or a member of a class of things called ‘gods’, but as unfathomable life encountered in and through our vulnerability – not over and against it.

When we get to the heart of the Christmas story we find ourselves challenged to become more, not less human. We are asked to stop treating each other, and God, as ‘objects’ to be contemplated, traded, argued about and disposed… but instead as “mysteries to be loved”...


Jonathan Bartley "Christmas means compassion not crusading"
http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/8233

... attempts to put Christ back into Christmas through conquest sit uneasily with the political message that lies at the heart of the Christmas story, which challenges those who would seek to dominate and control. According to St Luke's account of the nativity, it's a sentiment that Jesus' mother recognised particularly well.

There is a tendency to think of Mary as a victim – a slightly passive but worthy virgin, chosen to bear the god-child because she has wouldn't hurt a first-century fly. But Mary's response is not one of benign resignation. She celebrates. She bursts into song. And the song she sings is about an end to tyranny and oppression. She anticipates that the powerful will be brought down, the hungry fed, and the rich sent away with nothing. The world will be turned upside down by the baby growing inside her.

The Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55), as it came to be known, is a profoundly political song of subversion. But it is also entirely in keeping with the tone of the Christmas story. Oppressive Romans are seeking to extend their control and tax the Jewish population through a census. A despotic ruler sees Jesus as a potential threat, and commits a terrible atrocity in his desire to eliminate the risk. Jesus' family become asylum seekers and flee to Egypt. The baby has clearly come to cause trouble – and he subsequently does so for both the religious and political authorities of his day.

It's all a long way from the "Little Lord Jesus", so gentle, meek and mild, he doesn't cry in his manger bed. But Christmas was rebranded long before the existence of "politically correct" councils. In fact there isn't any record of Christians in the first few centuries after Christ celebrating Christmas at all. Following the fourth century conversion of Constantine, Jesus was embarrassing for a church now in bed with the same empire that had put him to death. It has suited both church and state, in assorted alignments for the next 1700 years, to have a romanticised and sentimentalised story, not a subversive one. Even the Magi (wise men) were made into "kings", rewriting history to create a close association with power, rather than a challenge to it.

Mary's song has far more in common with The Red Flag than We Three Kings. But if it makes uncomfortable reading for the Church keen to attract people with a warm, fuzzy message at the one time of year when church attendance seems to actually increase, it is equally challenging for governments.

Recovering Christmas? Bringing Herod back into Christmas

Australian Christians are faced with the problem about how to celebrate the birth of Jesus appropriately in a context where consumerism happily drives the mongrelisation of the secular festival further and faster. Christmas has morphed into a celebration of family, accompanied by relief for those with a demanding job at the possibility of a holiday break.

What can be done to recover in the life of the church the radical character of Christmas?

A couple of suggestions that point to changing our practices as well as re-narrating the Christmas story.

Firstly we can begin to disengage from Christmas as commercial event. Substantially reduce the amount of money we spend on presents for one another and start giving sacrifically to assist community development amongst our brothers and sisters in the global south. (TEAR's Arguably the World's Most Useful Gift Catalogue is great place to start. www.usefulgifts.com


Secondly, we can bring Herod back into Christmas. Genocide and the politics of an Imperial puppet at the edge of the Roman empire that we meet in the Gospels have little to do with the sentimental blather that passes the Christmas story and its commercial images. The Gospel writers (Matthew and Luke) confront us with the political aspirations of the people of Palestine hoping for liberation. The poetry of the Magnificat is soaked in the language of politics, of justice, pulling down princes, lifting up the poor, freedom from fear and guiding our feet into the path of peace.

The intention of Matthew leaves us in no doubt that Herod should be afraid of Jesus. Jesus’ vision was of overturning everything Herod believed in – unaccountable power, privilege and violence in the cause of injustice.

Such a truthful, politically relevant account of Christmas if repeated often enough might even bring the advertising agencies mongrelising of Christmas to a halt - perhaps making it indigestible. It might make preaching on Christmas day a bit harder and more challenging. and uncomfortable for the clergy.

Christmas - a very political festival

Simon Barrow has drawn attention to the highly political character of Christmas and its subversion due to the alliance of Christianity with the powers that be. Following is an extract from his excellent blog FaithinSociety,- see the link attached to this site. the various commentaries he is pointing to start to spell out the implications of a recovery of the subversive character of Christmas.

Enjoy!

I expect to return to this theme in the context of Easter where the mystification of the politics of Jesus has gone much deeper into the liturgy and theology of the Christian community.

But the truth is that the alliance of Christianity with governing authority and dominant culture has inflicted the most damage on the subversiveness of Christ's birth. This is something Jonathan Bartley and I have been arguing in different ways over the past couple of weeks. See Jon's Church Times piece here, which roots the problem in our ongoing diagnosis of the ails of the Christendom mentality. Mine focuses on the biblical dynamic itself. We have also published provocations from Giles Fraser, from Methodist president Martyn Atkins (who I am delighted to see will be their general secretary shortly, and has a blog here) and from Rabbi Michael Lerner (mentioned below). Rowan Williams' BBC Radio 4 Thought for the Day is worth reading, too.

Christmas as the time of no room

A collection of readings for Advent and Christmas, Watch for the Light, brought me this morning an extract from Thomas Merton's meditation "The Time of No Room" from his collection of essays, Raids on the Unspeakable.

Merton opens up another dimension of the politics of Christmas with a reminder of the critical approach of the Old Testament tradition to the practice of the census.

Why then was the inn crowded? Because of the census, the eschatological massing of the "whole world" in centers of registration, to be numbered, to be identified with the structure of imperial power. The purpose of the census: to discover those who were to be taxed. To find out those who were eligible for service in the armies of the empire.

The Bible had not been friendly to a census in the days when God was ruler of Israel (2 Samuel 24). the numbering of the people of god by an alien emperor and their full consent to it was itself an eschatological sign, preparing those who could understand it to meet judgment with repentance.

Merton provides a powerful reflection on the detail that there was no room for the baby in the inn.

Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for him at all, Christ has come uninvited. But because he cannot be at home in it - because he is out of place in it and yet must be in it - his place is with those who do not belong, who are rejected because they are regarded as weak; and with those who are discredited, who are denied the status of persons, and are tortured, exterminated. With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in this world.

Luke on Christmas and the Empire

In comments yesterday on the politics of Christmas in Luke, I forgot to mention that the story is located explicitly in the midst of empire. A census is being undertaken to establish the base for revenue and the rake-offs by the various organs of political authority at local and regional levels.

The language of the Christmas story is spare, stark and edgy - there is nothing sentimental here - Mary is told that a "sword would pierce her heart". How did we get into the sentimental mode in which the festival becomes a warm celebration of family insulated by an unrelenting consumption from the reality of life for much of the world and hiding from ourselves the reality of dysfunctional relationships.

The Politics of Christmas according to Luke

For all the attention paid to the birth of Jesus in the focus on Christmas in both the church and the prevailing culture, the stories that we have are limited to only two of the four gospel accounts of Jesus. This is is in stark contrast to the focus in all four gospels on the last week of Jesus life and his execution.

In Luke's account as in Matthew's account, discussed earlier this week, we land up in the midst of the politics of first century Palestine, not some nice spiritually warm "religious" event.

Luke focuses our attention on the political aspirations of the people of Palestine located against the history of their striving for identity and independence - hoping for liberation - read the poetry of the Magnificat and the prophetic Benedictus, all this is soaked in the language of politics, of justice, pulling down princes, lifting up the poor, freedom from fear and guiding our feet into the path of peace.

All the signs and language of this account are a counter imperial challenge to the claim of the ruling Roman powers and the claims to divinity of Caesar.

With Caesar there was not distinction between the 'political' and the 'religious' - Luke was writing to those in the wider Roman empire. To make the claims Luke does was to call into question the political claims of the empire.

Jesus is bringing into the world, Luke advises us, a new form of politics that calls the claims of Caesar into severe question.

Luke's Christmas account read carefully calls into question any easy alignment of those who claim to be followers of Jesus with the pretensions of Empire - then and now.

Shipwrecked at the Stable Door

Celebrating Christmas as a regular event on the church's calendar, let alone getting swamped by the commercialised family fest has its downside. You can take it for granted and the sheer wonder of the contingency gets lost.

Bruce Cockburn, the Canadian singer, songwriter, poet continues to remind me of the sheer wonder and strangeness with some lines from a song on his 1989 album Big Circumstance, lines which connect the Christmas story with the radical claims of the Sermon on the Mount.

Big circumstance has brought me here wish it would send home
never was clear where home was but its nothing you can own
It can't be bought with cigarettes or nylons or perfume,
And all the highest bidder gets is a voucher for a tomb

Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are the meek
for theirs shall be the Kingdom that the power mongers seek
And blessed are the dead for love and those who cry for peace
And those who love the gift of earth may their gene pool increase ...

Left like a shadow on the step where the body was before
Shipwrecked at the stable door
(Bruce Cockburn "Shipwrecked at the Stable door")

This year as in many other Christmases past I find myself shipwrecked at the stable door - with nowhere else to go but step inside stunned at the sheer wonder of this strange disturbing event, this baby who was to radically disturb the peace of this world's rulers, and then to step back out and follow the shepherds back to the everyday life of herding sheep, shepherding ministerial correspondence and this strange counter-cultural call to love the gift of earth and cry for peace.

Left like a shadow on the step where the body was before
Shipwrecked at the stable door

Christmas in context - violence, grieving and refugees

Jim Barr in his sermon at Canberra Baptist this morning for the fourth Sunday on Advent drew attention to the gaping difference between the nostalgic sentimentality of Christmas in the current consumer and church culture and the stark realities of Matthew's gospel account in chapter 2.

Matthew gives us a story of political realpolitik, genocidal violence and refugees fleeing their homeland. There is in the text a triple layer of reference to grieving - the children massacred by Herod, the quotation of Jeremiah with its grief at the exile in Babylon, referring in further back to Rachel, a mother in the line of the patriarchs in her grieving.

Here is a story that resonates through so much of the experience of the Jewish diaspora for the next twentieth centuries and a story that could be claimed by Palestinian civilians in refugee camps, Gaza and the West Bank today.

The Christian church in its Christendom embrace of empire has frequently aligned itself on the side of practitioners of realpolitik and has ended on the side of Herod rather than the refugees and those who are grieving.

No wonder we in the church, let alone the wider community, collectively avert our eyes and close our hearts to the hard challenging edge of a story that speaks of the coming and presence of God as vulnerability in the midst of violence and grief.