As I drove down a familiar street one evening, traffic began to slow….then crawl….then stop and start at a hesitant snail’s pace. I checked the time. It was nearly 9:00 PM. I wondered if there was an accident up ahead. Then I remembered the likely cause of the delay. I should have known to avoid this route home in the weeks before Christmas. At a busy intersection, an Evangelical Church hosts a “live nativity” in their parking lot. From the direction I’m driving, cars must turn left over a couple of lanes to get into the parking lot. Of course, at the parking lot entrance, there are church members asking for donations to support their mission fund. Thus, I’m in the middle of late in the day traffic congestion.
Manger scenes, nativities, crèches: by whatever name they are called, they all have a romantic and tranquil quality about them. Our nostalgia for the perfect holiday glosses over the hardship conveyed in the two stories which tradition presents about the birth of Jesus: one found in Luke and the other in Matthew’s gospel. While the stories bear little resemblance to each other, they are both tales of sorrow and woe.
Luke tells of the unmarried teenage girl who mysteriously ends up pregnant. Because the penalty for pregnancy outside of marriage was death by stoning, the saga tells of Mary leaving town to be with her pregnant cousin Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist. The narrative conveys nothing more of her pregnancy until we learn of Mary traveling with Joseph toward the end of her pregnancy, presumably married at this point in the story.
Unmarried pregnant teenage girls continue to be a topic of gossip and viewed with shame today. How much more terrifying it must have been in this ancient culture to know that any group of men could simply apprehend and stone you if they realized you were pregnant and unmarried? Mary’s pregnancy was overshadowed by the fear of death.
The saga found in the narrative attributed to Matthew weaves the theme of death into the story in a different way. It’s Matthew who tells us of the magi, the visitors from a foreign land who practice a different religion. Among the gifts they bring is myrrh. Myrrh is a resin, much like incense. Most of us would consider the odor to be foul. Among its uses was preparing a body for burial. What a gift to give to a new born child! But remember that immediately after the visit of the magi Herod began the slaughter of all children under age 2. Joseph took Mary and their child to Egypt to escape the actions of a brutal despot. In other words, Matthew’s narrative places the birth of Jesus into the context of brutal, senseless killing.
Implied in chronicles presented by the authors of Luke and Matthew is the message that providential care of the Holy One leads to deliverance from sorrow and death. Through dreams and visions and with the help of their friends and family, Mary, Joseph, and Jesus remain safe even when fleeing as refugees from the despotic ruler intent on killing the child.
The world today is not so much different from the world depicted by the writers of Matthew and Luke. Today, women continue to face challenges to simply receive safe and affordable health care, particularly in regard to reproductive issues. It seems that others insist that they should determine what’s best for individual women and the provision of health care. Women who seek mammograms and other health testing at agencies like Planned Parenthood are often terrorized by so-called “right to life” protestors who work to deny legal and affordable treatment options.
Beyond the scandal of treating women with fundamental disrespect, such as denying access to health service, there is also the plight of refugees today. Each day, the news media conveys stories of the hardship of refugees as they flee from Syria hoping to create new lives in other countries. Syrians are only some of the refugees who flee their homes due to threats of violence and death. People from Congo, Eritrea, Afghanistan and other countries torn by war seek safe-havens where they can simply live at peace with others. Given the practice of religion in their countries of origin, the majority of refugees today are Muslim. However, when Christian refugees attempted to flee Latin America in the 1970’s and 1980’s, they were not well received in North America.
Again this year many Christians around the world will recount the stories of the birth of Jesus, hear the sagas for the Mary, Joseph, and Jesus who narrowly escaped death, and recall how they fled as refugees at night. These same Christians will return to their homes and share festive holidays with loved ones. Somehow they conclude that it is good and right to make the lives of others more difficult by restricting health care to women and refusing to accept today’s refugees in their communities while singing “Joy to the World” and “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.”
The conservative Evangelical Christian magazine, Christianity Today, reported a few years ago that those who regularly read the Bible develop liberal social views. http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2011/october/survey-bible-reading-liberal.html While Evangelic and other conservative Christians talk a great deal about the Bible, often appearing to worship the book itself, I suspect that few of them actually read the Bible and, in particular the Gospels which convey the teachings of Jesus, with any regularity. Instead, they probably listen to preachers who pick specific verses and present them out of context to make a case for conservative views that make life difficult for others. If we really want to Keep Christ in Christmas, we must read the Biblical stories of the birth of Jesus as they are presented and not the way we want them to be. If we take these stories seriously, we’ll understand that before all else Christmas is about giving hope to those who are on the margins of society: the refugees, the homeless, the mentally ill, and all those others who in our comfort we implicitly and explicitly oppress.
The message of Christmas announced by the angels for peace on earth begins when we bring light to those whose lives have become dark because of societal marginalization. Just as Luke and Matthew recount stories of hope for the marginalized in their accounts of Jesus birth, Christ is found in our Christmas when we bring hope to those marginalized today. When hope is restored, we will all have a very merry Christmas indeed.
