Cuddly donkeys, Gucci-clad kings and even the odd brussel sprout or Christmas cracker might have been the order of the day in many of our school nativity plays this year but the original birth stories featured revolution, not romance.
In his Christmas sermon at Llandaff Cathedral today, the Archbishop of Wales, Dr Barry Morgan, said cosy and sentimental versions of the nativity story have made us lose sight of the real power and political significance of the birth of Jesus.
The Gospel writers, he said, wrote the stories after Jesus’ death to spell out who He really was – the King of the Jews. And that was a profoundly radical statement which continues to challenge the way we live today and means we cannot separate religion and politics. When we worship at the crib, he said, we are signing up to a world of justice, peace and sustainability and rejecting everything that dehumanises and degrades people.
Dr Morgan said, “What the early Christians were saying was that Jesus was their Lord, not Caesar, and that this Jesus partook of the power and authority of God. The early Christians felt that the title “Lord” was the only adequate name by which to call Jesus. Just imagine how the Roman authorities must have felt about that. Caesar was Lord through conquest and oppression and violence. Jesus was Lord because He had come to bring justice and non-violence to the earth.
“So these birth stories are not at all what they seem. They proclaim the Lordship of Jesus and the reign of God over and against the rulers of this world – so much for keeping religion and politics apart.”
The nativity stories, said Dr Morgan, continue to question all of us as to where we stand today.
“To proclaim Jesus as Lord, is to proclaim that He is the pointer to God’s way with His world and the question they pose for us, as individuals, as a church and as nations, is this – how do we use power and influence, be it military, political or economic? Where do we stand? Are we with Herod and Caesar who ruled through domination and fear and intimidation or are we with Jesus who rules in a different way through justice, peace and non-violence?
“To say Jesus is Lord is to join Him in His fight against everything and anything that dehumanises and degrades human beings. Acknowledging the Lordship of Jesus is to help God bring about the reign of God on earth as it is in heaven – a world of justice, peace and sustainability. It’s pretty revolutionary stuff – and when we come and worship at that crib, we need to realise exactly what we are signing up to.”
Sermon for Christmas Day 2009
We had never lost him before, even though he was only about one and a half inches in length but we simply couldn’t find him. We searched everywhere – on the floor, amidst the Christmas debris, on surfaces but baby Jesus was definitely missing. Rather difficult to get another one as well because this was a small wooden hand-carved one that we’d had for years and had bought in Bethlehem and it would be decidedly odd to have the stable at Christmas with everyone in and around it apart from the main character. And then he was found.
Our grand-daughter of two and a half, as she was then, had removed him from his crib and taken him home to Bristol with her. She is fascinated by small objects and was so taken up with the Christmas story, she decided to kidnap baby Jesus. He was discovered by total accident by her mother at the bottom of Nanci’s coat pocket last Easter – we’ll have to keep a sharp eye on the crib this week I can tell you!
But of course when you think about it, we all of us are at times guilty of appropriating Jesus and making Him in our own image and that’s especially true at Christmas time. We love new births and so we get taken up with the nativity of Jesus and we fail to realise what these birth stories are really all about. We tend to romanticise and sentimentalise them and fill in what we think are the missing details – animals hanging around the crib, a pristine baby, a glowing mother looking as if she’s just come off a film set and if you are a parent or grand-parent and go to a school nativity play, you’d be very hard put to equate what you see on stage with the actual Gospel accounts of the birth of Jesus.
In fact, of course, the birth stories are only recorded in St Matthew and St Luke’s Gospel. There is nothing at all in the Gospels of Mark and John and Matthew only has 31 verses. There is no story of the actual birth in Matthew, no swaddling clothes, no stable, no manger, no shepherds or angels, all of that is only to be found in Luke. In fact, there is no journey to Bethlehem in Matthew either because the Holy Family already lives in Bethlehem according to St Matthew. Matthew merely tells us about the coming of the Wise Men and the flight to Egypt from the hands of Herod. It is St Luke that fills in the other details in 132 verses and it is only in his Gospel that the shepherds and the angels appear.
So there isn’t one Christmas story, but two Christmas stories and they are different and that’s the point – both Gospels were written not to make us all go soppy about the baby Jesus but to tell us who He really is and what His birth really means.
I said earlier that we found baby Jesus at Easter and there is a symbolical significance in that as well because the Christmas stories, although they appear at the beginning of the Gospels, weren’t the first stories to be written about Jesus. The first to be written about Him were those of His passion, death and resurrection. The Christmas stories were written because the first Christians believed that Jesus had been raised from the dead and that changed everything for them.
It was because Matthew and Luke believed that Jesus was alive and was Lord that they wrote the Christmas stories and they were written not to give us factual information about the birth, but to tell us about the significance of Jesus. For they make bold claims about it. Jesus is the King of the Jews. Just imagine how Herod, who held that title, must have felt about that.
Matthew’s story tells us that as a result Herod had all Jewish boys killed because he didn’t want any rivals and that points to the contrast between Herod’s idea of kingship and Jesus’ idea because as the Gospel unfolds, we realise that as opposed to Herod’s violence and oppression and terror, Jesus’ lordship is of service and vulnerability and love. “Jesus then” says St Mathew “is the real King of the Jews”.
These stories also proclaim that Jesus is Lord, “kyrios” in the Greek but that was the standard and official title of the Roman Emperor. Whereas at one stage only dead Emperors were called Lords, that is divine, gradually living Emperors also came to be seen as Lords or Gods. Temples were built to them and a test of loyalty as a citizen of the Empire, was whether people could say “Caesar is Lord”. But in the Greek version of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, the word “kyrios” was used to translate the word for God “Yahweh”. In other words for Greek speaking Jews, the word “kyrios” was the equivalent to the name of God. So Jesus was Lord.
As a result, the early Christians, because of this belief, refused to pay homage to Caesar. Since Jesus was Lord, they were not going to acknowledge the lordship of Caesar. They faced death of course by calling someone other than Caesar “Lord” and it was bold too because they gave this title “Lord” to a man who had been crucified by the express decree of the Roman power occupying Judea at the time.
Jesus was a disgraced figure, a dis-owned citizen, a reject. Crucifixion was observed for the scum of the earth. The Romans didn’t crucify their own, they only crucified evil-doers of the lowest class – rebels, criminals, slaves. And yet people were prepared to stand up and confess that Jesus is Lord.
What the early Christians were saying was that Jesus was their Lord, not Caesar, and that this Jesus partook of the power and authority of God. The early Christians felt that the title “Lord” was the only adequate name by which to call Jesus. Just imagine how the Roman authorities must have felt about that. Caesar was Lord through conquest and oppression and violence. Jesus was Lord because He had come to bring justice and non-violence to the earth.
So these birth stories are not at all what they seem. They proclaim the Lordship of Jesus and the reign of God over and against the rulers of this world – so much for keeping religion and politics apart.
To proclaim Jesus as Lord, is to proclaim that He is the pointer to God’s way with His world and the question they pose for us, as individuals, as a church and as nations, is this – how do we use power and influence, be it military, political or economic? Where do we stand? Are we with Herod and Caesar who ruled through domination and fear and intimidation or are we with Jesus who rules in a different way through justice, peace and non-violence?
To be a disciple of Jesus is to be involved in His kind of Lordship of washing his disciples’ feet. To say that Jesus is Lord means acknowledging his headship but it also means following in His way of service, love and compassion. It is about being transformed as individuals and as a church into His likeness.
To say Jesus is Lord is to join Him in His fight against everything and anything that dehumanises and degrades human beings. Acknowledging the Lordship of Jesus is to help God bring about the reign of God on earth as it is in heaven – a world of justice, peace and sustainability. It’s pretty revolutionary stuff – and when we come and worship at that crib, we need to realise exactly what we are signing up to.
Archbishop of Wales, Dr Barry Morgan
