Christmas Eve – December 24, 2010

"Myth or Reality?"

The Rev. Stephen Elkins-Williams

He came to his own home, and his own people received him not. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.

The Christmas story is marked by struggle and conflict. Despite its message of “Peace on earth” and the good will the celebration of Christmas has fostered over the centuries, Jesus’ birth and life and eventual death and resurrection are marked by both acceptance and rejection. At his presentation in the temple, a week after his birth, Simeon told his mother, Mary, “This child is set for the fall and rising of many.” The stories of his birth are made up of people, such as the shepherds and the magi, who joyfully accepted the Good News of Jesus, and others such as Herod and the chief priests and the scribes, who actively opposed him. The seeds of long lasting religious struggles, still very much alive today, began with Jesus, the Word becoming flesh.

An oddly humorous version of this conflict made the news this year just after Thanksgiving. American Atheists, a national organization, rented a large billboard on I-495 in New Jersey en route to the Lincoln Tunnel. The sign shows the silhouettes of a couple under a thatched shelter attentive to a baby in a simple manger, with a donkey and palm trees nearby. Very prominent on the left of the scene are three kings riding camels, all silhouetted against the night sky, with a giant six-point star shining down on the small family. Emblazoned across the top of the billboard are the words, “You know it’s a myth. This season, celebrate reason.” David Silverman, President of American Atheists, said in an interview, “Every year, atheists get blamed for having a war on Christmas, even if we don’t do anything. This year, we decided to give the religious right a taste of what war on Christmas looks like” (NY Times, Nov. 29, 2010).

The most public response to this salvo came not from Christian fundamentalists but from the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, a lay organization that receives no direct funding from the Roman Catholic Church. They erected their own billboard on the New York side of the tunnel. This rebuttal for holiday commuters shows a close up of a traditionally clad Joseph (in brown) and Mary (in blue), both Caucasians, gazing at an unfortunately blond-haired baby on a pile of straw. In a green band stretching across the top of the billboard’s red background are the words, “You know it’s real. This season, celebrate Jesus.” Bill Donohoe, President of the League, “said the billboard was not intended as ‘a statement against atheists or agnostics, most of whom are good people,’ but as a repudiation to ‘aggressive, militant atheism’ that he believes is growing increasingly prevalent in America’” (NY Times, Nov. 30, 2010). He went on to note “that he thought American Atheists singled out Christianity over other religions, noting that their billboard was ‘not attacking Ramadan.’ ‘They believe in nothing, they stand for nothing, and they think we came from nothing,’ he said, ‘so they have to crib off Christmas’” (ibid).

Prescinding from the snippiness of the personal comments and the questionable art, which side of this billboard battle are we on? This season, do we celebrate Jesus, or do we celebrate reason?

Those of us who confess our Christian faith in the tradition of Anglicanism and the Episcopal Church would say that this is a false dichotomy. We certainly celebrate the gift of Jesus, and while we do not worship reason or use it as our sole guide, we do exercise our reason in helping us understand and articulate our faith. For example, we know that the historicity of the details of the Christmas story are certainly in question.

Consider that twenty-five of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament do not show the slightest interest in the infancy or childhood of Jesus. Only Matthew and Luke give us accounts of Jesus’ birth, and both these versions differ dramatically. We have combined these two stories over time in our familiar crèche, but each evangelist gives us a unique version. Matthew presents Mary and Joseph as living in a house in Bethlehem where the wise men were led by the star. This visit attracted Herod’s dangerous attention, and the family fled to Egypt, later settling (for the first time) in Nazareth. Luke, on the other hand, recounts that Mary and Joseph lived in Nazareth and went to Bethlehem because of the census and that crowded conditions forced them to have the baby in a stable, where shepherds (not eastern travelers) visited them. A week later they presented the child in the temple at Jerusalem as the law required and then returned peacefully to Nazareth, not detouring as fugitives through Egypt.

Do these discrepancies mean that Jesus’ birth was, as the first billboard asserts, a myth and not real? No, that Jesus was born is not in dispute; but exactly where and how his birth happened is not known to us. Raymond Brown, a renowned Catholic biblical scholar, reminds us that “the Bible is a library handed down to us by Israel and the early church. In that collection of inspired books there are many different types of literature including poetry, drama, history, and fiction. Indeed, between history and fiction,” Brown instructs, “there is a whole range of possibilities covering imaginative retellings that have a core of fact” (A Coming Christ in Advent).

It is clear that we do not know all the facts surrounding Jesus’ birth, given the differences in the two accounts we do have. But the religious truths conveyed by the two Gospel stories are remarkably the same. Both evangelists include their accounts to emphasize first, Jesus’ identity, and second, his role as the dramatic embodiment of Israel’s history (ibid). Through Matthew’s and Luke’s stories, we learn that Jesus is both human – born of Mary and Joseph’s acknowledged son (and therefore a legal descendant of David), and divine, God’s own Son, having been conceived by the Holy Spirit. This twofold identity is revealed to us from above, in this case by angels, not deduced by reason, just as it was later in the Gospels at Jesus’ baptism and at Jesus’ resurrection. This Good News of Jesus’ identity is proclaimed to us throughout the Gospels, beginning with these infancy accounts.

Matthew and Luke also take pains to show that Jesus is the fulfillment of Israel’s history, e.g. Joseph is deliberately reminiscent of the Old Testament Joseph (he of the multi-colored coat), both of whom received revelations in dreams and went to Egypt to save their families. Herod is a parallel to the wicked Pharaoh who killed the Hebrew male children, only to be thwarted by God, who protected the life of the one who would save his people, i.e. Moses in the Old Testament and Jesus in the New Testament. And so on. These stories then, tell us what the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews proclaims in tonight’s Epistle, “In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets; but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son,” a Son who, as the Gospel writers tell us, is both human and divine and who “became flesh and dwelt among us.”

That is the revelation we have received from God. That is the mystery at the heart of life and at the heart of all reality. That is what we who have received him believe through the gift of faith. It is not a myth. We believe it is real. “We have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father.”

Hebrews 1:1-12
John 1:1-14