Christmas Eve, Year C, 2006
St. Stephen’s Episcopal
Celebrating at St. Augustine’s
At this time of year we encounter a great power in the universe, a power that
rivals all forces on earth – a power that can bring peace or conflict to human kind
and remind us of what can be sublime even as we participate in what can seem
ridiculous to others. I speak, of course, of the phenomenon of family tradition.
Yes, nothing can bring us together, knot us in the ties that bind and hold us
hostage to our loved ones quite like Christmas. It can be one of those funny
dances we do with family, especially at the holidays, because ultimately we love
one another even if we can’t always agree on what foods to serve, who should
make them, who should put up what decorations and where or who gets to visit
whom at what time and day.
And then there’s always the family tradition of going to church. And if you’re not
here fully voluntarily, well, good for you. It means you understand one of the most
important lessons about Christmas; that it’s not about you as much as it is about
celebrating someone who loves you very, very much. And the most priceless gift
you can offer in homage of love is yourself – nothing more, nothing less – you are
enough. In Christian tradition, Love is the gift we are given on Earth in the form
of an infant. And the only gift we can ever really give in return is ourselves.
I believe the truest traditions of our faith reflect this mutual commitment of the
love of a selfless God and the response of a selfless people. And just as the
history of this relationship between the divine and the human community
continues to grow in its understanding for our lives and for our world, so, too, do
the social, religious and even familial traditions change throughout the course of
our church family history.
In the Western world we celebrate Christmas on December 25th. For all of us, this
is an unquestionable tradition, seemingly concrete and immutable. But it was not
always so, and the celebration (even the idea) of Christmas gradually emerged
and changed, bringing us with it to this day.
In the early Christian church, Christ’s birth (or nativity) was not initially celebrated
at all. The only feast days of the early Christian communities were Easter and
Epiphany. There was a great debate among Christian communities (what a shock)
in calculating the day of Christ’s birth.
Mesopotamia calculated the birth of Christ as being thirteen days after the Winter
Solstice (in accord with significant dates of their calendar) which made the date of
Jesus as January 6th. Others celebrated January 6th as the anniversary of Jesus’
Baptism.
In total disagreement with those communities, Egyptian theologians placed Christ’
s birth as being May 20, which was the ninth month in their calendar, a placement
of great astronomical significance.
But finally, after the Roman Emperor Constantine established Christianity as the
official court religion in 336, the church was pressured to determine a universal
date to celebrate the nativity. And in 354AD, Bishop Cyril of Jerusalem protested
to Pope Julius I that his priests could not possibly process to the Jordon to
celebrate Jesus’ baptism and also process to Bethlehem, almost 30 miles away, to
celebrate his birthday on the same day (January 6th). And so Julius assigned the
Celebration of Christ’s birth to December 25 on his calendar, the Julian calendar.
But the idea of celebrating Christmas at all came under fire in the Church of
England during the English Civil War (1642-1649). At that time the English
parliament raised armies in an alliance with Scotland, against the forces of the
king, Charles I of England. The Church of Scotland had recently overthrown its
bishops and adopted Presbyterianism. As a condition for entering into the alliance
with England, the Scottish Parliament formed the Solemn League and Covenant
with the English Parliament, which meant that the Church of England would
abandon Episcopalianism and consistently adhere to Calvinistic standards of
doctrine and worship.
When Oliver Cromwell led the victory over Charles I and became the Lord
Protectorate of England, he was bitterly-opposed to Charles the First’s "reforms"
of the Church of England, which introduced Catholic-style Bishops and Prayer
Books. Cromwell was a devoted Puritan, Calvinist Protestant, and under his
influence, Christmas was forbidden in England by an Act of Parliament in 1644.
But in 1660, the restoration of the British monarchy and of the Anglican
episcopacy resulted in the nullification of the parliamentary acts. Cromwell
seemed to think that Christmas was a scandalous and ridiculous tradition. And
maybe it is. And yet, what an appropriate way to mark the scandalous and
ridiculous nature of a God who gives us everything in love, even though we do
nothing and can never do anything at all to deserve what is called grace.
In this radical perspective, Christmas is an act of subversion in the face of any
form of judgment that attempts to restrict the utter generosity of God’s love. The
Gospel story from Luke we have heard today perfectly exposes the transcendent
nature of divine love, setting it completely above and beyond any human stricture.
In the face of strict Jewish religious law and Roman imperialism, the Gospel of
Luke presents a story that is transcendent in all its imagery. Luke presents the
story of the nativity, with its themes of persecution and danger, as a parallel to the
experience of his own community of first century Christians. How he presents it
and the symbolic forms he uses is an intentional subversion of the dominant
culture social norms and beliefs. In Luke’s Gospel is the story of a God that is not
safe or comfortable but challenging and invasive to the human world -- both
ultimately powerful and ultimately humble in the form of a human child. In the end,
Divine Love transcends the crib of a child to touch all creation in the birth of an
intimate and immanent God.
To better understand how the author of Luke challenges the social and religious
forms of his day, we must turn again to history. The reign of the Roman emperor
Caesar Augustus is usually dated from 27 B.C. to his death in A.D. 14, and Rome
achieved great glory under him [Octavian/Augustus]. He restored peace after 100
years of civil war; maintained an honest government and a sound currency
system; extended the highway system connecting Rome with its far-flung empire;
developed an efficient postal service; fostered free trade among the provinces;
and built many bridges, aqueducts and buildings adorned with beautiful works of
art created in the classical style. Literature flourished with writers including Virgil,
Horace, Ovid, and Livy all living under the emperor's patronage. What’s not to
like about that?
Well, the empire expanded under Augustus with his generals warring against and
subduing Spain, Gaul (now France), Panonia and Dalmatia (now parts of Hungary
and Croatia). He annexed Egypt and most of southwestern Europe up to the
Danube River. And after his death, the people of the Roman Empire worshipped at
temples dedicated to him. In Greek inscriptions, Augustus is called "savior" and
"god." Having ushered in a time of peace, the Pax Augusta, throughout the Roman
world during his long reign, it is no accident that Luke relates the birth of Jesus to
the time of Caesar Augustus: bearing Christ as the true savior and peace-bearer.
The essential and radical message in Luke’s narrative is contained in the angel's
announcement to the common shepherds that this child is their savior, their
Messiah, and their Lord. Luke is the only gospel writer to use the title savior for
Jesus. As savior, Jesus is looked upon by Luke as the one who rescues humanity
from the condition of social and spiritual alienation from God; to be rescued from
dictators is to in part to stop worshipping them and submitting to their beliefs.
From Luke we hear the ultimate “Question Authority” message.
“On earth peace;” the peace of which Luke's gospel speaks is more than the
absence of war, even when war is a means of achieving that peace, as with the
Pax Augusta. Christ’s peace includes the deep inward assurance of a peace not
born of conflict but of mutual acceptance. Here is a different kind of ‘son of God’
and a different kind of peace than either Roman or Jewish society believed was
needed or desirable at the time.
Luke presents a peace only possible where God reigns as compassion of the
human heart, where God’s pleasure is not that of a tyrant but that of one who lives
by the ultimate law of love for one’s neighbors and one’s self and for God. In
Luke, the birth of Jesus is the announcement in the mouth’s of angels of a
counter savior, a counter ‘son of God’ to Rome’s great emperor, bringing a
counter ‘peace’ for a counter people who seek justice and mercy together.
Luke encapsulates the meaning of Jesus’ entire ministry within the image of the
nativity. In the manger, we behold God in the midst of humankind. In the imagery
of those people and creatures who gather around the manger, we see that none
are written off, none despised, none too strange, too bad, too inhuman. All of
Creation is included in the images of animals and stars, in the kind of expansive
relationship and universal salvation that Luke is presenting. For Luke, we
celebrate in the birth of Jesus the intimate encounter between the Creator and
his creation. And in that meeting in our lives, we can know the possibility of
participating in the life of God and the peace of God in the Kingdom of Heaven
that is within the heart.
It is the nature of tradition to emerge and to change in the renewal of the human
experience. But the message that is constant in the celebration of Christmas for
Christians, from the first century until now is to understand and accept the
knowledge that we are worth no less to God than the life of his first born son. We
are loved without condition; our life is worth the greatest love God has to give in
response to the longing of the human soul for God.
From a manger set in Bethlehem, the journey of the Christian heart begins. And
once a year, we are asked to remember the humbleness of that beginning, the
fragile hope and dream of God to become known to the world in such a way as to
intimately touch the human heart and mind, to enlighten us of God’s presence and
cause us then to act on that awareness in our relationships with one another.
Christmas is not just a day or a season or a set of traditions (about which we can
infinitely disagree). Christmas is rather a celebration of God’s love for us in every
age, a love stronger than death, brighter than any darkness and more enduring
than any time. In the story and celebration of the nativity, we are invited to let the
grace of the story of Christ’s birth remove any conditions of doctrine or social
judgments or any limitations whatsoever that keep us from accepting ourselves
and one another in the way God fully accepts us. Christmas is the pronouncement
of freedom from our own oppression.
Let no one take this from us, for faith is not faith if it does not live by the example
and witness of God’s boundless love, as St. Paul reminds us. And so, with the
courage of Luke’s community, let us love one another and make Christmas more
than this day or a season but a grace-filled manner of living and loving in every
moment. Let us together be the Kingdom of the King of Peace and see in this
celebration the gift of eternal and transcendent love.
Amen.