“Christmas Now and Then” Dec. 22, 2019 Dr. Roger Ray
Bishop John Shelby Spong: From every angle, the facts suggest that these stories are not history. Virgin births, singing angels, and guiding stars occur only in mythology. The story of Jesus' virgin birth is no more literally true than is the story of Santa Claus.
Once we arrive at this conclusion, then we are free to search for the real meaning of these stories. They were written not to describe the details of his birth but to reveal who they believed the adult Jesus was. To Matthew, Jesus was "a God presence," a life through which the holy God could be experienced. That had been the conviction of Jewish people about other heroes, such as Moses, Samuel, Elijah, and Isaiah. But this Jesus was a more total "God presence" than any of those, Matthew asserts--and when he writes his gospel, he wants to spell that out in a typical Jewish manner. He starts with a tale of his miraculous birth.
Once we arrive at this conclusion, then we are free to search for the real meaning of these stories. They were written not to describe the details of his birth but to reveal who they believed the adult Jesus was. To Matthew, Jesus was "a God presence," a life through which the holy God could be experienced. That had been the conviction of Jewish people about other heroes, such as Moses, Samuel, Elijah, and Isaiah. But this Jesus was a more total "God presence" than any of those, Matthew asserts--and when he writes his gospel, he wants to spell that out in a typical Jewish manner. He starts with a tale of his miraculous birth.
They have all been a part of my life. I have loved them, had movie posters in my grad school office and have enjoyed them all, in spite of the fact that some were distinctly better than others. They express, as only computer-generated special effects can, the battle between good and evil with all of the values of heroism and sacrifice, and, at moments, at least hints at fairly profound theology. However, what these movies are not, is historical. Even though, in the very same movie 
theater where I watched the Rise of Skywalker, the day before I had watched Dark Waters, a historical documentary about the environmental pollution history of DuPont in West Virginia, no one had to tell me that one was real and one was fictional. Side by side, in the same historical time frame, we know that literature comes in different genres. We can go to Parkersburg, West Virginia and meet some of the characters portrayed in Dark Waters who still live there and are still impacted by the chain carbon molecules that were dumped into their water and air. You cannot however, go to Skywalker Ranch, and take a flight into space on the Millennial Falcon. Even the news staff at Fox could easily tell the difference between the two . . . though I’m pretty sure that they could find some way to mess up even this illustration.
We began this morning with a reading from one of Bishop Spong’s commentaries on the birth narratives in the New Testament but John was far from being the first person to try to state clearly that these were not historical narratives but, more along the lines of Star Wars, they are stories about the battle between good and evil, light and darkness, the good side of the Force and the dark side.
And while I do not consider myself to be an original scholar by any stretch of the imagination, I did not have to be taught that the birth narratives were fictional. In fact, I can remember raising the issue with my New Testament professor, Russ Dudrey, the same year that the first Star Wars movie was released. The overly zealous students around me were shocked when I said to Professor Dudrey, “The birth narratives in Matthew and Luke don’t even read like they were written by the author of the larger works to which they are attached. They seem to be fictional accounts that differ in character and vocabulary from the rest of the gospels.”
But, to the students’ surprise, even in a conservative religious college, the professor nodded and acknowledged that they were not original parts of Matthew and Luke and that they were not to be read as history. This is one of the dirty little secrets that even right-wing Biblical scholars know, but are too afraid to say in public.
The fact that Star Wars does not describe actual historical events will not keep me from seeing each episode over and over again, nor does that fact take away from the truths about character and faith portrayed in the movies. The first Christians who produced the Christmas story late in the first century or early in the second century, did not think that they were writing history. They were telling a story that made a theological point.
However, two hundred years later, in the confusion of the era, Constantine’s mother, St. Helena, took the gospels quite literally and she went around identifying where they all took place and building churches on the alleged sites where these fictional accounts allegedly happened. Let’s be honest, Helena was a woman of great faith. Her son, Constantine, was a calculating politician who used his mother’s religion to reunite the Roman Empire. Neither of them had a clue about the actual historical circumstances surrounding the birth of Jesus.
For that matter, whoever wrote the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke also didn’t know or they didn’t care about the historical details of Jesus’ birth. They were not news reporters or historians. They were preachers and they had a perspective they wanted to sell to their audience.
I don’t want to dwell on this too long but let me just quickly say for the uninitiated:
Of the four gospels in the New Testament, Mark and John say nothing about the birth of Jesus. Matthew and Luke each offer a fairly brief narrative in which:
Matthew says that they live in a house, and are visited by foreign astrologers bearing gifts but that they are forced to flee from a Roman government ordered slaughter of children. The family never returns to Bethlehem and years later decided to settle in Nazareth. Luke says that the holy couple lived in Nazareth. He cooks up a story about a census that made them travel to Bethlehem where they were forced to sleep in a small barn and give birth to their child there. After the miraculous birth was heralded by angels and the child was adored by farm hands, they went back home to Nazareth.
It is worth noting that Matthew’s version rather misogynistically gives the visions and the speaking parts to men. Luke is more inclusive and gives major parts to the women who bore John the Baptist and Jesus, relegating the men to supportive roles which, I think all of us can agree, is appropriate to any story about giving birth.
So, once you accept that neither Matthew nor Luke are trying to record eye-witness accounts, we are free to ask ourselves, “What was their point?” Both writers were influenced by Jewish tradition but much more by the Greek culture in which they lived. Predictably then, both accounts contain a certain amount of homage to their cultural setting.
Because of popular beliefs at the time, the Messiah needed to have been born in Bethlehem and it was common to claim that the births of very important people like Caesars or renowned philosophers were virgin births and that the event of their birth was marked by the appearance of a new star. In ancient literature, we call these “ascriptions of praise.” They are poetic flourishes but not to be taken seriously by readers just as they were not meant to be taken literally by the original authors.
Other elements of their stories also have historical or biblical precedent. The songs of Mary and Elizabeth harken back to the song of Hannah around the birth of Samuel. And the slaughter of the innocents reflects the murder of infants in Exodus in the time of the birth of Moses. While all of these elements have their literary genesis, you have to be careful to note that they are not chosen haphazardly.
Consider the way that Matthew uses the common image of the appearance of a new star, and even the common religious element of men having visions to set up a narrative that challenges both the government and the state religion. Matthew doesn’t give us only a new star, but he uses that star to introduce foreign astrologers who practice a set of beliefs that were condemned by the Jews. The arrival of the holy birth was not only unknown to the government, it was unknown to the religious authorities. It is like saying that the faculty at Harvard Divinity School were clueless but the little old lady doing palm reading on the sidewalk on Harvard Square had all of the facts.
The author of this narrative is intentionally being dismissive of both organized religion and the state and to dramatically underscore how far apart the message about Jesus was from either the state religion or the state itself, they collude together to kill Jesus in the crib before he gets a chance to grow up. Now, this slaughter of the innocents under Herod in Bethlehem leaves no historical clues, 
which is to say, it didn’t happen, but, it isn’t about history . . . it is about the truth.
Consider this 19th century painting by the French artist, Leon Cogniet. Unlike many who portray such graphic biblical scenes in full bloody horror, he pulls the narrative down into the look on one horrified mother’s face, who cradles her baby and stares back at us in shock and terror, as if she is demanding an answer from us.
Matthew is telling us about this horror… not a single historical event, but a globally and daily experienced horror of insanity and inhumanity. Not cattle lowing and a baby lying-in sweet-smelling hay. That’s Christmas at the Battlefield Mall. But that’s not the real story
“He has shown strength with his arm;
He has scattered the proud in the imaginations 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 the rich he has sent empty away.” Lk 1:51-53
I realize that this is not the Christmas sermon that will be delivered at the Vatican or the National Cathedral but, I’m being very honest here, this is the Christmas sermon you will find in the New Testament, where the god-child is born in a smelly barn in a world with a corrupt government and a nearly useless church.
And a terrorized mother clutches her child who is about to be taken from her and asks us what we are going to do about this mad world.
Obviously, when I talk about a savior, I don’t mean the same thing as most religious people mean. I don’t need to be saved from hell and I don’t need to be forgiven for my lack of piety or purity. I need to be forgiven for every day that I have been complacent about the cruelty and insanity of my government and the uselessness of institutional religion. I …. We, need to quit waiting for a savior and we need to become saviors . . . so, Merry Christmas.
