Litchfield Presbyterian

Scripture Lessons: Matthew 2:1-12; Luke 2:1-7

Today I begin a series of four sermons based upon the traditional stories of the first Christmas as they are found in the gospels of Matthew and Luke.  There are no stories of the birth of Jesus in Mark or John – those gospels begin with the prophetic ministry of John the Baptist.  I want to frame these sermons as an attempt to respond to a particular question.  But before I say what that question is, I’ll say what the question is not.

For me, the question is not, “Are the stories of the first Christmas fact or fable?”  Frankly, this question is not interesting to me and I regard it as a distraction.  So let me say a couple of things and then set this question aside.  Factual accounts and fabulous accounts can both be bearers of truth.  We can, for instance, get at the truth of George Washington’s character by studying the facts, as nearly as we can know them, about his career as a military officer and politician.  We can also get at the truth about his character by attending to fables about him, like the well-known myth of the chopped-down cherry tree and his “I can not tell a lie” acceptance of responsibility. All these stories can be “truthful” in that they convey something of the true character of the man.

So, I am not particularly interested in whether the stories of Jesus’ birth are historically accurate, or are imaginative artifice.  I tend to believe the latter, but you can believe as you wish and it will make no difference in how we get at the question that is, in my view, far more important.

The important question is, “What do these stories mean?”   This is the question that Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan also attempt to answer their book, The First Christmas.  I will be drawing heavily from that book, but since long quotations and references make for boring sermons, I’m just going to borrow freely and put things in my own words.  The authors will forgive me I’m sure.

So the question I want us to ponder in this series of sermons is: “What do these stories mean?”  Another way of putting that question is, “How do these stories function for us, what do they do for us, what difference do they make in how we think and act?  One way to uncover the meaning of the stories of the first Christmas is to see how they function in relation to the gospels as a whole.

This time of year, many of us enjoy, once again, a performance of Peter Tchaikovsky’s  Nutcracker Ballet.  The ballet begins with a very famous overture and suite, a piece that most of us would recognize right away.  An overture is a kind of preview of the full musical composition to follow.  In the Nutcracker overture and suite, the major themes of the ballet are introduced:  The March of he Tin Soldiers, The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, The Russian Dance, The Arab Dance, and so on.  Each theme is only touched upon, to be explored more fully later on in the unfolding acts of the ballet.

This is how the Nativity stories function in the gospels of Matthew and Luke.  They are like overtures, introducing the major themes that are to be played out fully in the life and teaching of Jesus.  In the nativity stories some of the major themes introduced are, the exceptional person of Jesus as offspring of humans and God, the character of the message of Jesus as ‘Good News,’ the inclusive quality of God’s love, and perhaps most strikingly, the contrast between the kingdom of God and the kingdoms of this world.  It is this last theme I want us briefly to look at this morning.

At the time of Jesus’ birth, the beginning of the first century CE , the Roman Empire was near the height of its power.  Rome was the center of the world, and Palestine, where Jesus was born and lived, was a Roman colony.  In Rome, the emperor was the lord, the absolute master and savior of all.  So complete was the emperor’s power that it was common for the emperor to be considered a god, or at very least, the son of God.  Worship of the emperor was expected and the political policy of the empire was “no kings but Caesar.”

Now we should understand that Rome was a military super-power.  There was none greater.  But Roman militarism was not an end in itself.  It was rather a means to an end.  The aim or end of Roman military conquest was peace. Perhaps you have heard of the Pax Romana; the Roman Peace. Rome wanted to be the center of a world at peace.  The Roman method for achieving peace was conquest. The Roman vision, or ideology can be summed up in a simple phrase: peace through victory.  By crushing opposition and enforcing Roman rule through their mighty legions, the Romans sought to bring about a permanent, universal Roman peace. Peace through victory.  If we do not understand the Roman ideology, we cannot possibly understand how the Christmas stories worked for their original hearers.

Peace through victory was the vision of the empire of Rome for the world, but the Roman vision of the world was not the only possible vision.  The vision of the kingdom of God was also a vision of a world at peace.  We can hear the annunciation of that vision in the message the angels proclaimed to the shepherds at the first Christmas: “peace on earth.”  It is not so much in the vision of “peace on earth” that the kingdom of God differs from the empire of Rome. The difference lies in the means or the way to that end that.  The vision of the kingdom of God was peace on earth through good-will to all.  That is, while the empire of Rome sought a top-down peace through victory, the kingdom of God was to be all about a bottom-up peace through justice, through love, through reconciliation, through humility.

Perhaps I can illustrate this point by telling a parable of my own.  It is the parable of two churches.  Once upon a time there were two churches.  Both churches wanted to be the best they could be and both faced hard decisions.  For First Christian Church, the hard decisions were about how to spend mission dollars, and for Hillside Church the decisions were about remodeling their aging facilities.  In both churches the congregation was about evenly divided in their opinions.

In First church, half the congregation wanted to spend their mission dollars in the neighborhood, developing much needed local missions.  The other half of the congregation wanted to send their money overseas where the needs were also painfully obvious.  Much discussion led to much debate, which in turn led to much argument.  As arguments often do, theirs turned personal and hurtful.  The two sides sought support from the undecideds and the minister was pressured to take a stand.  The conflict escalated to the point that mediators from the denomination had to be called in.  The local mission side began to gain strength and pushed for a vote.  The minority overseas faction felt disrespected and misunderstood.  On the day of the vote, the pastor sided with the overseas faction, but even so, they were narrowly outvoted.  On that day, as the local mission side rejoiced in their victory,  about a third of the members determined to withdraw from the church.  A few months later, the minister was fired and the remaining few overseas mission advocates quit the church.  With all the minority faction gone, the conflict ended and the church was at peace.  Peace through victory.

Hillside Church also had some tough decisions to make.  Some wanted to remodel their aging facilities to be more contemporary, but others wanted to restore them to a pristine historic design.  As with First Church, discussion led to debate, and the debate began to turn into an argument.  But instead of forming factions, the people at Hillside Church determined to truly listen to each other in love and mutual respect.  They made a commitment not to ever criticize the motives of those with whom they disagreed and to always speak honestly but respectfully.  They unanimously agreed that the church was not its buildings, but its people, and that maintaining healthy and loving relationships was every bit and perhaps far more important than maintaining their facilities.  In the spirit of love, justice and unity they reached a compromise solution on the remodeling of the church.  All the mechanical systems and sound system would be upgraded to sate of the art, but would be tastefully integrated into the restored classic historic structure of the church.  Nobody got exactly what he or she wanted as far as the facilities were concerned, but everybody was delighted with how the congregation was strengthened and enriched by the decision making process. New members were attracted and Hillside Church grew and went forward in peace.  Peace through justice, love and humility.

Which of these two churches exhibited the character of the kingdom of God?

The Christmas stories are also parables.  They are parables of how the kingdom of God comes to earth.  They are parables meant to illustrate the way in which a true lord, a true savior begins his reign.  They are stories meant to challenge the peace of Rome with the peace of heaven.  They are the prelude, the overture to the life of Jesus.  Granted that the whole story of Jesus is the story of the coming of the kingdom of God over against the kingdom of Rome, how exactly does Christ differ from Caesar?  How does the Empire of Rome differ from the Kingdom of God?

These are not just questions for those who lived in the first century of the common era.  They are questions for every generation.  For the Kingdom of Rome is refigured again and again in the subsequent kingdoms of this world. And the kingdom of God is still struggling to emerge.  In our age as well as the age of Jesus, the vision of peace through victory still differs from the vision of peace through justice and love.  One still uses violence as a means to its end, the other remains non-violent.  One still crushes resistance, the other still works for reconciliation.  One still seeks outward tranquility, but still has little regard for the state of the soul.  The other still seeks to bring the troubled heart to rest, so that from inward peace, outward peace may follow.  One still thinks in terms of top-down imposition of rules, the other still seeks a bottom-up harmony of humility, love and mutual respect.

Advent is a time of preparation for Christmas.  It is a time for us to think about which kingdom we will serve, and what means we will use to live toward peace.  In the next few weeks – as we look again at the coming of the Prince of Peace, we will consider how the stories of the birth of Jesus establish a pattern for his life… and in a very real way, for ours.  Amen.

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