by CCW | 25 December 2011 12:30
Nothing is more certain in this world than death and taxes, it is commonly said, a saying attributed to Daniel Defoe and Benjamin Franklin. How intriguing that death and taxes should be the features of the two centers of Christian contemplation: Bethlehem and the mystery of Christmas; Jerusalem and the mystery of Easter! Somehow God uses the matter of our common mortality, death, and the matter of our social and political lives, taxes, to teach us about his grace and goodness. Easter is the overcoming of death by the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the mystery which is centered on Jerusalem. Christmas is the birth of Child Christ, which is centered on Bethlehem, where Christ is born because of the decree of Caesar Augustus “that all the world should be taxed.”
It is, I think, a pleasing overstatement which captures the power and the extent of the Roman Empire into which world Christ is born. Somehow all of the mechanisms of Empire and Government become, in spite of themselves, the instruments of divine and heavenly providence. In a way, it is the logic of the Incarnation itself; God embraces and redeems his Creation to himself. Even by way of taxation!
Since William Tyndale’s translation of the New Testament into English, taxing is the word that has been used in English. Some newer translations offer enrollment in its place. The actual Greek work apography, (απογραφη) appears here in Luke’s Christmas Gospel four times (in noun and verb forms). It has to do with being registered, with names written down in terms of origin and place. Tyndale, no stranger to the machinations of rulers and governors, captures the point of such numbering and naming: ultimately, it is for the purpose of taxation, itself a form of power and control. No real wonder, too, that such 18th century figures as the Defoe and Franklin should create an aphorism about death and taxes; the latter being a feature of the political and economic world of the 18th century and one which would play an important role in the revolutionary impulses of that age in ways that remain with us to this day. I might make mention, delicately, of course, of such things as the Boston Tea Party and its legacy!
Death and taxes speak to the realities of the human condition existentially and politically. God engages both to effect human redemption, a redemption that is present for us individually and collectively. It begins with Christ’s holy birth, with the God made man, who “borrows a body,” as Athanasius puts it, “that he might borrow a death,” our death, so that we might live through him. Thus is human redemption accomplished. Joseph and Mary come to Bethlehem, following the dictates of Roman imperial authority which serves, unbeknownst to itself, the fulfillment of Jewish prophecy. Joseph is of the house and lineage of David, the Shepherd King who comes from Bethlehem but who united the tribes of Israel at Jerusalem.
“But thou Beth-leem Ephratah, though thou bee little among the thousands of Iudah, yet out of thee shall he come foorth vnto mee, that is to be ruler in Israel: whose goings foorth haue bene from of old, from euerlasting,” as the prophecy of Micah puts it. Christ comes forth into the world for the redemption of the world, born of Mary, born in the city of David. “Christ is man born of woman to redeem both sexes,” as one of our Anglican divines, John Hackett observes. “Without forsaking what he was, he became what he was not.” He is both God and man. Such is the holy mystery of the Incarnation, the miracle of Christmas. The whole world turns to bring Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem for the birth of the one upon whom the whole world now turns.
Apography. Something written down and registered, at once named and numbered. God writes himself into the very flesh of our humanity. Christ is the Word made flesh, the story of God written out for us to read in the story of Christ, (the apology of God, we might suggest, for such is Revelation, a kind of explanation, απολογια). The Divine story becomes our story, the story of our humanity in which we read the love of God for us. “In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only-begotten Son into the world that we might live through him.” What comes to be written down for worldly purposes serves a higher and greater purpose than we could ever imagine.
Such is the nature of God’s providential love for us. Such is the mystery of Bethlehem, the mystery of Christ’s holy birth. Somehow the certainty of death and taxes confirms the greater certainty of God’s redemptive love for us. It is, as the angels tell the shepherds, “good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people.” The Christmas miracle is for the whole world, for all people. “For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord.” All the elements of Christian faith and understanding are captured in the richness of these tidings: a child born at Bethlehem, the city of David; a child born unto us who is a Saviour; a child born unto us who is the anointed one, the Christ; a child born unto us who is the Lord. The miracle of divine love is written for us in the story of Christ, the story which has its beginning in our flesh with his holy birth at Bethlehem. And all because “all went to be taxed, every one into his own city.”
Fr. David Curry
Christmas Morn, 2011
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