Sermon for Christmas Morn
“Now it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree
from Caesar Augustus”
A sermon, snowstorms notwithstanding! This is beginning to become a habit. This is the third time in ten days that I have had occasion to say that.
“A decree from Caesar Augustus,” and yet there is a greater decree, a greater Word, a greater command that “has come to pass” and which brings us, like Mary and Joseph, to Bethlehem, if not literally, then spiritually and intellectually. You may hope that it is not to be taxed!
It has often struck me how for Christians the aspect of the holy land has a different connotation and meaning than it does for Jews and Muslims, complicated as that may be for them as well. It is curious in a way because Bethlehem and Jerusalem, to name the twin poles of the Christian doctrinal and devotional imagination, are barely mentioned in the Islamic Qur’an, Bethlehem only once and Jerusalem by name not at all, and, while Jerusalem has a kind of pride of place in the Jewish Scriptures, the place of Bethlehem there is a bit more nuanced, at once “the greatest” and “the least” of cities, for example, providing one of many cases for some creative and imaginative interpretation on the part of Christian commentators, I might add!
The crusades notwithstanding (and that story is more nuanced that some would have us believe), all of the ancient holy places of the Scriptures have taken on a different kind of meaning for Christians. Prince Charles has recently and rightly decried the attacks on Christians in the Middle East, fearing the grim reality of no Christians in the land where Christianity had its birth. True, and yet there is something profound about an understanding which transcends, albeit without denying, the sheer force of locality and place. It is especially part of the story of the Jewish diaspora and an undeniable part of the Christian as well as the Islamic story. There is not only the journey to Bethlehem by shepherds told by Angels and by Magi-Kings led by a star; there is also the flight into Egypt of the holy family and the return of the Magi-Kings “into their own country another way.” Christmas would have us abide in Bethlehem, to be sure, but already the story takes us away from Bethlehem; it suggest another kind of abiding, our abiding in the truth of God wherever we are.
