by CCW | 25 December 2017 13:00
It is an intellectual challenge that I sometimes like to set for myself, namely, to take a phrase from Scripture and see if one could tease out from that one phrase the essential teachings of the Christian Faith. Crazy, I know, but it means giving serious consideration to the words of Scripture and to what can be found in them, realizing just how much is revealed or at least suggested in them. There is, of course, the obvious problem that such an exercise probably means reading a whole lot more into things than what is there; the problem of isogesis rather than exegesis.
But in the ‘alt fact’ or ‘post-fact world,’ there is the need to pay close attention to interpretation. There are no facts independent of interpretation, even to say what the facts are involves interpretation as to why something is a fact that matters and to what extent. There are lots of ‘facts’ that are merely incidental and in a way meaningless. Despite the claims that are sometimes made by some physicists and some atheist philosophers, we don’t and can’t live in a purely random world of contingency. If everything is contingent, meaning that everything could be other than what it is, then logically there could be nothing. “Nothing is but what is not,” after all, as Shakespeare intuited! Interestingly, he was talking about the nature of evil.
Yet, as Averroes and Aquinas knew, the very idea of contingency requires the existence of the necessary, a necessary principle of being. Aquinas puts the argument in the most extreme case: if all is contingent, then everything potentially could not be therefore there would be nothing at all and if so, then no way for anything to come to be unless there was a principle which necessarily exists and cannot not exist. In short, there can be no contingency without necessity. Contingency in the finite world depends utterly upon a necessarily existent first principle which we call God.
What has any of this curious speculation have to do with Christmas? “For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Saviour which is Christ the Lord.” A powerful phrase that illumines the great mystery of Christmas, it captures the sense of wonder and excitement of the infancy narrative of Luke, the quintessential Christmas story, full of details and apparent facts. It is a familiar story and scene which has moved the imaginations of poets and artists throughout the centuries. Its images are still deeply embedded in the psyche of our contemporary culture.
There is something somehow inescapably significant in the details of taxation, of the journey of Joseph and Mary “great with child,” to use the felicitous phrase of the King James Version, going to Bethlehem, and there delivering her “first-born son wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in manger,” all “because there was no room for them in the inn,” itself a phrase which has caught the imaginations of people everywhere, the fears of homelessness, of the migrant and the sojourner, of the traveler of every age, sceptics notwithstanding.
Yet the account is remarkably sparse and extremely economical with its words. And about some of the ‘facts’, such as the census itself and the rulers of the day like Quirinius, there is some uncertainty, indeed even error in the sense of reading back perhaps a later census taken in the provinces under Roman rule to the story and supposed time of Christ’s birth. But then the whole story could only be written from a later standpoint of looking back on things in the light of later events such as the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. There are things which simply cannot be empirically known even such things as the date and time of Christ’s birth. We really only have the narrative accounts of Luke and Matthew along with the metaphysical, majestic and theological account of John. None of which are really possible without the later events of the crucifixion and the resurrection.
Only in the light of those things could there be a birth narrative at all. This is true for the birth narratives in other religions, too. Think of the birth narratives of Siddhartha Gautama for Buddhism, of Moses for Judaism, of Mohammed for Islam. There are elements of the mythological in all of them to one extent or another which is not to say that there is no truth in them. The question is more about what kind of truth. So here, too, in what follows in the narration, where with a masterly touch, Luke shifts the scene from Bethlehem to the countryside, from Joseph and Mary and the new-born son to the “shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.” To them “the angel of the Lord came upon them.” Why? Well angels are messengers. So what is the message? What is proclaimed to them? The meaning of the birth in Bethlehem.
An angel? How does one know that empirically? The truth is that one doesn’t and can’t but then not all truths are empirical, especially the greatest truths, the truths that have to do with our lives spiritually and intellectually and which shape every other aspect of our being. The angel’s words are instructive and, I think, compelling. “Fear not,” the angel says even as “the glory of the Lord shone round about them” such that “they were sore afraid.” Something is happening that is out of the ordinary, even frightening and strange. But the angel suggests something else. It is not a matter for our worldly fears but about our being awakened to “the fear of the Lord” which “is the beginning of wisdom,” the awakening of our minds to the awe and wonder of God and his presence. Philosophy and religion begin in wonder for what we behold changes our lives. It is precisely, as the angel, says, “good tidings of great joy” and note that this is not just for them, an exclusive gift, but that it “shall be to all people”; in short, universal, for all.
The “good tidings of great joy” is about the birth of Christ with attention to the barest of facts or details and yet profoundly significant. “For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord.” This is the significant phrase. Rich terms and words pregnant with meaning: “the city of David”; “a Saviour”; “Christ the Lord.” And immediately there is the further idea that these words can be tested, proven. “And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger” and, “suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God”. Heaven and earth conspire in the praise of God and in the universal themes of peace on earth and good will toward men.
We are attracted by such longings for peace and good will in our own fractured and fearful world. We overlook that the ground of such hopes and longing are found in giving glory to God. “Glory to God in the highest.” The praise of God is the ground of all our hopes and expectations and the only counter to the violence of our hearts and world.
The Christmas story does not hide the grim and hideous realities of human experience but instead infuses them with a new spirit and quality. In the simple and humble nature of the story, we sense the motions of God’s love and mercy which is far greater than all of the petty machinations of power and domination in our sad and weary world. It is really only the idea of God in his truth and goodness that makes the story so compelling, so true. So compelling and true that the Gospel read for centuries at the Mass of Christmas Day stops with the “Gloria in excelsis Deo.” Only later in Christmastide, on the Octave Day actually, will we go with the shepherds to Bethlehem “and see this thing which is come to pass,” to see the sign, literally “this saying that has happened,” a complement to John’s Word made flesh, perhaps.
Somehow it is enough to see already the meaning, the thing signified. The barest of details suffice especially when they are suffused with such deep meaning. “For unto you is born this day in the City of David, a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord.” Simply put, we have the great wonder of God’s intimate engagement with our humanity proclaimed here in the message of the angel to the shepherds. Christ the Lord means that Christ is God. His birth is our salvation. Such is the mystical theology of Christmas without which it becomes really only so much sentiment and worry, so much fuss and bother, so much tinsel and wrap, and so much sorrow and pain. Here is the mystery of God signifying the redemption of our humanity. “Christ the Lord”! The theological claim is that Christ is God whose birth in the city of David is salvation. There is the parallel between this annunciation to the shepherds and the Annunciation to Mary, wonderfully expressed in a beautiful medieval Marian Carol: “Cuius Annuntiato / Nostra fuit salvatio” – “Whose Annunciation / Was our salvation.”
In a way, we have the whole mystery of the Incarnation captured in a phrase which opens us out to the necessity of God’s motions towards us without which we are bereft and empty. Here is the fullness of joy, the fullness of our life with God in Christ, the joy of Christmas in the contemplative wonder of Christmas morn.
Fr. David Curry
Christmas Morn, 2017
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