by CCW | 24 December 2024 22:00
What does it mean to celebrate Christmas in a post-Christian culture? Is it simply nostalgia? Is it our longing for an imaginary golden age which, of course, never was? Is it our holding to traditions and customs simply out of sentiment and feeling? George Steiner’s 1974 Massey Lecture, Nostalgia for the Absolute, points to a deeper kind of longing, one which belongs more profoundly to the mystery of Christmas. It is the human longing for God in whom is the life and the light of our humanity.
He examines three nineteenth century substitutes for the Christian religion in terms of Freudian psychology, Marxist economics, and the social anthropology of Claude Leví-Strauss, all of which sought to take the place of religion, especially the Christian religion, as the overarching narrative or story that embraces and explains our lives. All failed, he notes, but left in their wake a vacuum into which all manner of fancies and fantasies have rushed in. Their legacy is very much with us in the various pseudo-religions of contemporary secular culture, even within and without the churches, despite the postmodernist claim of “incredulity towards all metanarratives”(Lyotard). They are all the parodies of true religion and liturgy, especially of the Christian liturgy, and belong to the competing claims and confusions about the self. But as parodies, they point us to the deeper mystery of Christmas which they presuppose.
Dame P.D. James, the great British mystery writer, in her novel The Children of Men, written in 1992, speaks with great insight about our current world. The novel is set in the future; 2021, in fact, and thus speaks very much to our present. “Western science has been our God,” she notes. This we know only too well in our techno-utopian optimism which thinks that salvation lies in technology and in our technocratic culture, utterly unaware of how this way of thinking is itself a problem. In the novel, this dominant scientific outlook finds itself utterly confounded by a barren world of universal infertility. There are no children, no prospect of life, only a world of the terminally ill. Such is the culture of death, a culture which is anti-life. Our culture.
The entire novel touches upon almost every moral and social issue of our time: from reproductive technology to euthanasia, from immigration to health care. The impotence of the human race humiliates “the very heart of our faith in ourselves.” Confidence in science and belief in the endless progress of humanity is shattered by the encounter with the stark reality of an absolute limit; mortality in the form of the empty womb. The womb has become a tomb. But the real barrenness is the emptiness of our souls.
She highlights the dilemma in theological terms, noting that “the recognized churches” including the Anglican churches, “moved from the theology of sin and redemption to a less uncompromising doctrine: corporate social responsibility coupled with a sentimental humanism.” This leads, she suggests, to the virtual abolition of “the Second Person of the Trinity together with His cross.” Left at that it seems all rather hopeless, dark and negative. Yet the novel offers hope and redemption through the possibilities of new birth through grace and humility. In other words, nativity and resurrection but only through sacrifice. The Word made flesh is Christ Crucified. Christmas does not let us forget that.
The celebration of Christmas does not depend upon the tinsel and wrap of cultures; at best, they provide the context of faith in our commitment to life. It is true that religions shape cultures but it is equally true that religions, such as the Christian religion, constantly challenge us and our cultural assumptions.
Here is the wonder and mystery of Christmas: “In him was life, and the life was the light of human beings.” Life and light are found in God and in the motions of God in himself and towards us. This is the mystery of Christmas. On Christmas Eve we hear very little about the nativity story apart from Isaiah’s prophetic references in the Christmas Anthems and in the images that the carols provide. To be sure, the nativity stories in Matthew and Luke are remarkably reticent and sparse about matters of detail. Luke tells us about the birth of Mary’s “first-born son wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.” The Greek word (φατνη) is manger or stall, meaning “a long open box or trough in a stable for horses or cattle to eat from” (OED). There is no mention of a stable or barn and there is no direct mention of animals. Matthew will tell of the Magi-Kings coming to the house (οικιαν) or dwelling place and finding the child with Mary, his mother. Again, no mention of animals. The Magi-Kings are really Johnny-come-latelies to the nativity about whom we know next to nothing, neither how many nor even their names. All that belongs to holy imagination over the centuries as building upon various scriptural passages.
Where do all our familiar ideas about the Nativity come from? A combination of Luke’s “manger” and “no room in the inn” along with the great insight of John in what we heard tonight: “He came unto his own and his own received him not.” On Sunday past, John the Baptist told the Pharisees that “there standeth one among you one whom ye know not.” Christ’s birth makes known to us what we do not know of ourselves and either choose to ignore or forget. Such is our darkness. But here is life and light. Tonight makes known to us the eternal birth of the only-begotten of the Father, the one who is the Word, Son, and Light of God. As John’s Gospel makes clear, the Word is God and with God – towards God – and the Word is with us, the Word made flesh. An eternal birth and his birth from Mary, who is also not mentioned explicitly. For “the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us” in whom “we beheld the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father.” In Christmastide, we will have the Christmas of the Angels on Christmas Morn and the Christmas of the Shepherds on the Octave Day of Christmas. Yet all this unfolds from the eternal mystery of the one in whom is life and light eternal.
And the animals? All that comes from the message of the Angel to the Shepherds alerting them to the wonder of this special and unique birth that sets us in motion and opens us out to a larger understanding of God, of ourselves, and of creation. Holy imagination builds upon that story to envision Bethlehem as paradise restored where all of creation is at one with each other and with God. That is to recall paradise not as a place to which we return but rather as the place of the beginning of our journey to God.
“God is essential life,” George MacDonald says. He was the nineteenth century Scottish writer who had a profound effect on C.S. Lewis. The wonder of Christmas Eve is the making known of God as essential life and light. We cannot know unless we are known, unless we are thought of and spoken of by God. He is our life and we have no life in ourselves apart from him. It belongs to the truth of our humanity to know who we are as found in God. We find ourselves in the wonder of God’s being with us illuminating the darkness of our unknowing. This is the great wonder of Christmas night. Life and light are the gift of God’s love. “Love is in the nature of the gift from which all gifts are given” (Aquinas). Love comes down at Christmas to make known to us the eternal love of God in the one who is the Word and Son of God. He is our life and our light. There is no other.
Fr. David Curry
Christmas Eve 2024
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