Looking Back Moving Forward

Anything Can Happen When Faith Meets Doubt
December 30, 2012
A Friend of God’s
January 13, 2013

The stories of Jesus’ infancy appear in two of the gospels, Matthew and Luke.  The gospel of Mark makes no mention of Jesus’ birth and the gospel of John speaks of Jesus’ incarnation in beautiful poetic terms—“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”—but tells no stories about the infancy of Jesus. 

The infancy stories told by Luke and Matthew are quite distinct.   Luke is the only gospel to mention the shepherds and Matthew is the only one to mention the wise men. For Luke it was important that the first ones to receive the good news would be the poorest and least respected members of Jesus’ community; for Matthew, it was important that the first ones to recognize Jesus would be Gentiles, because his message would be universal, for Gentiles as well as for Jews. 

The Greek word Magi can be translated “wise men” or “astrologers,” and is also related to “magicians.”  The word “Kings” does not appear in Matthew’s account, but became part of the tradition later because of the line we heard David read from Isaiah, “kings shall come to the brightness of your dawn.”  These wise men do not have the light of biblical revelation, but they do have a natural light, the light of creation, that takes the form of a miraculous star that they follow to find their way to Christ.

Matthew’s gospel introduces a sense of danger and foreboding;  this is not the happy Christmas story that we’re used to imagining.  Before they even meet Jesus, the wise men meet up with Jesus’ future executioner.  When they ask Herod, “Where is the King of the Jews?” we are reminded that that is the title Jesus will be taunted with at his crucifixion.  The story says that not only was Herod worried about the threat this infant king might pose to him, the Jerusalem establishment is concerned too.  Having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod after finding Jesus, the wise men go back home a different way.  Traditional interpretations of the meaning of the wise men’s gifts further add to the foreshadowing:  Gold, for Jesus as king, frankincense, an aromatic gum resin used in worship, for Jesus as divine, and myrhh, a resin used in embalming, for Jesus’ dying.

Matthew’s story  tells us that Jesus was born into a cruel world at a dangerous time.  After the Magi sneak out of town without reporting back to him, Herod, in a fit of paranoia, orders the death of all boys in Bethlehem under two.   Jesus and his family barely manage to get out alive.  And yet you will not find this story depicted on any Christmas card.

T.S. Eliot picked up the dark side of this story in the poem we just heard.  “I had seen birth and death/But had thought they were different; this Birth was/Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.”

In our culture we try to keep birth and death as far apart as possible.  Christmas has become about light and happiness, and we have largely forgotten the dark side of this story.  But the problem is that thus interpreted, the story loses much of its relevance.  It doesn’t take into account the complex reality in which we live.  The juxtaposition of the Newtown, CT shootings and Christmas was too much to bear; it was almost impossible to think of one without blocking out the other.   The sentimental scene of  the cute baby Jesus, the happy shepherds, and the adoring wise men which is the only Christmas story most Americans know feeds the perception that Christianity is a mere child-like fantasy, too much for any hard-headed realist to believe when confronted by the true facts of life.  

But it wasn’t always so.  The Eastern Orthodox tradition has something to teach us about holding birth and death together. 

On your bulletin cover is the icon of the Nativity of Christ.  At the center of the icon are the child and His mother.  The child is shown lying in a cave.  But Jesus was born in a stable, right?   Luke is the gospel writer who describes how Joseph and Mary could not find a room at an inn, but all he says is that Mary laid Jesus in a manger, an animal’s feeding trough.   He doesn’t say where the manger was.  At that time animals were often sheltered in caves and recesses in the hills, so that’s what the icon depicts.  

The cave is surrounded by impossibly sharp, inhospitable, rocks which reflect the cruel world into which Jesus was born.  But the cave is not hell; it is not the mythical underworld of the Greeks, it is rather like the “she’ol” of the Hebrew Bible – our own world, dark with sin.  The Son of God at the mouth of the cave has taken our human condition upon himself:  He is born of the earth and will return to the earth, in a cave just like this one, at the time of his burial.

Now take a look where the baby lays.  The manger looks like a coffin, and the swaddling clothes look very much like burial cloths.  Even at his birth, his death is promised.

Besides his mother, the only company Jesus has in the first few hours of His life are a lowly ox and donkey, which are not mentioned in Luke’s gospel but are placed there by the iconographer as a reference to Isaiah: “The ox knows its owner; and the donkey its master’s crib; but Israel does not know, my people do not understand.”  Their presence shows the humility of God’s incarnation on earth.

At the bottom of the image, we see Joseph’s doubt concerning the virginity of Mary and the divine origin of Jesus. Joseph sits overwhelmed; he is being tempted by the demon of doubt in the guise of an old person with a stick.  This is Satan telling Joseph that virgin birth is impossible. He’s telling Joseph that he’s a fool if he believes this.  Joseph represents all human beings who struggle to believe the mystery of the incarnation, which is too great for the human mind to understand.  Above him, Mary looks with compassion at Joseph, as he struggles with his doubt.   

“Were we led all that way for Birth or Death?”  As this icon makes clear, in the true story of Christmas, they are both there.   At the very beginning of Jesus’ life, Herod rages and the road to the cross is already begun.   Yet the message of the gospel is that just as we bear our death within us from the moment of birth, we also bear life within us from the moment of our death.  Death does not have the final word.  Herod is no longer the one remembered as the King of the Jews.  

And that is why the iconographer wanted us to see, even as we look at the nativity of Christ, the death and thus the resurrection of Christ.  So that we can look death in the face, and not turn away because the Christian myth is too weak to stand in the presence of evil.   Even as we say, “Christ is born!”  we are also saying “Christ is risen!”

I wonder where we see ourselves in the picture?   Perhaps we identify with the wise men as they make their way up the mountain, following the star.  We, like they, are climbing uphill, encountering obstacles along the way.  We, like they, are following the light we have been given. 

The star sends down a single shaft of light towards the baby Jesus.  This light is what we celebrate today, on Epiphany, which means “manifestation.”  This was the first manifestation of Christ to the world.  But it is not the last manifestation of Christ to the world.  The light appears again and again, in biblical history, in natural history and in our own histories.  It is the light of which John spoke when he said, “What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.”  

The wise men are shown in the distance, still on their journey.  They are not yet there.  And neither are we.  At the start of a new year, we are more aware than ever that we are on a journey, moving toward the light, moving forward into God’s future, at the same time as we look back to see where we have come from.   It is not an uncomplicated journey.  Along the way we will encounter birth and death, joy and loss, reward and difficulty, delight and disappointment.  But the message of the gospel is that we are not alone on this journey.  Christ has been through all of it before us.   And his star goes before us to lead us, guiding us to the perfect Light.