Christmas

Sing a song of Christmas, of emperors and angels;

Sing a song of Christmas, of darkness now past;

Sing a song of Christmas, of shepherds and of mangers;

Sing a song of Jesus, of peace come at last.

Buried beneath the remnant trash of the presents that lay under the tree… I would venture to say that ‘peace come at last’ would make the ultimate of gifts we would all desire to receive this Christmas. We live in a chaotic world. The songs that the angels sang… or the prophecies of Isaiah… each tug on the hearts of so many in our world who are dealing with debt… grinding away in a work that does not reward appropriately their labor… praying for loved ones who are waging war in a part of the world they will never visit… When we think upon the message of Christmas, we can all agree at a basic human level, ‘let’s do away with all the pain and injustice… God send a savior.’

But in a few days… as the decorations get packed away for their annual storage, and Christianity becomes a private religion again… until Easter anyway… or perhaps as something tolerable for old ladies and young children… it won’t be much use to us when it comes to the problems we face in the real world.

As we watch the news coming in from around the world, it is no wonder our hearts sink as we wonder if things will ever change. It often seems that the blind are leading the blind into a ditch. As we corporately look in the mirror, it is not a stretch to say that our country is being reduced to chaos by someone else’s inept and money-driven warmongering. It is this that should cause us to come to grips with the promises of the Christmas story that lead to thoughts of peace. We cannot read Isaiah 9 this Christmas season and then quickly forget that it does in fact speak to the rest of the year that we will live in a day-to-day fashion.

At Christmas… in light of the Biblical narrative… we should easily ask, how can we turn this season into action for the rest of the year. How should the rulers of our world… from national to the local of our own homes… adjust their priorities because Christmas happened.

This time of year, many of us don’t give much thought to the ideas of empires and money and wars when we put up our trees… make trips to the local charities that ensure there are presents under the tree… Many of us only have a Christmas experience in our churches that will hopefully make us feel good on the inside. Maybe that is part of the problem in the way we have treated Christmas in our culture. We have filtered out the emperors from the Biblical stories… and in doing so… have only received a partial message of the angels songs.

The Christmas story… as told by the prophet Isaiah… isn’t about an escape from the real world of politics and economics… of empires and taxes and bloodthirsty wars. It is about God addressing these problems at last… because God comes into our world… and we are reminded that it is his world. And he is coming in with authority to deal with the problems of evil… chaos… violence… and oppression in all of their horrible forms. It is only when we look hard at the promises and come to grips with what they really mean are we able to grasp with real comfort and joy that Christmas does truly provide. If we don’t, then we are embracing only a private comfort at the inflated cost of allowing the rest of the world to continue in its misery.

Luke’s story of the birth of Jesus takes the trouble to tell us about the Roman emperor Augustus, and his desire to take a census of more or less the whole known world. This isn’t just background information that provides some local flavoring to the story. Empires, censuses and taxes were as hot a topic in the Middle East in the first century as they are in our time. Maybe it was a heavier burden then… after all… when we take part in a census, we fill out a boring form and send it off in the mail. Many in our country have conceded to the idea that they are going to tax us anyway. In the first century, anytime there was a census, riots would break out, and people would be killed… censuses raised the question in the back of everyones mind: “who really rules the world, and how are they going to run it? who is profiting by the huge government over us… and who is going to be crushed in the process? when will all of this ever change? can we do anything about it.

Luke has placed Jesus’ birth and the angel’s song within this everday story of Imperial behavior because he wants us to know that Jesus’ birth is not an invitation to a private religion into which we can escape and feel cosy, but a summons to us, as it was to his first followers, to sign on under his authority, to celebrate the birth of the Wonderful Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace, and to work under that authority for the growth of his promised kingdom of endless peace, of justice and righteousness.

Perhaps we have done a bad job of embracing this message of Christmas… and our world suffers as a result. You may be thinking… ‘things have always been like this. politicians always get it wrong. the church always muddles things up. why would we expect anything different?’

Is that true?

It’s been a century and a half since the end of slavery based largely on the effort of William Wilburforce in England and anti-slavery activists here in the United States. The battle to end this trade took decades to resolve… and some would point out that equality among the races is still a long way off. The Christian faith played a major part in the progress of just this one area alone.

It can be done.

There are many that believe in the extraordinary idea that the gospel of Jesus is not about emperors and angels… but about a private spirituality and a promise of someday escaping this world altogether… instead of extending His Kingdom. In a story without empires, the angels lose their authority, and become gooey pictures on calendars that look pretty. They become a piece of a Christianity that longs to just escape from this world someday… and a contentment to let the empires go about doing their own thing.

It’s time that Christmas gets its glory back… then the angels songs will promise real justice and real peace.

I am praying that God will call us this Christmas season to not only trust him for ourselves, but also to put some rubber to the asphalt through prayer and faith… through social and political action… to carry forward the work of the kingdom that was launched a the first Christmas. We need all to work together… laity and the ordained. We need to stay focused to that very task.

For lo, the days are hastening on,

by prophets seen of old,

When, by the Spirit’s might power

Arrives the time foretold:

When peace shall over all the earth

It’s promised splendors fling,

and the whole world give back the song

which now the angels sing.

So where can you start? Not all of us will be William Wilberforces… we cant all run political campaigns… we can’t all lead great reforms. No. But we can pray, we can watch, and we can listen. We can, in fact, inhabit Luke’s story of Jesus’ birth right were we are. We can pray in love and devotion before the Christ-child, trusting that his new kingdom of peace and justice will come to birth within us and through us. And then we watch the empires… the Augustus Caesars of our day… we can keep our eyes open for where the powers that run the world are crushing the little people who live on our street, in our town, in our local hospitals or prisons. We can listen for the song of the angels. It may come in surprising ways, as it always does.

God doesn’t call everybody in the same way. But if you are learning to love the Christ-child you will find your eyes gradually being opened to what the powers of the world are up to and your ears gradually become tuned to the particular song that God’s angels are trying to sing to you… and perhaps through you. You will discover, in fact, the things we call vocation… maybe simply volunteering to work on behalf of the least of these. Writing a letter to the opinion formers in your community or on the television… organizing prayer vigils and chains… running a blog to raise awareness of the issues that need a voice… Every great work begins with little steps; usually it continues with little steps to.

And remember the story of the shepherds and the manger. We are so used to hearing about it, that we often forget the point. The shepherds were told something quite ridiculous: that God’s Messiah, God’s only Son, had been born up the road. Now, how on earth are you supposed to believe that? And what on earth could you do about it? But they were given a sign: you don’t normally find babies in feeding troughs, but that’s where this one is. And so they went, and they saw, and they believed, and they worshipped. What is the equivalent for us today? Well, when you worship the Christ-child for yourself, and learn to open your eyes to empires and your ears to the angels, you may well wonder whether there is any point in even trying to do anything about it at all. It all seems quite ridiculous.

And then you may begin to notice places where there are, so to speak, babies in mangers: places where God seems to have startling at at work.. in a hospice… in a prison… in a day care… at the coffee shop… in your small groups… in the lives of drug addicts… prostitutes… pagans… debt campaigns… in debt relief and unjust laws… whatever it may be.

And then: watch for the empires, listen for the angels, worship the Christ-child – and go for it.

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and his kingdom shall be established with justice and righteousness from this time forth and forevermore.

… inspired by Mr. Wright…

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