Christmass is upon us.

I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.

Charles Dickens



No sermon to preach this year - in fact no responsibilities at all other than to meet with God's people on Christmas Eve and celebrate the true Christmass.

I attended an Advent Retreat over the weekend of Advent 1 at which we discussed the speeches associated with the birth narratives of Matthew and Luke. It was good to bring these words to the fore right at the beginning of the season. The one thing I got out of that exercise was to notice the highly stylised form of the texts which emphasised again that we have there not an historical narrative but a theological reflection of what the Authors' believed was the beginning of the meaning of the Christ story.

We all think we know these stories so well because we hear them year after year, but it is surprising when you look at all the texts together in one go, so to speak, to find little details you had forgotten about (sometimes making you think "I never heard that before.")

I read Marcus Borg's book "The First Christmas" and found that it brought the narratives to life for me in new ways. We are so used to harmonising the two different stories into one that we neglect to give thought to the possibility that there might be reasons for the differences. "Reading each as a separate narrative and paying attention to the details of the texts enriches these stories and adds greatly to their power." (Borg, p.23)

Borg lays the ground for seeing the Birth Narratives as a literary form of the musical "Overture", a word derived from the French ouverture meaning the opening part "that serves as a summary, synthesis, metaphor, or symbol of the whole." (Borg, p.39) The form and the themes introduced in the Birth Narratives by Matthew and Luke reflect the later form and themes that are explored in the Gospel as a whole. This fact illuminates our understanding of otherwise incidental features of the narrative.

Borg also sets out to demonstrate that many aspects of the narrative are actually quite subversive, and intentionally so. Matthew's declaration of Jesus as "King of the Jews" was a direct challenge to Herod the Great who claimed that title to himself. Luke's various declarations that Jesus was the Son of God, Lord, saviour of the world, and the one who brings peace was a direct challenge to the Roman Imperial Cult by which these titles were intrinsically Caesar's. (Borg, p.37)

Borg brings his work to a conclusion that reflects themes of that work with which I began this post - Charles Dicken's story "A Christmas Carol". For him the Christmas story can only be understood in those three tenses - past, present and future. All three are interdependent and intertwined - we look back at what happened in the past, we seek to experience the incarnation as a present reality and we wait in anticipation an even greater fullness of God's presence among us in what we call "The Second Coming".

In my reading and retreating one phrase stood out. A statement by the 14th century German Mystic Meister Eckhart who said "Unless Christ is born in you today, what happened in Bethlehem is irrelevant." I am inclined to agree. What do you think?