Beyond the Childification of Christmas

4 Advent         December 21, 2014

2 Samuel 7:4,8-16     Ps.89       

Romans 16:25-27     Luke 1:26-38  

Lectionary Link

  We all love the fact that Christmas is for children and we have childified Christmas to the hilt.  We've done it in many ways.  We taken St. Nicholas of Myra and dressed him up with a fancy red duds and given him the perpetual grandfatherly role of making children happy.  We elevated the new St. Nicholas to a status which rivals the status of Jesus and we often wonder if Jesus get upstaged by Santa Claus at Christmas.  The elevation of Santa Claus allows Christmas to have relevance way beyond the church walls but Santa Claus is mainly associated with the commercial efforts to drive the giving of gifts and help boost the economy at the end of the year.  Apparently, our economy is really bad if people are not maxxing out their credit cards and completely in debt.  Go figure.
  With the extreme childification of Christian we can diminish the fact that the Gospel writers actually had specific purposes in writing what they did.  And because of fact checking and science we would like to keep the Christmas stories in being read only in the state of "primary" naivete (see Paul Ricoeur), the same kind of state which fascinated children have when they watch a Disney movie.  And that is a good state and not to be all bah hum bugged on.  But there is more to the Christmas stories and some of the more concerns what Americans are supposed to be best at, "pragmatism."  Truth has to have actual function, pragmatic function for people who use "truths."
  And what could be the pragmatic function of the story of an Angel who comes to the Virgin Mary and tells her that she is going to have baby.  And this baby is going to be a ruler of the house of Jacob, also known as Israel because he is going to be like David.  And Mary, "you will not come to have this baby by regular means, you will be over-shadowed by the Holy Spirit."  Surprise?  Well, nothing is impossible with God.  Mary's response was, "Let it be."
  Let us talk about literal prediction.  Was Jesus ever King of the house of Jacob?  Did he ever reign over Israel?  And did the Jews of his time all embrace him as a King?  In fact, he was mocked as a "false and pretending King" when over his head on the cross were written the words "This is the King of the Jews."
  What is going on in the writing of the Christmas stories?  What is their actual pragmatic function of the stories during the time of their writing and promulgation?
  Since the stories are collections and represents subsequent editing and redacting, one can assume that the stories had more than one function depending upon how they were applied and used as teachings within the various communities which read them and used them for liturgy and teaching.
  The earliest writer of the New Testament writings was St. Paul.  St. Paul did not write about Jesus of Nazareth or his early life.  We have no record of St. Paul meeting Mary or Joseph, but one assumes that  if he met James, the brother of our Lord that he would have at least asked for some historical background about Jesus.
  Paul, the earliest writer of the writing which appear in the collection of New Testament writings, wrote mainly letters giving instructions about his spiritual experience and how it changed his life and how this experience could also change the lives of others.
  This experience of spiritual change happened in this way:  A person had an encounter, an interior event which included the understanding that the Spirit of God, the Spirit of the Risen Jesus was present after he had died and rose again.  The Spirit of Jesus was a higher power which could change one's life morally and socially.  The Spirit of Jesus could unite a person with like minded people to form a new community of people who could support each other as they faced the stresses of living in the cities of the Roman Empire.
  So what does one do with the theology of St. Paul's spiritual experience of the risen Christ?  What does one do as one notices how successful it has become in forming communities within the Roman Empire?  The leaders of the Christian Movement had a growing audience and they needed to have methods of inculcating and teaching this spiritual practice such as had been experienced by St. Paul, who said that Christ was born in us as the hope of glory and that this happened by the power of the Holy Spirit.
  So in the program of mystagogy or the teaching about the mystery of Christ being born within us by being overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, the early Christian spiritual directors Christianized genres of stories which were present in their cultures and they presented the Virgin Mary as the example of every Christian who received the birth of Christ within them, not by the natural human means, but by presence of the Holy Spirit.  And when one knew this birth of Christ, one was initiated into the program of the Kingdom of God, the new House of Jacob and the New Israel.  It was a hidden but profound and omnipresent kingdom but it was a sure and certain kingdom because everyone in this kingdom had the uncanny experience of knowing Jesus as the kingly and transforming power of their lives.
  And so do you understand the very pragmatic function of the annunciation story in the mystagogy of the early church?  It took the didactic theology of St. Paul and put it into a story form and hid the spiritual mysticism because the Christ event was not something that happened by thinking or by external force;  it was an inward event of being over-shadowed by the Holy Spirit.
  And how did one know that it had happened?  One could know that it had happened in the event of being so persuaded that one completely acquiesced even while not understanding fully what and why it had happened.
  This acquiescence is expressed perfectly in the words of Mary to Gabriel: "Let it be to a servant of the Lord according to your word."  Let it be, let it be, let it be.  The result of persuasive faith is acquiescence when we cannot help but say, "Let it be" because we have been over-shadowed by the Holy Spirit in having Christ be born within us.
  So as we encounter all of the childification of Christmas this year, let us not forget the Christmas events of our souls when God's annunciation to us brought our acquiescence and we said to God, "Let is be."  Christmas becomes an every day event when we acquiesce to God's birthing presence and say to God, Let it be, let it be, let it be.  Amen.