Sunday December 3, 2017
The Birth Stories
During these days preachers will be planning their Christmas messages.
They will, of course, have to turn to the Gospel Infancy Narratives of Luke and Matthew as their first source of information. Here they will have to make a choice. Will they take off from what the stories say or from what they mean? Most preachers take off from what the words say and use their imaginations to embellish the stories with details and interpretations. These often lead to a sentimental and child-oriented message. The can often belie the fact that in Scripture the birth of Jesus is only of secondary importance to his death and resurrection. The meaning of his birth is understood properly only in the light of his life, death and resurrection.
While the approach of such preachers has some value, it is, in a sense trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. It is trying to make something out of the texts that they were never intended to convey. It is trying to make the texts tell us what happened when they were intended to tell us why things happened. It is trying to learn how events happened from a text was intended to convey the meaning of what happened. To try to see what was the original meaning of the text may not seem so attractive at first but it is ultimately a more fulfilling way of reading them and profiting from them.
Luke begins with two Annunciation stories. First, the angel Gabriel appeared to Zachariah, an old man whose wife was beyond the age of childbearing, to tell him that Elizabeth would conceive a son. The Old Testament often used the literary technique of saying that someone was conceived of a mother beyond childbearing years to highlight that this person was called by God to a special mission. But if being born of a woman beyond child-bearing years was remarkable, how much more extraordinary, and how much greater the person must be destined to be, who is born of a mother without the intervention of a human father! The story of the two annunciations are a way of highlighting the dignity and importance of Jesus.
St Luke tells us (2:7) that Mary "gave birth to her first born and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn." The thrice repeated word manger is the most important word in this account. The child will be found in the manger because it is in the person lying there that people will find the sustenance of God. The finding of the child in the manger is a sign that God wants to be found by his people again and to be recognised once more as the people's sustenance. The Child was wrapped in swaddling clothes which suggest a royal child, a son of King David.
Very often the shepherds are presented as devout people who spent their time praying for the coming of the Messiah while tending their flocks. Actually, in the literature of the time, they were looked down on by society and often mentioned with tax-collectors and whores! So Luke's point in making them the visitors to the manger is to say that the savior of sinners and outcasts has been born. He is a savior who makes the last become first and for whom there are no outcasts. The angels singing "Glory to God in the highest and peace to men with whom he is well pleased," is a literary way of saying that God was present at the birth of Christ who would bring salvation to all people.