12.24.09
exclusive, inclusive.. Christmas and new boundaries
Imagine arriving in a foreign country and not knowing the language..
Then imagine this happens to you right where you live. You wake up one day and everyone is speaking Hebejebian.
Imagine the sense of disorientation, frustration, maybe anger.
I realized after a conversation this week just how strange it can sound trying to talk about familiar boundaries in this new location. In Christendom and modernity, we knew who we were and what the Gospel was. In this new place many things that were familiar have become strange, and some things that were strange are now familiar. And these are things that were carefully guarded in the old world. But “we’re not in Kansas anymore.” Ok, let’s get concrete.
A legacy of Christmas under Christendom is that “Jesus is the reason for the season.” Let me tell you why this no longer works for me.
Fifty years ago Christian language and culture were pervasive. We held power for so long that our culture spilled over into every context. We could assume familiarity with the Christian story. When we saw that elements of the story were sanitized or secularized, we could call people back toward the center based on shared memory. It may not have been completely fair (I’ll get to that), but by and large they understood us and it made sense.
Even then, however, we were glossing over some elements of the story to make our point. What was sometimes grey, we rendered in either black or white. So, while it wasn’t until the fourth century that the Church standardized this nativity celebration, we treated the story as if the celebration was in place from the first century. And we avoided the solstice connection, and didn’t acknowledge that Christmas was the overlay the Church placed on a pagan festival.
But here we are in this new location, with the festival once again pagan, trying to declare that Jesus is the reason for the season. He is not. To make this point is oppressive and colonial. The reason for the season now is consumption, family holidays, a huge industry, some cultural memories (Santa Claus) and traditions. For a few.. really a very few… the center is the Incarnation of the Son of God.
On the one hand then, I don’t think I should be proclaiming in the public square that “Jesus is the reason for the season.” On the other hand, when I talk to believers about Christmas, or when I sit in a church building and watch a Christmas play, I am running a whole different set of questions. My expectations about the message are completely different. I expect congruence with the Gospel and a presentation that accurately reflects the time and place of Jesus arrival. I do not want to see a nice, peaceful, sanitized, safe nativity. Jesus came to an oppressed people in a dangerous land, vulnerable and small, with death kicking at the doors.
I want to raise the bar for discipleship, and lower the bar for the culture.
What does this mean for the crossover point, the connection point.. we living as “resident aliens” .. a colony of heaven in a hostile land? Miroslav Volf writes,
“When Christians take the Christmas narrative seriously, the practice of gift-exchange within a closed circle of family and friends becomes problematic. If our lives are to mirror the ways of God, then we must break open the closed circle of exchange so that Christmas gifts flow outward to those with profound needs.â€
