A Christmas Reflection

Different Stories about God:

              It seems to me that there are two equal and opposite narratives about the place of God in our world. In my humble opinion, (and those who know me realise I rarely have humble opinions!) both are wrong.

              The first narrative, looks at the festival of Christmas and says a large Baa Humbug. They are convinced that there is no basis for this celebration, other than a good excuse to have a party at the darkest time of year. They believe, sometimes very passionately, that God has no place in this world whatsoever. They are convinced that despite all the mystery and complexity of creation and all the depths and pathos of relationships that there is nothing ultimately giving meaning to all that we experience.  These folk are actually people of great faith, even though they claim to be entirely rational. As a previous archbishop once said, they believe that nothing made everything out of nothing, whereas his faith only stretched to believe that something created everything out of nothing.

              The second narrative, is in my view equally troubling. Those who adhere to this story call themselves people of faith, but actually they are in danger of peddling superstitions which simply justify their decisions, actions and often inaction.  In their understanding God is all powerful and everything is down to him. Within this motif the issue of responsibility becomes blurred. If God is all powerful and ultimately everything is down to the will of God, then we now longer have to take responsibility for our actions.

I want to highlight a misreading of the Christmas story to illustrate how this misrepresentation can blunt our understanding and divert us from our true calling as partners with God in restoring his beautiful, wonderful world. Our image of the Christmas story became skewed by a Victorian mistranslation of the greek word ‘kataluma.’ We translate it as an inn, or hotel, whereas all it really meant was guest room. We are all under the impression that Joseph and Mary struggled through Bethlehem with nowhere to stay before the miraculous baby Jesus was born in a stable with no-one to help. We all have images of multiple other ‘innkeepers’ all dressed with suitable tea towels shaking their heads and sending the poor couple away. But God’s plans cannot be thwarted….. because God is God, and so the baby is born, almost despite humanity and so begins the life of Jesus, with no-one to help apart from the practically God like Mary his mother.

The text actually reads that while they were in Bethlehem, probably staying at a relative of Joseph’s, Mary’s time came. She had the child and wrapped him up and laid him in a manger. There you are you say she must have been in a stable… because a manger is a cattle feeding trough. True it is, but in those days most of the houses had mangers in them, because the animals normally stayed in the house at night, to keep the house warm. Your goat and donkey and Ox were your very own central heating! (Smelly boiler!) The average normal house in Bethlehem was a single room, with a raised level where the people lived, and a lower level at one end where the animals would roost. In the floor at that end there was often a carved out hole, a manger: that the animals would eat from. At the other end of slightly more ‘upmarket’ houses there was a guest room, sleeping area. Real posh houses had their guest rooms upstairs!

So with this information the traditional nativity where God bursts into life despite callous innkeepers and indifferent relatives suddenly is transformed. Mary and Joseph are almost certainly part of a normal extended family, but Mary has to lay her baby in the ‘manger’ because the guest room is already occupied by the wider family or other travellers. What we discover is the intense ordinariness of the scene. The difference to normal life was not what happened, but rather what was happening. God’s son was being born in the normal humble circumstances of everyday life.

You see rather than God working despite us, all of God’s dealings show that God is passionately interested in working with us. Between this absent God or the God who does everything is what I believe is the true picture of God, one who works with us and through us, who longs for a partnership relationship. The pinnacle of this is actually the Christmas story. God and humanity tied together, the majesty of God, expressed as a vulnerable ordinary child, wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger like so many other ordinary children before and since. What this means is that we cannot expect God to do our dirty work, or to sort everything out for us, but we can expect him to strengthen us, encourage us and help us to become his working ambassadors.

Christmas tells us that the light shines in the world. However the reality is that unless we choose to reflect that light, and to live in that light then the light will not penetrate the darkness. Please do not misunderstand me, I am not saying that God cannot do all things, that he could not sort the world’s brokenness in a single flash. I am saying that God has chosen a different pathway. There are legitimate questions that you might ask from there, such as why does God not act more decisively to end the evil and brokenness in the world. But again we are in danger of passing the buck, of implying again that it is all God’s fault. The truth of Christmas is that God has acted decisively, he has made his choice. He has chosen to inhabit humanity, to work with us, not despite us. He took full responsibility for his choice, in the birth, life and death of his Son Jesus Christ. When will we awaken to the reality that now the responsibility is ours, not to walk alone, but to live in a partnership with the love that created heaven and earth: the one who is passionate to eat with us, drink with us, laugh, rejoice, weep, mourn and dance with us. God has chosen to love you, nothing you do will deflect him from that choice. However for that love to become an expression of his beautiful healing love in the world, you have to accept that love and allow it to become an integral part of who you are. That is for you to know yourself as a full partner with God. That is what is meant by being a Christian, put most simply it means, Christ-i -an, I am in Christ and Christ is in me.