W OODBROO K. listening to Christmas: the four stories of Jesus the story deemed not worth telling. Mark

Transcription

1 W OODBROO K B A P T I S T C H U R C H 25 Stevenson Lane Baltimore, MD Every member a minister. listening to Christmas: the four stories of Jesus the story deemed not worth telling Mark an excerpt of the preaching experience at Woodbrook Baptist Church Sunday, November 28, 2010 a contribution to the conversation by the Rev. Dr. John Ballenger Itʼs the first Sunday of the new church year! The first Sunday of Advent. We are now officially into our liturgical countdown to Christmas. Our culture has long had its commercial countdown however many shopping days left till Christmas that started with how many? Anyone know? Started well before Thanksgiving, didnʼt it? Before Halloween? I found one internet countdown dated September 15 marking 100 shopping days left until Christmas! As opposed to just our four weeks of Advent. With every new church year, the lectionary shifts its gospel focus, this year, from the gospel of Luke to the gospel of Matthew. But this Advent season, instead of looking to Matthew, weʼre going to take a Sunday to look at each of the four gospels. They are, after all, our primary sources for the Jesus story. And while we do tend to think of it as the one Jesus story instead of as four different ones while we tend to take details from each of the four gospels and then put those details into the one narrative time line we call Jesusʼ life, thatʼs not really fair or appropriate to our sources. And when it comes to Advent and Christmas, itʼs even more unfair or inappropriate. Because with the birth narratives, we look to only two of our four sources we look to Matthew and Luke, and we make of those two stories, one story, and then assume it to be the story all four sources would agree on. I donʼt know, you, like I, may have heard the four gospels described as four witnesses on

2 the four corners of a street describing one incident (letʼs not call it an accident!) in the middle of the intersection from their four different perspectives. Add together the perspectives and you get the most accurate account. So, with regards to Advent and Christmas texts, angels come to Elizabeth and Mary. Fear not. Fear not. Two unexpected pregnancies. Angels come to Zechariah and Joseph. Two confused men. Thereʼs a census. Joseph and Mary go to Bethlehem. Thereʼs no room at the inn. They get the stable. Jesus is born in a manger. Swaddling clothes. Angels appear to shepherds keeping watch over their flocks by night. Fear not. Glory to God in the highest. Magi are following a star that appeared in the sky that hovers over the stable. They all arrive at the stable. The magi have gifts. Everyone leaves glorifying God. Mary ponders everything in her heart and writes it all down in her baby book. Itʼs a great story. Except itʼs two stories... that donʼt agree. Not only do the details not match up, but in telling the tale of Jesusʼ birth, Matthew has Jesus born during the reign of Herod who died in 4 BCE while Luke dates Jesusʼ birth to the time of the census of Quirinius taken some ten years after Herodʼs death. Hereʼs the thing: [a] growing consensus has held that... all the evangelists [were]... theologian[s] of the Christian community. [Their] purpose [was] not primarily to write history, but to announce a message (Lamar Williamson, Jr., Mark in Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville: John Knox, 1983) 17. emphasis mine). Surely, after all, no matter what street corner you happened to be standing on, if you were recording history, you wouldnʼt miss a birthday by ten years! No, the purpose of the gospels is not to tell the history of Jesus, but to tell the Jesus story. And this year, throughout Advent, weʼre going to look at how each of the gospels tells (or doesnʼt tell) the Christmas story or the birth narrative as a part of its larger, longer Jesus story. And a birth narrative, in Markʼs gospel, is a story deemed not worth telling. Because as we begin today with what is presumed to be the earliest of the four gospels: the gospel of Mark... begins... chapter 1... with John the Baptist and Jesus begins... letʼs jump right in... identifying John the Baptist and Jesus (as adults, mind you) as the beginning of the good news. No angels announcing a birth to either unsuspecting young girls or surprised young men. No fear nots. No Elizabeth, no Zechariah. No Mary, no Joseph. No census. No Bethlehem. No no room at the inn. No stable. No manger. No swaddling clothes. No donkey. No cow. No shepherds. No heavenly hosts. No glory to God in the highest. No star in the sky. No magi. No gifts. There is no Advent. There is no Christmas. There is Jesus full grown already in the full stride of his ministry baptized, driven into the wilderness the rush is on. So what do we, looking for a Christmas story to go with our Advent worship do with no Christmas story? First, we acknowledge that we may assume too much on Christmasʼ behalf. Because itʼs so important to us, we think, surely... We may presume too much on Christmasʼ behalf. One of our primary secondary sources, the Jewish historian Josephus, writing in the first years of the church, like Mark, doesnʼt mention the birth of Jesus at all. Like Mark, refers only to the life and the ministry of Jesus.

3 And itʼs not like any celebration of Christmas was immediately incorporated into church life either. Ever struck you that thereʼs no biblical mention of it at all in the stories of the early church in Acts or any of the epistles? Clement of Alexandria, one of the early church fathers, tells of a group of Egyptian Christians, around the year 200 CE, celebrating the nativity [but] on March 25. Tertullian who died in 220 CE does not mention Christmas as a major feast day. in the year 245 CE, Origen of Alexandria, another of the church fathers, said only sinners (like Pharaoh and Herod) celebrated their birthdays. In 303 CE the Christian writer, Arnobius ridiculed the the idea of celebrating the birth of the gods, which suggests that Christmas was not yet a feast at this time (Russ Dean, Lost in the Cantatas a sermon preached at Park Road Baptist Church, November 29, My good friends Russ and his wife and co-pastor, Amy, explored Advent and Christmas through the four gospels last year. Our series is informed by some of the conversations Iʼve had with them and by their sermons available on the Park Road Baptist Church website, It was not until the fourth century that the Church officially decided to observe Christmas on December 25. And this date was chosen not for religious reasons but simply because it happened to mark the approximate arrival of the winter solstice... (Stephen Nissenbaum, The Battle for Christmas: A Cultural History of Americaʼs Most Cherished Holiday (New York: Vintage Books, 1996) 4). There are actually still Christian traditions that celebrate Christmas on January 6 or even January 19. In any case, itʼs pretty clear that the church simply took over a pagan celebration and as much as there may have been to those early celebrations about redeeming some pagan celebration or claiming the symbolism of the annual transition from darkness back to light, there was at least as much rowdy celebration of excess like Mardi Gras, like Carnival. And weʼre not just talking the early church here the beginning of the tradition. No, the history of Christmas is a mixed bag even in our own relatively young country. In New England, for the first two centuries of white settlement most people did not celebrate Christmas. In fact, the holiday was systematically suppressed by Puritans... It was actually illegal to celebrate Christmas in Massachusetts between 1659 and 1681 (the fine was five shillings). Only in the middle of the nineteenth century did Christmas gain legal recognition as an official public holiday in New England (Nissenbaum, 3). In 1772, a New York newspaper complained that the absence of ʻdecency, temperance, and sobrietyʼ at Christmas was so serious a matter that it belonged in the courts. (Nissenbaum, 53). Fascinating, isnʼt it? I mentioned there were no biblical grounds for a December 25 date for Jesusʼ birth. Also mentioned an ancient source indicating some kind of celebration of the birth of Jesus, but on March 25. There is actually a Judeo-Christian tradition let me back up... thereʼs an ancient Jewish tradition claiming Adam was created on March 25. Another Jewish tradition maintains that the ancient Jewish prophets died on the same day they were born. Thereʼs a Judeo-Christian tradition that Jesus was crucified and conceived (not sure why conceived and not born) on March 25. December 25, of course, nine months later. March 25 just happens to be, within some of these traditions, also, coincidentally, Iʼm sure, the day of the

4 fall of Lucifer, the day of the passing of Israel through the Red Sea, and the day Abraham took Isaac up Mount Moriah to kill him. Youʼre going to mark March 25 on your calendar next year, arenʼt you?! All really interesting, but there are really only two options why the earliest of our sources wouldnʼt have included a birth narrative: they either didnʼt know about them, or they knew about them and chose not to include them. If they didnʼt know about them... well, I guess itʼs theoretically possible that they may not have heard them which frankly seems a little bit hard to believe, or, as some suggest, the birth narratives werenʼt come up with until later... within this new and developing Christian tradition... perhaps to justify the greatness of who Jesus grew up to be. In ancient literature, heros were often indicated as such at birth in some kind of miracle by some kind of sign. Maybe Jesus was retrofit with an appropriate beginning. Itʼs easy to get caught up in something that doesnʼt really matter. Because whether there were no birth stories circulating when Mark wrote, or whether he made the choice not to include an existing birth narrative, the clear, explicit, unambiguous lesson Mark offers us this Advent season is you ready? itʼs really quite simple that you can tell the Jesus story without including a birth narrative, and thus, conversely, if you think about it, that you can also tell a birth narrative that never touches on the fullness of the Jesus story, and so it is that a gospel writer might conclude that a birth narrative is potentially far too dangerous a story to include in a gospel. Dangerous? you might howl... you know, if we werenʼt in worship. Dangerous? Yes, dangerous. Itʼs so very easy to underestimate the danger inherent to precisely the beauty and the sentimentality of such beloved stories. Let me refer you, with deep and profound apologies, to a scene from the movie Talladega Nights. I am not recommending this movie; I have not seen it. Just one scene courtesy of youtube and the recommendation of a friend (that one scene being enough, in fact, for me to not recommend this movie to you). The movieʼs about (Iʼve gathered) a race car driver, Ricky Bobby, and thereʼs this one scene where heʼs at the dinner table with his family and says grace. Dear tiny, infant Jesus, Ricky Bobby prays. Look sweetie, his wife interrupts. Jesus did grow up. You donʼt always have to call him baby. Itʼs a bit odd and off putting to pray to a baby. Look, retorts Ricky Bobby, I like the Christmas Jesus best, and Iʼm saying grace. When you say grace, you can say it to Grownup Jesus, or to Teenaged Jesus, or Bearded Jesus, or to whoever you want to (Adam McKay, director, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (Columbia Pictures, 2006)). You really think Ricky Bobbyʼs that uncommon? Would that he were! You donʼt think there

5 are any number of people who prefer baby Jesus to Jesus the man? Prefer the nice stories about the baby and the birth as opposed to what that baby full-grown will say and teach and do and expect? Want to pick the Jesus of the story that makes them most comfortable... pick the story of Jesus they like best instead of risking being picked by the Jesus of the stories all the stories particularly when it comes to Markʼs stories. Isnʼt that what we do? Markʼs gospel, after all, rushes to the cross. One significant commentary calls the whole gospel Markʼs apology for the cross. Thatʼs what everything leads to. There we find the crux(!) of the gospel. Markʼs Jesus lives in some sense, Markʼs Jesus is driven from beginning to end driven by God by his sense of God and self into a way of life a way of living that confronts and challenges the world. Markʼs Jesus lives a discipline and a commitment that sees him down the long road up to Jerusalem, into Jerusalem to a cross outside Jerusalem and to the final terrifyingly unexpected vindication of God. Thereʼs no time for a baby no place for a baby. Thereʼs no need for a baby no need for cute and sentimental no need, at the beginning, for some divine justification of this baby born. Mark doesnʼt want and Mark doesnʼt include anything non-essential anything peripheral anything distracting. Markʼs Jesus has all he needs and is all we need. Some of you may know it as Schubertʼs Eighth Symphony. More of you may recognize it when we play an excerpt. Some of you will know it as Schubertʼs Unfinished Symphony. Itʼs known as the Unfinished Symphony because it has but two of the expected four movements of a symphony. While some will say thatʼs all Schubert intended, itʼs nonetheless known as the Unfinished Symphony. I remember as a child being intrigued struck by this piece of music absolutely fascinated with the idea that something could be incomplete... it could be unfinished, and yet, nonetheless, be so familiar, so beloved, so popular. Hereʼs Markʼs gospel message: the gospel remains complete finished if you donʼt include the traditional Christmas stories of the birth of Jesus. But if all you tell are those wonderful stories or if you get stuck in those marvelous (familiar, beloved, popular) tales, then the gospel will necessarily remain incomplete unfinished. The Christmas story is not the Jesus story. Itʼs unnecessary to the Jesus story. Itʼs potentially dangerous to the Jesus story. It might lead someone to think they can pick which Jesus to believe in to pray to. And so Mark, amazingly this Advent/Christmas time, disconcertingly, discombobulatingly, demands that our question not be why he does not include a birth narrative, but why anyone would! So this first week of Advent, go home from worship and take with you no Christmas story no birth story anyway, no Advent story, but do take home the gospel hope. Tell yourself this first week of Advent, that Christmas is God-with-us as God-is-that-God-is... and always has been... and always will be. Tell yourself the best gift is the one you realize has always been there one you can trust to always be there. And tell someone, Isnʼt it interesting that the best Christmas story isnʼt even a Christmas story? And when they ask you Why? say, Well, itʼs like this, when my daughter was born... unless you have a son, then you say,

6 Well, itʼs like this, when my son was born... unless you donʼt have kids, then you say, Well, as my pastor said, ʻwhen my daughter was born, it was an amazing day. But it was an amazing day that kept getting better and better, richer and richer, more and more wonderful. Until...ʼ Until what? theyʼll ask, and you could leave it at that. Or you could go on, but if you do, if you were to go on, you would have to let your eyes get brighter. Youʼd have to make sure there was real enthusiasm in your voice. Youʼd have to be a good witness. Until not the day God is born in her, but the day God grows up in her, driving her to a way of being such that to look at her is to see God living urgently and passionately is to see an answer to prayer is to see hope fulfilled is to see that she is herself Christmas Emmanuel God-with-us, and that as hard and difficult as life will be as challenging and terrible as life can be, thereʼs not anything in this world that can undo that. She is Christmas... thereʼs nothing that can undo that... absolutely nothing at all.ʼ That thatʼs something worth waiting for, donʼt you think? Something worth anticipating. Happy first Sunday of Advent from the story, absolutely finished and complete, without the story deemed not worth telling.