| What does Christmas mean?
Fr Chris Thomas a member of the Emmaus Family of Prayer helps to draw out the meaning of the infancy naratives in the gospels
|
|
In a very real sense that captures the truth of the momentous event of the birth of the Lord. The only truth that we need to know is that God has entered into human history and transformed it. The world will never be the same again because of this moment. God is present in a tangible way in the person of Jesus. The God of the impossible is with us. Sadly our pretty cribs and our insistence that we jumble together the stories that Matthew and Luke tell us distort that truth. It’s as though we think that the evangelists were trying to write historical accounts of the birth of Jesus and somehow got it a little bit wrong. They missed out important points. For example Luke doesn’t tell us anything about wise men whereas Matthew does. Matthew doesn’t tell us anything about the annunciation whereas Luke does. Our western mentality invites us to put together all of the stories told so that we’ll get the whole picture of what really happened. That’s a false understanding of what the Scriptures are about. The evangelists aren’t giving us biographies of Jesus. They aren’t trying to tell us what happened. In fact they were doing something very different and something far more wonderful. All the Gospels were written to tell us meaning rather than fact. The authors want the real transforming meaning to shine through the details they give us because it’s meaning that changes people’s hearts and minds. It’s meaning that revolutionises our thought patterns and battles against our hard ingrained attitudes. The Gospels go beyond what is written and what can be proved factually and point the reader to a new understanding of life and meaning as we open up to the transforming presence of Jesus who is with us. If this Christmas we read the ageold stories of the birth of Jesus with an open heart and mind and allow meaning rather than fact touch us we’ll know the truth that the word © Carlos Reyes Manzo/Andes Press has become flesh and does live among us. That’s the more wonderful thing that Matthew and Luke want to do and that’s the only reality that matters to the person of faith. So if Matthew and Luke weren’t worried about the details of the birth of Jesus what were they trying to do? They were inviting the reader to respond to the person of Jesus, the Jesus that they and their communities had experienced. Luke invites us to be like Mary who is the predominant figure in his narrative. Mary, who was willing to trust in the presence of God and respond to the invitation she was given to walk the journey of faith not knowing or understanding but trusting. She stands as a symbol for all of us who would journey in faith, a symbol of humanity that says yes to God. Luke shows us shepherds, the lowest of the low, who were willing to proclaim the good news, a reminder that God can use any of us to proclaim his presence in the world. They remind us too that it’s the message that’s important, not the messenger. How often do we look at the messenger rather than the message? The word Bethlehem means ‘house of bread’. Luke is inviting us to recognise that Jesus will become the bread of life for us. He will be our nourishing food. When the child was born Mary swaddles her son. The swaddling cloths were baby wraps. She then puts him in a manger again symbolic because a manger was the animal’s food box. The whole episode identifies Jesus very strongly with the poor, a theme that Luke stresses over and over in his Gospel. Matthew shows us Joseph the faithful one, again willing to trust and to respond. After his dream when the angel appears to him Joseph simply says ‘yes.’ Matthew also tells us the story of the wise men who come and bow down before the Christ bearing three symbolic gifts: Gold for a King, frankincense for a priest, myrrh for the anointing of a dead body. These intellectuals from afar prostrate themselves before the Christ. In a sense they represent us, the Gentiles. We, exotic peoples from afar, educated, have come to believe in this little Jewish Messiah. Then we have the massacre of the innocents. There are strong Old Testament images here as elsewhere, the massacre of all the elder sons when Pharaoh let the people out of Egypt. Jesus is the new Moses, leading the people out of slavery to freedom. Matthew’s version of the infancy narratives shows us the whole of his gospel in miniature. We see Jesus being Israel, personifying the new Moses, the son of David, and the new people led into exile and led out of exile. Each of them in their own way is trying to tell their communities, and those that would follow down the generations, who Jesus is and how we are to respond. They adapt what little material they have to proclaim the truth of Jesus who is Son of God. The birth of this child brought new life to the world. As we listen to the stories this Christmas may our hearts burn within us and may the meaning of his birth touch us at deep levels transforming our very existence and bringing us new life.
|
I
once heard the story of a Parish Priest who said that he would love
to remove the crib from the Church at Christmas. He said that he would
like to place a bible in front of the altar with the figure of the
infant Jesus and under it inscribe the text ‘and the word became
flesh’ from John’s Gospel. 
