"JUSTICE AND LOVE IN THE CHRISTMAS STORY"

‘JUSTICE AND LOVE IN THE CHRISTMAS STORY”

            The Gospels have three versions of the Christmas stories.  Mark, the earliest written Gospel, doesn’t seem to consider the birth story important, so he (or she) doesn’t mention it.  Matthew and Luke have the traditional ones that we know, the ones that get blended together in the Christmas narrative.   John’s Gospel flies off into high and powerful theological atmosphere in his version of the birth story:  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God…..and the Word became flesh and moved to our neighborhood” (to paraphrase Eugene Petersen’s and Fred Rogers’ translations).

            Matthew and Luke want to hunker down more in the muck of human life, rather than stay up in the rareified theological atmosphere of John.  Matthew begins his birth story in Chapter 1 with a genealogy of Joseph and Jesus, and as I mentioned a few weeks ago, Matthew makes a huge break with tradition and includes women in his genealogy – and, oh, the women whom he names:  Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, the wife of Uriah (Bathsheba), and Mary.   All five of these women are at the margins, and I’ll address that more next week when we take up Mary’s story.

            Luke begins his version not with the birth of Jesus but with the birth of John the Baptizer.   John the Baptizer is born to a couple who are older, and who have no children.  As usual in the patriarchal style of the Bible, the woman named Elizabeth is blamed for the lack of children – Luke’s story tells us that she is barren.  The father-to-be is a priest named Zechariah.  John’s conception is announced in dramatic fashion.  Zechariah is a priest, and he has a rare opportunity to lead worship in the Temple.  While he is preparing to lead worship, the angel Gabriel appears to him and tells him that he will have a son.  Zechariah indicates that this is not possible, given their biological circumstances.  Gabriel replies by taking Zechariah’s voice away – so much for leading worship!  

            John is later born to Elizabeth and Zechariah, and he grows up to be prophetic ball of fire and preparer of the way of the Lord.  John has his own distinct identity, though, and he challenges the religious powers by inviting people to come to be baptized in the Jordan River, in order to be reconciled to God.  The Temple and synagogues are where such activity usually takes place, so John’s new way is a direct challenge to the religious establishment.  John doesn’t just stick with individual spirituality – he challenges those who would follow his way to seek to do justice.  When they ask John what they can do to be saved, he replies in Luke 3 that they should share their food, share their clothing, and shun corruption. 

            John remained a strong voice for justice.  He later baptizes Jesus, believing that Jesus is the One.   John is later arrested for challenging the authority of the ruler of Judea, and he believes that his arrest will trigger the revolution.  But, nothing seems to be happening.  He sends messengers to Jesus asking him “Are you the One, or should we look for someone else?”  Jesus replies that he is doing what he is supposed to do, and his answer points to the tension between John and Jesus.  It is a tension that is often posed as the tension between justice and love.  John burns for justice;  Jesus burns for love.  While this is a bit simplistic, it does capture the ongoing tensions between love and justice.  Can  love be genuine without  justice?  That is a tension that exists between John and Jesus and a tension that flows throughout human history.  As Christians, especially in the Christmas season, we often tend to move towards a sentimentalized version of love, a love without consequences or challenges to our views of the world.   John the Baptizer challenges that view, reminding us that justice is what love looks like in public, as Cornel West once put it.

            The tensions between John and Jesus often remind me of the tensions between Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X.  As James Cone put it so well in his fine book on them (“Martin and Malcolm and America’), King started with love and moved towards an emphasis on justice, while Malcolm started with justice and moved towards love.  Whatever their differences, they were both assassinated because they were black men standing up for love and justice.  And, whatever the differences between John and Jesus, they were both executed by the state for their emphasis on love and justice.  In our individualistic culture, we much prefer a softer version of love that has no reference to justice, and that tendency comes out no more clearly than in the Christmas season.  Here’s one of Howard Thurman’s poems on that, entitled “Christmas Is Waiting to Be Born:”

When refugees seek deliverance that never comes,

And the heart consumes itself, if it would live,

Where little children age before their time,

And life wears down the edges of the mind,

Where the old man sits with mind grown cold,

While bones and sinew, blood and cell, go slowly down to death,

Where fear companions each day’s life,

And Perfect Love seems long delayed,

CHRISTMAS IS WAITING TO BE BORN:

In you, in me, in all [mankind}.