On Rewriting the Christmas Story!
Isaiah: 7 10-16, Matthew: 1 18-25
Dear friends!
I
want to speak to you today about how best we can rewrite the Christmas story. Perhaps
if it is written well we may like to read and reread it again and again. A little
boy came home after the Sunday school, having learnt the story of the crossing
of the red sea from the bible. ”What did you learn today in the Sunday school? The
mother asked the son. “The Israelites got
out of Egypt” the young man said, “the Pharaoh and the Army chased after them, so
they got into the red sea. They couldn’t cross it. The Egyptian army was
getting closer. So Moses got on to his walki talki and the Israeli air force
bombed the Egyptians. The Israeli Navy built a pontoon bridge so that people
could cross”. ”Is this the way they taught you this story” the mother asked the
son? ”No “the boy admitted, “but if I tell you the way they taught me in
the class you will never believe it”.
A story today has to be true to its historic
setting and at the same time capture the intellectual minds of the 21 st
century. For the biblical story writer Matthew;
the readers perhaps were mostly Jewish. He refers to the wise men from
the East or the Magi coming to Bethlehem guided by the star and offering to the
baby the most valuable gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. He mentions in
his story the evil deed of the crooked king Herod who killed all the children
under age two to include the baby Jesus also. The Luke’s readers were gentiles
and they were people lived in the margins. In his story he befriends the smelly
shepherds and gets angels to sing songs for them. ”Glory to God in the highest,
peace on earth and goodwill among humankind”. What puzzles me about these story
writers is Mark and John does not give us any yuletide thriller or an exciting
Christmas episode. His story is in the earliest recorded document written in
the year of 70 C.E. But ten years prior to this date, St. Paul had written the
letters of I st and 2nd Corinthians, a letter to the church in Philippi
and a few other epistles. Paul was a
contemporary of Jesus however to my big surprise weather Paul or either Mark or
John have not written any sensational account of Mary and Joseph, the wise men
and the shepherds, King Herod, Cesar Augustus, the angels, the manager and the
Bethlehem Inn. What was Paul’s Christmas message? He simply said in a finger
snap God was in Christ.
It was Christmas Eve and this family was
frantic and they were moving things around the home in hectic pace for they
have invited a family for Christmas dinner. Gifts had to be wrapped and the
table had to be set and the youngest child of age 3 was in the way of the
father and the mother and finally in exasperation she was put to bed for her afternoon
nap. And the child was concerned about the confusion in that house that
afternoon and as she muttered her Lord’s Prayer, she said---Our Father and
continued her prayer and said “give us this day our daily bread and forgive us
our Christmases as we forgive those who Christmas against us”. Have we made a
mess of our Christmas stories, Christmas messages, Christmas gestures and
Christmas celebrations?
For
ten years around this time of the year I had a speaking engagement in Staten
Island New York. I had to share the Christmas message with about three hundred
people who were not Christians. It was during these speaking engagements I
learnt that Christmas cannot be an exclusive Christian celebration but rather a
festival of the entire human race. So on one occasion after the infamous world
trade center bombing of Sept 9th of 2001, I spoke at the cultural celebration
and also remembered a few who died in Manhattan that year. The next day someone
took me to ground zero and I witnessed there piles of rubbles and twisted steel
hanging. People were still looking for their loved ones gazing at the sky
wiping their tears with their handkerchiefs. I witnessed the indescribable destruction
to humanity at its worst. Then from there my friend drove me to the Rockefeller
center and we watched the largest Christmas tree in New York, beautifully
decorated with all kinds of ornaments. There was music: “Silent Night Holy Night,
All is calm and all is bright” .Having seen in one day both the human atrocity
and the killing about three thousand people at the world trade center and the
beauty of the decorated Christmas tree, I felt Christmas was an oxymoron. What
is an oxymoron? It is a unique combination of terms, which makes sense and
non-sense at the same time. And that to me is another facet of the Christmas
story. How do we sing silent night in America today when people are busy with
sending text messages, writing their e-mails, watching the 17 channels on the
TV all at the same time and listening to cell phones? Perhaps we must learn to
sing silent night in the midst of all noises of typhoons and air strikes and all
other distractions?
When I
first came to this country 34 years ago to study at the Divinity school in Rochester,
I was home sick for my family was not with me and on top of it, it was a
challenge to get used to the American meals. We lived in a home next to the sea
beach in Sri Lanka and every day we used to go to the beach and bought the
fresh fish needed for the day. I missed those tropical fish dinners back at
home. So one day my friends from the seminary took me out for a dinner and I
was thrilled especially when I read in the menu something called CATCH OF THE
DAY. When I asked the waitress to tell me more about it she said it is not
really fresh, however it was freshly frozen and said “we had it in the freezer
for a month or so”. Freshly frozen is
an oxymoron. How about long shorts, jumbo shrimp? She is pretty ugly. And I
think George Bush talked a lot about a holy war. Christmas is an oxymoron; the lamb and the lion, the
baby was poor yet rich, the human and the divine, a peasant and a king. In both the texts this morning of Isaiah as
well as Matthew, one Hebrew word stands out. And the word is a Hebrew name
called “Emmanuel” which means “God is with us”. I don’t see too many people
here with the name Emmanuel. My message to you today is to invite you to take
home the name Emmanuel. Christmas is not about religion or as a matter of fact
not about any particular religion. It is about the goodness of God and of the
sacredness of all people. God is with us in our good times and bad times, in days
of sun shine as well in times of shadows. God is inspiring our blessings and eternalizing
our loves. God is scattering our hatreds and reconciling our lives. God is embellishing
our laughter, bearing our pain and crying our tears. God is gracing all our
acts of service. Amen.
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