Of the traditional events leading up to Christmas, the service of Nine Lessons and Carols has been a quiet favourite of mine. We get to be Christians in this time; there’s no Santa and no snow, but instead the focus is entirely upon scripture in both testaments, and upon songs of worship and adoration of our newborn and forever King. I’m no Scrooge or Grinch, I get the excitement of the snow and the Father Christmas stuff too: I have spent Christmases in England where that sort of input makes a lot more sense in the last week of a wintery December than it does in the parts of Australia where I have also spent this week, but even in the bleak midwinter my favourite part of Advent was the candle-lit cold of the Abbey or Parish Church, and the songs and stories of the saviour.
Just like the nine lessons (and tonight we also had eleven carols) the story of Christmas as told in the scriptures is assembled from multiple sources. The gospel according to Mark, which was the first of the four to be written down, makes no mention of the birth of Jesus. It is assumed that Jesus was born; after all the Son of Man appears beside the Jordan to be baptised by John the Baptiser, and adult men usually come from boy babies, but Mark doesn’t tell us that story. In none of his genuine letters, all of which were the first parts of the Christian Tradition to be written down, does Paul make mention of the birth of Jesus. Neither does he ascribe any particular significance to it: no direct descent from David, no virgin conception, no Bethlehem. The gospels according to each of Matthew and Luke make use of Mark, and of another source document which scholars refer to as “Q”, but “Q” doesn’t say anything about the boy or baby Jesus either, it’s a collection of quotes and teaching material. The story we read in John, the last of the four gospels to be written down and which you have just heard read by Jack, is about light and presence, but again there’s no baby.
So, even in the Biblical record, we are left with Matthew and Luke, and their two stories are very different. Matthew has Jesus born at home in Bethlehem, visited sometime later by Magi, and then fleeing first to Egypt and then to Nazareth as a refugee hiding from a murderous royal dynasty. Luke has Jesus born away from home at Bethlehem, his parents first travelling south from Nazareth for a census, and Jesus is born in a cave where he is visited almost immediately by shepherds, before quietly going back to Nazareth when the census is completed and Mary is strong enough to travel once more.
The nativity scenes you will see in paintings or sculpture, with kings and shepherds together huddled around a wooden stable, are inaccurate as far as the history of the event is concerned, but the story these pictures tell is true. The story is true, even if it is inaccurate, because along with the light and dark metaphors of John the story is told about the truth. The truth is that God is with us, Emmanuel, and we will never be alone in the world or alone in our experience because the Creator has been here. The LORD Godself has been here, not just walking in the cool of the evening with Adam and Eve in the garden; but crying in a crib, walking a dusty road, sleeping in a wind-tossed boat, hanging on a rough cross, and walking out of a cold tomb.
Only in the knowledge of that does our carolling makes sense. O come, o come Emmanel, and good Christians all rejoice as you listen in while the heavens ring with the song of the heralding angels “glory to the King of Kings”. The Christ has come, The Spirit remains; God is with us. Amen.
damienwrites 