In this episode I interpret the biblical Christmas stories in a nondual manner.
In this episode I interpret the biblical Christmas stories in a nondual manner.
It is the holiday season and Christians are gearing up to celebrate the birth of Jesus. Even people of other faiths or no faith who do not celebrate the holiday are regularly exposed to reminders of the Bible story in Christmas carols, Christmas cards, outdoor nativity scenes, and television Christmas specials. Those of us who attend church can expect the advent worship services to be filled with references to the birth of Christ, including sermons on the biblical birth narratives.
Most Christian preachers approach the stories in a traditional way. With maybe a few tweaks here and there, most preachers treat the stories as if they are historical fact. They see no reason to upset the regular attenders or even the Christmas and Easter attenders with the scholarly findings of historical criticism. Furthermore preachers tend to interpret the stories from a traditionally Western – meaning a very dualistic – point of view: heaven and earth, saved and lost, God and men. In this episode today I am going to come at the stories differently. I will interpret the biblical Christmas stories in a nondual manner.
The first thing is that it is important to interpret the Christmas stories symbolically rather than literally. The consensus of biblical scholars – at least non-fundamentalist ones – is that the biblical Christmas nativity narratives are not historical fact. They are Christian tradition that was formed decades after the lifetime of Jesus. The earliest gospel – the Gospel of Mark has no birth stories. Likewise the only gospel that has ties to one of the original disciples of Jesus – the Gospel of John – likewise has no birth narrative.
If you try to take them historically you immediately run into problems. For example the two birth stories – one in Matthew and one in Luke – do not even agree on when Jesus was born. Matthew says that Jesus was born during the lifetime of Herod the Great, who died in 4 BC. The Gospel of Luke places it during the census that took place when Quirinius was governor of Syria. Quirinius became governor of Syria in 6 AD, which was also the year of the Roman census. That is at least ten years after Matthew’s date.
They can’t both be right. Fundamentalists will perform all sort of hermeneutical gymnastics trying to make the two accounts agree, but it is like trying to put a square peg in a round hole. Furthermore there are other problems. The Gospel of Luke says that everyone in the Roman Empire had to go back to their ancestral home for the census, which for Joseph was Bethlehem. But we know that the Romans never required that. Can you logistical nightmare that would be if everyone in the Roman Empire had to return to their ancestral home for the census? And what would be the purpose of it? This never happened.
The census in Luke’s Christmas story was a literary device used to get the pregnant Mary to Bethlehem so that Jesus could be born in the City of David, thereby making him eligible to be the Jewish Messiah. So the story has a theological purpose. It is not based on history but theology. The Christmas stories are to be interpreted theologically, bot historically. As a friend used to say, literarily not literally. Every biblical scholar knows that the Christmas stories are myths created by the church long after the lifetime of Jesus by people who did not know Jesus. They are to be interpreted mythically.
Let’s look at these myths. One is the Virgin Birth, which is included in both Matthew and Luke’s gospel. Literalists take this literally and assume it was unique. They forget that miraculous births, including virgin births, were a dime a dozen in the ancient world. The Virgin birth is not unique to the story of Jesus. Alexander the Great was born of a virgin. Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome were born of a virgin. Plato’s mother was a virgin. Julius Caesar was said to be born of a virgin. These birth were accompanied by miraculous signs and were prophesied. Caesar Augustus had heavenly signs accompany his birth.
It was not unusual to claim that an important person was virgin born. The question is not: Did it happen? The question is: What did it mean in that time and place? What did it mean to claim that Jesus was born of a virgin? The answer is that such a person was born of God or the gods and therefore divine. In other words that person was of divine origin. The ancient world was filled with God-kings. Last Sunday was Christ the King Sunday in church. Christians call Jesus God and King, King of Kings and Lord of lords. But Caesar Augustus was also a god-king. Egyptian pharaohs were god kings. Japanese emperors were God kings right up to the 20th century. Jesus was considered such a divine ruler by the early Christians.
So what is the spiritual meaning for us? The meaning is that this is true for all of us. Not that we are virgin born literally, but that we are of divine origin. The genealogy of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke traces his ancestry back to Adam who is called the Son of God. This means that we are all descended from Adam according to biblical genealogies. Divine kings claimed they were descended from a God. According to the Bible we are all descended from God. The virgin birth teaches the divine ancestry that all humans share with Jesus. We are sons and daughters of God.
This is echoed in the central teaching of the Christmas stories, which is Incarnation. This is what the Gospel of John teaches in its prologue, which takes the place of the Christmas stories in that gospel. Jesus is called the Logos, the Word, and it says that the Word was made flesh in Jesus. It goes on to say that all of creation was made by the Word and through the Word. We are all expressions of the Divine Word of God. That is what Incarnation means. It is not just about one special human being named Jesus. When we are in Christ and Christ in us experientially, then we are all that one Divine Word, that Logos, enfleshed in various human forms. And in all forms. Everything is the Word of God. All is one.
The Star of Bethlehem points to that truth as well. In the Christmas story the Star signifies the birth of one baby born in a stable. But the Star of Bethlehem signifies every child. Our first grandchild died at birth. Full term and she would have been healthy but died of placental abruption shortly before birth. To honor her I had a star named after her. I gave my son and his wife a certificate that identified the star in the heavens with a star map. I also purchased a silver star as a Christmas ornament with her name on it to go on the tree. I know it is just a sales gimmick. No one can own, buy or sell stars. But I loved the symbolism. I love the thought that not only was the Star of Bethlehem Jesus’ natal star, but a star shines for every child born – or almost born.
All the other stories about the Christ child apply to every child. Jesus being born in an animal stall points to those children born in poverty. Jesus is described as a refugee when his family had to flee a violent dictator in this homeland and take refuge in another country. Every refugee child is the Christ child. As we have done to them, we do to him.
The Christmas story says were killed by Herod in Bethlehem while trying to kill the Christ child. It is called the Slaughter of the Innocents. That story is about the death of all children in violent lands. This Christmas I can’t help but think of the deaths of children in Israel and Gaza. Regardless of where one stands on this war, there are a lot of dead children in the Holy land this Christmas. As we celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace, we are to remember the sacredness of all human lives. Jewish lives, Muslim lives, Christian lives.
The Quran says, “whoever kills a person … is as if he has killed the whole of humankind, and whoever saves the life of a person is as if he has saved the life of the whole of humankind.” The Talmud says the same thing: “Whoever saves a single life is considered by scripture to have saved the whole world.” Sounds like common ground between Jew and Muslim to me.
I read the Christmas stories about shepherds worshipping the Christ child, and I think of the outcasts of society. Shepherds were excluded from temple worship but they were welcome at the crib of Christ. I think of all those people excluded from churches because they are seen as outsiders by Christians. I am thinking especially of LGBTQ people. They are welcomed by the Christ child. When I hear about the magi – religious leaders of another faith who came to worship his Jewish child – I think of how God guides and inspires people of all religions, not just my own. The Christmas narrative speak of this underlying unity of all faiths.
This Unicity is what I celebrate at Christmas. The Divine Word has become flesh in Jesus, the Son of God, and in every human being. To realize who we really are as children of God – and to realize that we are all one - is the goal of the spiritual life. When the Christmas story is well-interpreted it points us in this direction in order that we might see this reality for ourselves. That is the nondual message of Christmas.