Matthew 1:18-25 and Luke 2:1-20
The Same Old Story
Visualize a variety of nativity scenes. Do you have a crèche scene at your home? Visualize it. Have you witnessed a live nativity crèche scene or been part of one at one time or another? Visualize it and remember the weather conditions outside or inside.
I read a story about a minister who tried some off-the-wall things at times and once tried an interesting approach at a Christmas Eve service. He stood up to read the traditional lesson from Luke and picked up the large Bible from the communion table and noticed a smattering of people in the congregation dutifully opening their Bibles. Then he slammed the big Bible back on the communion table and said, “Okay, I’d like you all to say this story along with me.” And amazingly, it worked. With one voice the whole congregation began to say: “And in those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed…” and they made it all the way up to “… and it was just as the angels had told them.” It was not quite letter perfect. A few voices dropped out along the way. While most people knew some variant of the King James Version of their childhood, a few younger folk were more familiar with new translations and looked a bit askance at their neighbors. But for the most part, everyone knew the story, and could recite it along with one another.
We know this story, perhaps like none other. Sometimes we know it so well, in fact, that we get irate if someone tampers with what we consider to be the real story, or with cherished Christian traditions!
From another preacher who wrote and told the following story: “I did once actually have a parishioner tell me – I swear, this is true – that the reason we had to stand outside in the freezing cold singing ‘Silent Night’ holding candles was because the shepherds carried candles when thy visited the manger. ‘It says so in the Bible,’ I was told. I wanted to ask this same parishioner, if the Bible told us how many verses of ‘Silent Night’ the shepherds sang, but I feared she would not think I was kidding.”
Don’t even try to change the words of Christmas carols. It is said that when one denomination produced a hymnal with somewhat altered lyrics a decade ago that one of their pastors could have sworn that he heard church roofs caving in all over the place. And yet, if one looks at half a dozen hymnals or collections of Christmas carols, one will notice that there are all sorts of variants in tunes and lyrics. Each person, each community, each tradition has their “correct” way of telling the story. Here is an example of how the Canadian American Indians tell the story:
Huron Carol
Words: Canadian Indian - Music: Canadian Indian
1. ’Twas in the moon of wintertime
When all the birds had fled
That mighty Gitchi Manitou
Sent angel choirs instead.
Before their light the stars grew dim.
And wond’ring hunters heard the hymn:
Refrain:
“Jesus, your King, is born.
Jesus is born.
In excelsis Gloria!”
2. Within a lodge of broken bark
The tender Babe was found,
A ragged robe of rabbit skin
Enwrapped His beauty ‘round;
And as the hunter braves drew nigh
The angel song rang loud and high: Refrain
3. The earliest moon of wintertime
Is not so round and fair
As was the ring of glory on
The helpless Infant there.
The chiefs from far before Him knelt
With gifts of fox and beaver pelt. Refrain
4. O children of the forest free,
O sons of Manitou,
The Holy Child of earth and heav’n
Is born today for you.
Come kneel before the radiant Boy
Who brings you beauty, peace, and joy. Refrain
The tune of this carol is French, as adapted by a Jesuit missionary, possibly Jean de Brebeuf, who worked among the Huron Indians in Canada in the seventeenth century. He supposedly set the text, retelling the Christmas story in the Huron language, although some scholars believe that the text may have originated with the Indians themselves, for the symbolism is that of Indian lore. (“Gitchi Manitou” is the Great Spirit of the Hurons.) In any case, this is one of the very first and still one of the few carols to have originated in North America. Copyright 1976 by Peter Duchin
Over the centuries other artists, poets, lyricists, and translators have provided wonderful interpretations of this magnificent story, influencing our imagination well beyond the original story. Italian renaissance painters have convinced us that Mary wore blue, for example.
We all tend to assume, with some probability, that Mary and Joseph must have had a donkey to accompany them on the journey, and there quite possibly was a cow or two in the stable. But some things that we add have no basis in history.
There is no innkeeper in the biblical story. The 17th century translators of the King James Version threw us all off track with the use of the word “inn,” but the real reference is to people’s living quarters. In Luke 22:11, Luke writes, “and say to the owner of the house, ‘the teacher asks you, “Where is the guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples”’” (NRVS). The word translated “guest room” is the same as the word translated “inn.” Probably Joseph and Mary would have been looking for lodging with extended family. In any event, they were not turning up at the doorstep of a series of local motels and hotels, which they did not have in those days anyway as far as we know. They were asking for a place to stay in someone’s home and, upon finding none there, are offered lodging in the place where the animals are kept. Not unheard of – it is like putting someone up in the rather unattractive spare room in the attic when you would really like to put them in the guest room, but you have already promised that room to Aunt Mildred.
There probably were other people present in the stable. News travels fast in a tiny village full of people on the move. Do you really think the arrival of a woman about to give birth would have gone unnoticed? People always notice pregnant women! Undoubtedly a kindly midwife, or at least a woman who had had a child or two, would have been found to help Mary through the ordeal of giving birth that night.
We note that in Luke’s account there are not mysterious visitors with strange gifts. Matthew gives us the story of the wise travelers bringing gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And, despite our very popular Christmas carol, a variety of legends, and countless paintings and greeting cards, we have no idea how many “astrologers,” Greek “magi,” there actually were, or their gender. We do not even know if they rode camels or not, and they probably were not kings.
For now, we focus on this story: The story of a baby in a manger in a stable, in a little, backwater town in a small corner of a forgotten land.
Because, you see, when all of the details have been analyzed and argued over, or even forgotten, it is the truth of the story that matters.
Not the wise men’s names. Not Mary’s status, however that might get defined. Not who might have ridden on a donkey or a camel.
It really doesn’t matter, in the final analysis, how any of it happened. Luke gives us one story. Matthew another. Mark does not mention it at all.
What matters is that it did happen. We know that, in one way or another, somehow. The truth of the story outshines any star, then or since.
Because, really, this whole story is just a longhand version of something that the Gospel of John tells us in a simple way, another story that millions can recite easily too:
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:16-17 NRSV).
That’s what this story is about.
That’s all!
PRAYER: O holy Child of Bethlehem, be born in us, we pray. Enter our world anew, and enter our lives anew. Quiet the rush of the world around us, and find room within us for rebirth and renewal. Create a place in our hearts for new life to dwell, for hope to grow, for justice to be birthed. Empower us to be those who birth the Christ child in our world, transforming it moment by moment into a dwelling place of the divine, we pray in your Name. Amen.
