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First Sunday After Christmas:
Heirs and Children of God
Isaiah 63:7-9; Psalm 148; Matthew 2:13-23; Galatians 4:4-7;
Philippians 2:5-11
The Lectionary actually suggests Hebrews 2:10-18 for this first Sunday after Christmas, but there are also two sets of readings for January 1. The choice depends on whether the church community wants to celebrate January 1 as honoring Mary, the Mother of God, or to observe New Year’s Day. The choice for me depends on whether the readings seem to give us a coherent message, and – for me – whether that coherent message speaks to the realities of post-modern life in the 21st Century. So I reject the reading from the letter to the Hebrews – which is attributed to Paul but not actually written by him – in favor of the passages from Galatians and Philippians, which are the authentic writings of Paul himself. The Galatians passage also appears in Romans 8:14-17, so we have a triple dose of Paul.
Matthew’s story about the escape to Egypt, the massacre of the infants, and the return to Nazareth is wonderful and familiar. None of this is historical fact, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Story-tellers know that all stories are true, but the truth of a story is different from the truth of day-to-day happenings. A criminal investigation establishes precisely what happened, when, and where, but – as we all know – why something happened is never answered. On the other hand, a story or novel that simply records the mundane goings on of daily life is not only boring, it is meaningless – and there is the clue to how it is that all stories are true. They are true because they illustrate the meaning that lies beneath ordinary existence. So when Matthew tells his story about dramatic events that surrounded the birth and the early infancy of Jesus, he is not recording facts. No one knows exactly when or even precisely where Jesus was born. But that doesn’t matter, because what Matthew – and Luke – were doing was showing the people in the first Christian communities what the birth of this Jesus meant. Matthew shows how Jesus was the fulfillment of the prophecy – the promise to the people of Israel – that God would act in the world to restore God’s realm of distributive justice-compassion.
Jesus was born during the Roman occupation of Palestine, under the rule of Cesar Augustus, somewhere between the years of 4 BCE and 4 CE. It was a time of repression, oppression, extreme poverty, and constant rebellion against Roman rule. The Jewish people had a long history of wars and occupations. Nevertheless, they believed that God is just, and the world belongs to God. So whenever they experienced injustice and political turmoil, they knew that God would act to restore God’s justice to the world. Otherwise, God would not be God. Matthew’s story shows that Jesus is the one sent by God to set things right. God has acted, through the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
In Paul’s letters to the non-Jewish, Christian communities he founded outside Jerusalem, all around the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, he says that God continues to act in the world when we use Jesus’s example as a pattern for justice-compassion in our own lives. This makes us adopted by God as brothers and sisters of Jesus, and heirs to the kingdom of God.
The problem lies in what it all means.
Paul’s words have traditionally been interpreted to mean the supremacy, the hegemony, the over-lordship, the exclusivity of Jesus’s message: “God . . . gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
These words have been used to justify the eradication of entire civilizations from the Asian Pacific Islands to North, Central, and South America. These words were behind the Crusades of the 14th Century, the heresy trials of the Inquisition, and today these words are the grounding for fundamentalist Christian Zionism, which informs the foreign policy of the current occupant of the White House. In the words of Jesus Seminar Scholar, Robert Funk, the Spanish invaders came with a Bible in one hand and a gun in the other. “Convert or else!”
But that is not what Paul meant. Before he gets to that ecstatic declaration of who Jesus is – the counter to Empire in every time and place – Paul uses the most humiliating imagery he can think of to hammer away at the point that being a Christian does not mean we are lords and masters of all we can conquer in Jesus’s name. Instead, Paul says, we are slaves.
Slavery – human trafficking – possibly the worst crime against Divinity that humanity can devise – is the metaphor Paul uses to describe the powerlessness of true Christians who follow Jesus’s Way. This is not an easy path to follow. It means giving up power as power is usually perceived: so forget about taking over the local neighborhood association so you can keep the immigrants out; forget about representing the richest corporation on the Planet so you can have all the things that money can buy; forget about running for President of the United States.
Slaves cannot do any of those things.
Power as it is usually defined by normal civilization is power over everything that is a challenge to human survival: power over the land and its natural resources, so that the harvest will be sufficient, and an economic basis can be assured; power over outsiders – enemies – so that the people can live in security; power over the everyday conduct of life within the civilization so that order can be maintained, and the civilization can grow and prosper.
Because of the inevitable structures that normal civilization creates to sustain itself, people who are not part of the main stream become marginalized – single women with children, and others who do not fit the accepted description of family; people with physical or psychological abnormalities; orphans; people who for whatever reason are unable to participate in the usual ways that make an economic or social contribution. Such people are easy to oppress because they are denied access to the usual political and social and economic power that enables participation and success in normal society: health care, housing, education, nutritious food. This is especially true in societies where the distribution of wealth is confined to those who hold the power over health care, housing, education, nutritious food. Injustice becomes inevitable, as access to the basic necessities of life becomes dependent upon the ability to pay. Add in the normal human proclivity to insist upon payback and retribution instead of fair sharing, and injustice becomes the norm.
Christians believe that Jesus came to overthrow that kind of injustice. But that’s not what Jesus did. Jesus was himself a victim of the injustice of normal civilization. He died at the hands of the oppressors. Thirty years after his death, the Romans sacked Jerusalem. Twenty years after the death of the Apostle Paul, disillusioned Christians began to believe that Jesus will come again to bring a violent end to all injustice, and establish his kingdom once and for all – we just don’t know when that will happen, so we need to be ready. Most Christians today persist in that belief.
What’s going on here? Is the Jesus story true or not?
Look at what Paul is saying in the passages from Philippians: “though he was in the form of God, [Jesus] did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death.” Jesus gave up all the usual forms of power instead of taking advantage of them, or seizing them for himself. Surely he had plenty of opportunity to join the resistance – the Zealots – and others who carried out a constant guerilla war against the Roman occupation. Quite possibly, some of his followers were members of those groups. They are called “Terrorists” today.
But Jesus did not do that. Jesus came up with a very different definition of power. “Look around you at the lillies in the field and the birds in the air,” he said. “God takes care of them, doesn’t he? Why wouldn’t God take care of you?” When Jesus says “God,” he is not talking about the Roman Emperor or those who acted in the name of the Emperor to control the power over the occupied people of Palestine. He is talking about the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who owns the world. By doing that, by letting go of the usual expectations and definitions of power, Jesus became such a threat to the Roman empire that he had to be killed. And what was that threat? It was to say to the Emperor that the Emperor is neither God, nor put into power by God. It was to advise that when the Roman soldier or his representative demanded that you carry his gear for a mile, carry it two miles – thereby forcing the Roman to break his own law.
The threat to empire lies in the subversion of law that happens when people refuse to act in their own self interest. When James Loney and the Christian Peacemaker Teams refused to testify against their Iraqi captors, those people were set free. That flies in the face of everything the United States Government stands for in Iraq. From the point of view of Empire, to refuse to testify lends aid and comfort to the enemy. But Jesus taught that we are to love our enemies. Loving our enemies is probably the most compelling illustration of the willing sacrifice of our own self-interest. When the people love their enemies, what happens to the need for imperial war? Jesus had to die. He was a greater threat to the normal course of civilization than the terrorists making raids on supply caravans making their way through the Judean hills.
This is all very romantic and dramatic. But the truth is, who wants to put their life in danger? Paul is not demanding that I put my life in danger. If we back up to the beginning of Chapter 2 of the Philippians reading, we find the secret: “If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete:” [in other words, Paul is saying “Please! Make my day!”] “be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.”
When we do that, we inherit the legacy that Jesus left us: the Kingdom of God – or in post-modern, non-theistic language, when we abandon self-interest, we step into the parallel universe where distributive justice-compassion rules, because if I do not demand retribution, but insist upon the kind of radical fairness that preserves the well-being of my enemy – if I allow my enemy to win – I give up even the justice that should rightfully be given to me and I subvert the whole system.
Paul spells this out in Romans 8:12-13. Paul’s language is 1st Century language, and it is mystical language, and it is language that has been translated and re-translated, and interpreted through the lenses of people who read Paul’s words and applied them to the developing theology of the organized Church. When Paul says, in verse 13, “if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live” he is not talking about sexual morality and going to hell if you shack up with your boyfriend for the weekend.
He is talking about living according to the normalcy of civilization, which demands retribution and payback, not justice-compassion. If I live in the demand and expectation of retribution and payback, I live in bondage to fear, and I am dead to the possibility of inclusive love. I am always afraid of what somebody is going to do to me in payback for what I did to them first. But, Paul says, in verse 15: “For you did not receive a spirit of slavery [so that you would] fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption.” Again, 1st Century Paul has to use theistic language, God-language, because there is no other way to express the unity of spirit that Paul – and we – can experience in that moment of giving up self-interest. So Paul says, “When we cry, “Abba! Father!’ it is that very spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ – IF, in fact, we suffer with him . . . .”
IF, in fact, we abandon the whole idea of looking out for ourselves first. A radical abandonment of self-interest applies individually, socially, corporately, nationally, internationally. Is this easy? Of course not. Who wants to die? In a custody battle with your hostile spouse, can you really abandon your own self- interest? What about the children’s welfare? Maybe they would be better off with the other parent. If somebody runs a red light and totals your car, do you really want to forego the justifiable financial windfall you will receive if you take that person to court?
What would have happened at the Bali conference if the United States had not tried to insist that developing countries adhere to the same level of reductions in greenhouse gases as the industrialized nations? Suppose the United States had agreed to a real number – as the entire Planet wanted to do? Would that not have empowered all nations to make a difference in the speed at which the climate is changing?
Are these questions naive?
Slaves for Christ are adopted by God – the Great Spirit, the Creative Force for abundant life in the universe – and thereby are empowered to enter into an unbreakable covenant that has nothing to do with any of the things that normal civilization associates with power. Jesus was born 2,000 years ago, and for Christians, he is the one who started the restoration of distributive justice, as Isaiah foretold: “For he said, ‘Surely they are my people, children who will not deal falsely’; and he became their savior in all their distress.” But slaves for Christ are not just believers in the Christian religion. Anyone who participates in that covenant inherits the Kingdom. Anyone who participates in that covenant steps into the alternative Universe. Anyone who participates in that covenant becomes a partner with Jesus in the ongoing, great work of justice-compassion.
Jesus is not coming back. He is wherever the great work is done, wherever the Covenant is joined. In the words of the beloved Christmas hymn, “O Holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us we pray, cast out our sin and enter in, be born in us today.”
The stories are true. But we are the ones we are waiting for.