Inclusion; Like Christmas. is it too costly?

Well I wonder how expensive your Christmas has been?  It’s been almost impossible to not be affected by the huge retail event that is Christmas here in the West.  A few weeks ago my wife and I were talking about being involved with events or ideas and the need for people to “buy in” to the event. It got me thinking about the term “buy in”.  This term itself concerns an acceptance of cost. That cost may be in financial terms, in time or in energy.  So I would like to you to think about how much you really buy in to this event we call Christmas. What does it mean to you and how much are you willing to pay? 

For most people, Christmas starts well before Advent; probably around the beginning of November once the Retail sector has stopped flogging monster costumes and huge black spiders for Halloween.  Media outlets bombard us with pictures of Christmas, there are 24 hour Christmas Movie Channels, the advent of the long awaited John Lewis TV advert, and this year Sky brought us the second coming of ET.  Talking of movies, who hasn’t heard of the film “Last Christmas”.  If you are at work there are Christmas parties, secret Santa.  In financial terms Christmas costs.  If you happen to be born female, then Christmas makes extra demands on you. You possibly feel pressured to look good, you may take on the demands of organising cards and presents, staying in touch with friends, family, organising food. Yes, Christmas costs. 

The two readings today, (Matthew 2:13-23 and Luke 2:22-40) hint at a much darker and more costly side of Christmas; this time that we have recreated into a time of love, of family and smiles – not to mention the expensive gifts.

What has this to do with inclusion. Inclusion is a bit of a buzz word at the moment. I wonder sometimes whether it is one of those things that we think we are being good at until someone pointedly shows us that we are not.  Very similar to racism, most people don’t think they are being racist. (I’m not including the right-wing thugs here who like nothing better than a fight).   It is more than having disabled access or lifts.  It is more a state of mind.  Are we willing to hear views that might not agree with ours? 

We think today of a “Christmas story”.  The very words that we use to describe the story of the Nativity belies our belief in it. We refer to it as a story; and in many ways of course it is. We encourage our children to play parts in Christmas themed dramas. As parents we may have experienced the angst  and competition for the coveted roles of Mary and Joseph, the Innkeeper even Angel number, - well it depends on the cast size. Not to mention the more recent additions to the cast.  I’m thinking here of spacemen, assorted marvel heroes, the odd lobster.  All this is some way reflecting our ability to develop stories in ways that perhaps mean something for us today.  In a weird way what we do here is perhaps more correct and apt than some Christians reliance on the literal truth of the bible. Perhaps in our refashioning of the Nativity story we might learn something about how to approach these ancient scriptures that we call the bible. 

Can we ever know what really happened on the first Christmas? Why are the Gospel’s so different on the topic – wise men only occur in Matthew, shepherds only occur in Luke, Mark has no nativity and John – well something else again. For the two that do discuss the nativity as we would recognise it both Matthew and Luke hint at costly consequences to this time of Joy and Peace.

It is incredibly hard to uncover historical realities; evidence is lost over time. Claims made in antiquity are very difficult to verify and too often as humans, we tend to believe what we already half agree with. We think that we are fair minded people but the truth is that If one of you say  something that sounds good, and it happens to coincide with my world view – the way I see things – my beliefs then I am more likely to think that you are speaking the truth. 

Tradition has the birth of Jesus represented as a birth of an outsider. This fits our view of Jesus as being the essential outsider; God in human form.  We have come to see the stories representing Joseph and Mary  as being told that they are not welcome by innkeepers of the time, of Shepherds (the outsiders of their time), of Magi, of a Star that doesn’t move in the sky, and of a heavenly host of Angels over the hills of Bethlehem, not to mention a virgin birth.

What if it didn’t happen quite like that?  What if the Gospel writers, each in their own way, are pointing us towards a greater truth, and what if we have mistaken their writing as a literal description of what happened.

I’d like to offer you instead a different picture. I am not saying here that the traditional story is wrong, or that what I am going to say is better, rather I am looking to offer an alternative version in order to help us understand and perhaps relate to Jesus in a different and more real way.  One that rests on inclusion at Christmas.  A biblical picture might be that inclusion  means that we echo Jesus in searching out the lost sheep, in willing to go the extra step to show that as a community of faith we constantly ask ourselves if we are by our actions excluding people from worship or full communion with God. Think of the cleanliness laws of the Pharisees that Jesus fought so hard against, and in this Jesus constantly reminds us to be inclusive, as well as the costs that inclusion brings – and I suspect that it is those costs, challenging our own deeply held beliefs sometimes  that can put us off from really being inclusive in our lives.  I want to encourage you to  listen to the way this links in with how Jesus lived, how he broke down barriers created by those cleanliness laws, broke down barriers of gender – remember when he spoke to an unrelated woman in Samaria in public, when he praised the woman who washed his feet with her hair?  Add to that his call for us to live Cross shaped lives, the only way to build the Kingdom of God here on earth. 

Let’s start with the virgin birth.  The bibles that we have and read from today are the result of generations of translations. When ancient Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek are translated, it can’t be done word for word. In Hebrew there are no vowels. My first name would be spelt CLN. How do you start to work out what that means? Sometimes there is no equivalent word in English, so the translator has to interpret the meaning.  Unfortunately, we have very little primary source material left, so we have used translations on translations.  What we do have in respect of the “virgin birth” is that the word used in Isaiah to describe the birth of the virgin was the same word that can mean young woman. The two translations can mean the same thing but the narrower term virgin carries with it a more restrictive meaning than young woman. Mary, (or Miriam a likely more accurate translation of her Aramaic name), was a young woman. In fact, a teenager, probably around 13-15 years of age.  What we have is a young girl betrothed – not the equivalent to engagement, more profound, to a young man and we have some sent of scandal or rumour surrounding the pregnancy.  They lived in Nazareth, a small village. Think of what it would be like over here in the early part of the 20^th Century in a small English hamlet where everyone knows everyone else. 

In the end, we can’t be certain, but the behaviour of the villagers’ points to a lack of inclusivity. We do get a hint that Mary was in real danger.

The evidence for a census is scant, but it isn’t impossible that government would like to keep tabs on taxpaying workers. It could be that Joseph just wanted to get Mary away from the village rumour mill in Nazareth. So they head to Joseph’s family home – Bethlehem. It would take about 4 days to walk from Nazareth to Bethlehem, so in all likelihood they wouldn’t have travelled alone, instead it is more likely to imagine they would have travelled as part of a group. For comparable evidence, consider the story in Luke of when Jesus went missing as a young teenager in Jerusalem.

When we get to  Bethlehem, we come to our next potential casualty of the traditional story. Sorry to all you Innkeepers out there; there probably wasn’t one.  The problem here is that there probably wasn’t an Inn. No Inn means no Innkeeper. Luke uses the word Kataluma, a Greek word that has been translated as Inn, but it also can mean Upper Room.  In a later important time in Jesus’ life when he shared an important supper with his closest group, when Jesus chose an Upper Room, Luke uses the same word Kataluma.  Given the shared importance of the events surrounding both the birth and passion of Jesus, it is not impossible to suggest that Luke was using the word, Kataluma, in the same way. Perhaps then Jesus was put in  a manger downstairs because there was no room  in the living quarters of the house – the upper room. Just in case you don’t know, in normal 1^st Century houses there was a downstairs area where animals were kept and an upper room where the family lived. Putting Jesus downstairs was logical as it was warmer and safer. What this means is that rather than a story of exclusion, we have Joseph’s family opening their house to the young family and to Jesus.

The birth of a new baby in such a small village would be noticed quickly, everyone would have quickly known about the birth. Enter the 3 Kings. Well despite the claims of Cologne Cathedral, probably not Kings and not necessarily 3 of them. Matthew just says Magi from the east so these people if they were there could have been astrologers; astronomers of their time who would suggest events of import from looking at the stars. Perhaps someone had suggested a story about fulfilment of an old prophecy. Perhaps someone put 2 and 2 together and the rumour made it’s way down the road to Jerusalem where a paranoid Herod was quickly losing his mind and wouldn’t have thought twice about ordering the murder of 20 or so young children. Behaviour of those people given absolute power has not changed throughout history.  You just have to look around at the current set of despots for confirmation.  The choice of inclusion by Joseph’s family and friends would cost them dear. This is the dark side of Christmas that isn’t told about all that often.

So, we have a different Christmas story. A story of intentional  inclusion, of bravery, of people looking out for each other, of not discriminating because of innuendo or rumour. Of taking risks. Exactly the message that Jesus shared during his life and principles that led in no small way to his death.

Consider then for a moment.  What would be the impact of this Christmas Nativity? What life lessons might it teach? Perhaps in fact it might echo the words of the Magnificat, of revolution, of the revolution of love. An approach to life that risks all to include those not like us. An approach to life that really, might just be, inclusive