"Celebrating the Birth of Jesus"
by Rev. James Kubal-Komoto
Saltwater Unitarian Universalist Church
Des Moines, Washington
December 13, 2009

      "Jesus is the reason for the season," some of our more religiously conservative brothers and sisters exclaim, but I believe we would have something like Christmas even if Jesus had never been born.

    There are so many strands that make up the tradition of Christmas, and many of them have absolutely nothing to do with stories about Jesus' birth we find in Christian scripture.

    It is difficult sometimes, though, to separate these strands. For example, after the end of World War II, when Christmas was widely celebrated in Japan for the first time, some Japanese had a hard time separating the more sacred and more secular elements of the holiday. One department store erected a 40-foot Santa Claus in front of its building. Unfortunately, Santa was nailed to a cross.

    Nevertheless, I'm going to try to separate some of these strands this morning, specifically the strand having to do with the biblical stories about the birth of Jesus, and this morning I want to talk about the stories about Jesus' birth we find in Christian scripture, talk about how we might understand them, and talk about what meaning they might have for us as Unitarian Universalists at the beginning of the 21st century.

    To help me with this task, I want to turn to a book called The First Christmas by biblical scholars Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan.

    According to Borg and Crossan, many people make three mistakes regarding the biblical stories about Jesus' birth, and I want to talk about each of these mistakes a little bit.

    The first mistake many of us make is that we conflate two different stories. What do Borg and Crossan mean by this?

    Out of the four gospels in Christian scripture - - Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John - - only two of them - - Matthew and Luke - - actually mention Jesus' birth. The Gospel of Mark - - the earliest of the Gospels to be written - - starts the story with Jesus' baptism, and the Gospel of John, the last of the gospels to be written - - starts the story at the beginning of time, saying, "In the beginning was the Word..."

      However, the two gospels which do contain accounts of Jesus' birth actually tell very different stories, not only with different emphases but with different events.

    In Matthew's gospel, the central character is Joseph. In Luke's gospel, the central character, is Mary.

    In Matthew's gospel, Joseph has a dream announcing the birth of Jesus. In Luke's Gospel, Mary is visited by an angel.

    In Matthew's gospel, Mary and Joseph are already living in Bethelem, and Jesus is born at home.  In Luke's Gospel, they have to travel to Bethelem, and Jesus is born in a manger. In Matthew's gospel, there is a star, wise men, the evil Herod, and a daring escape to Egypt. In Luke's gospel, there are shepherds.

     If you sit down and read them side by side, these are two very different stories. However, in popular imagination, these two quite different stories have gotten harmonized into a single story of magic and miracle with a few extra-biblical characters - - like the Little Drummer Boy, for example - - thrown in for good measure.

    Most people, whether they describe themselves as Christian or not, don't know and don't care about these differences, and in their imagination, the wise men from the Gospel of Matthew and the shepherds from the Gospel of Luke all stand together in the manger singing "Silent Night" with the Little Drummer Boy playing softly in the back ground.

     A second mistake many people make, according to Borg and Crossan, is that we literalize the stories, believing that their authors intended them to be read as literal tales in the same way a modern biography is supposed to contain literal facts about some person's birth and childhood.

      Interestlingly enough, two separate groups do this. Biblical literalists do this, claiming each and every element in both biblical stories about Jesus' birth to be true - - even the ones that are contradictory. However, many religious skeptics do this too - - delighting in the contradictions between the stories and lifting up these contradictions as a good reason to dismiss these stories all together as nothing more than fanciful myths with nothing important to tell us.

    Want to give a biblical literalist a hard time? Ask him or her who Joseph's father was. The "begats" in Matthew and Luke mention different men.

    However, according to Borg and Crossan, the third and probably the biggest mistake that many people make in understanding the biblical stories about Jesus's birth is that they decontextualize and depoliticize the stories about not only his birth but about his adult life as well.

    The easiest way to explain what they mean by this is to two tell you two stories about two men.

   The first story is a story about Caesar Augustus, the first emperor of Rome.

   The legendary Roman Republic had fallen under the military and political manueverings of Julius Caesar in the first century BCE, and with the fall of the republic came decades of civil war. After Julius Caesar's assassination, his grand-nephew and adopted son Octavian rose to power, defeated all of his enemies in battle, brought peace to Mediteranean society, became Rome's first emperor, and eventually took the title Caesar Augustus.

    Truly, Caesar Augustus was revered because he had ended the civil war and social unrest that had disrupted Mediteranean society for nearly 100 years.

    Though it was common for important figures to be deified and worshipped after their deaths, Caesar Augustus was deified during his life and worshipped as a God. "Augustus" literally means "one who is divine." He was variously called "Divine Son, Son of God, God from God, Lord, Redeemer, Liberator, and Savior of the World." Do any of these titles sound familiar?

    Indeed, in the eyes of many, he was the savior of the world because, through him, Pax Romana, or the Peace of Rome, had been established.     

    However, it is important to remember how this peace had been established. Caesar embodied the idea of "peace through victory," or more exactly, "peace through victory through war through religion." First, he had prayed to the right Roman gods. Then he had gone to war. Then he had won. Then there was peace.

    It was not as easy peace, though. It was one that could only be mainatined through military, economic, political, and ideological might and often involved the opression and exploitation of many. Nevertheless, it was peace.

     Like many in the ancient world, after he had risen to power, people began to tell extraordinary stories about his beginnings. For example, it was already believed that his grand-uncle Julius Caesar's family had descended from a union between the godess Venus, daughter of Jupiter, and her human consort Achises, a hero of the Trojan war. But after Caesar Augustus' rise to power, the story was told that he himself, was divinely conceived while his mother Atia was sleeping in a temple dedicated to Apollo, god of light and truth, and Caesar Augustus was often regarded as Apollo's son.

    Let's now turn to the story of another man, the historical Jesus of Nazareth, who was born while Caesar Augustus reigned as emperor.

    The historical Jesus was mostly likely born in the tiny village of Nazareth - - not Bethlehem - - in Gaililee in what is now Israel in about 4 B.C.

    We don't know very much about Jesus' birth or his growing up years. His parents' names probably were Mary and Joseph, and he probably had several siblings, and he most likely was raised in the Jewish tradition.  

     We do know that Nazareth was only a small village and that it was only about four miles, about an hour and a half walk, from the city of Sepphoris, which was the capital of Galiliee.

    Right about the time that Jesus was born in Nazareth, there were several violent rebellions throughout the region against the harsh and brutal Roman rule. One of those happened in Sepphoris. A rebel named Judas gathered a group of followers, stole weapons, and began an attack. Rome sent more than 20,000 soliders in response. There aren't too many more historically-known details about exactly what happened, but if the Roman soliders acted as they did in other places in similar situations where details are better known, not only were the rebels massacred and the city burnt to the ground, but all the men of the city were killed, many of the women of the city were raped, and most of the children of the city were enslaved.

    Growing up only four miles away in Nazareth, we can guess that the story that Jesus probably heard most often was about "the day the Romans came."

    About the age of 30, Jesus became a follower of a wilderness prophet named John and soon after that began his own itinerant ministry. Given his background, one might have expected Jesus to preach about the necessity of violence and revenge, as some did. Instead, Jesus practiced and preached a gospel of radically inclusive, unconditional love, telling his listeners about the possibility of an ideal society which he called the Kingdom of God in which all were treated justly and none were oppressed or exploited, and telling his listeners that non-violent resistance was the best way to make the Kingdom of God a reality.

    In one way, Jesus was very similar to Caesar Augustus. Both talked about a way to bring peace to the world. However, while Caesar Augustus embodied the idea of "peace through victory" - - or more exactly "peace through victory through war through religion," Jesus embodied the idea of "peace through justice."

    Eventually, as we know, Jesus was executed, most likely because his message threatened the power of the political, economic, and religious elites of his day. However, his message of "peace through justice" lived on after him.

    Several decades later, when the authors of the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke sat down to write about the story of Jesus' life, they weren't terribly concerned about getting the facts just right. Getting the facts right just wasn't an important part of telling the story of somebody's life in those days. However, what they did want to do was to tell a story that would help their listeners understand what Jesus was all about and even help further the cause he died for.

    For example, the author of the Gospel of Matthew, who was writing mostly for a Jewish audience, wanted his listeners to see Jesus as the new Moses. Just as Moses led the nation of Israel out of slavery under Pharoh, the author of the Gospel of Matthew wanted his listeners to see Jesus's teaching of "peace through justice" as something that could free them from Roman oppression. So, you might say as a literary device, the author of the Gospel of Matthew incoporated many elements from stories about the birth of Moses into his account of the birth of Jesus.

    In a very similar fashion, the author of the Gospel of Luke, really wanted to contrast not only Jesus' life but also his values to that of Caesar Augustus.

    So the author of the Gospel of Luke incorporated many elements from stories about the birth of Caesar Augustus into his account of the birth of Jesus.

   There was probably a certain amount of one-upmanship going on here. If Caesar Augustus was divinely conceived by the god Apollo, then Jesus Christ would not only be divinely conceived but divinely conceived with a virgin.

    But there was probably also an attempt to shock his listeners.

   For example, when the author of the Gospel of Luke refers to Jesus as "Son of the Most High" and “Son of God” and "Savior" and "the Lord," he is not trying to make any kind of theological statement about Jesus being the second person of the holy trinity. Our 21st-century ears may hear these titles this way because of all the theological wrangling over Jesus' nature that has taken place in the past 2,000 years, but first- or second-century listeners would know that these were terms exclusively reserved for Caesar Augustus.

    To imagine how this must have sounded to first- or second-century listeners, imagine if there a religious leader today whose followers all referred to him or her as "My Commander-in-Chief" - - a term usually reserved only for the U.S. president - - and even played "Hail to the Chief" every time this leader made a public appearance.

    I suspect these things would be heard, even by those of us who don't wear our patriotism on our sleeves, as jarring and perhaps even politically subversive, and Borg and Crossan suggest that's how the author of the Gospel of Luke meant his story to be read, as a story that subverts the reigning ideology that the emperor was supreme and that makes those who hear it question whether the the values Caesar Augustus embodied - - "peace through victory" - - or the values that Jesus embodied - - "peace through justice" - - were the best hope for humanity.

    I think reading the biblical Christmas narratives in this way - - as parables about two competing claims for truth, "peace through victory" or "peace through justice" - - also, confronts and challenges us regarding what we believe is the best way to achieve peace in our own world.

    What do I mean?

    For example, at the local and state levels, our elected leaders are constantly deciding how to allocate dwindling resources, deciding whether to allocate more money for social services or more money for law enforcement and criminal justice.

    At the national and global level, I think we must admit that if there ever has been another empire in human history to rival the military, economic, political, and ideological might of the Roman Empire, it is the American global empire we live and each partcipate in today.

    And like Caesar Augustus, we have sent our armies to the far corners of the known world in the name of creating and maintaining peace, this time a Pax Americana.

    Caesar Augustus and certainly those who followed him learned how difficult if not impossible that "peace through victory" was to maintain, and it a lesson that this nation seems to be re-learning as well. 

    But will we ever achieve "peace through justice" in our world? Will we ever achieve peace not based on military, economic, political, and economic might, but peace based on compassion, respect, liberty, equality, and democracy?

    Perhaps we need Christmas once a year to continually remind us to keep on trying.

    My friends, as we celebrate the many strands of the Christmas tradition in the coming weeks, may one of the strands we celebrate be that one which calls us to create a world in which there is a true and genuine peace on earth and goodwill toward all.

    So may it be. Amen.