Dear friends, this month’s column from me may well come across as obscure and playing with some odd ideas about Christmas as we prepare to celebrate the Nativity of the Messiah. I assure you that this is not the intent; it is just another way of thinking about Christmas.
The traditional Biblical story of the birth of Jesus warms our hearts. However, only two of the synoptic gospel writers tell the story of the birth of Jesus. The birth of Jesus is recorded in the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke. It is not mentioned in the Gospel of Mark. And John deals with the incarnation in a completely different way.
The Scriptures recount the story of the coming of the Messiah in different ways. Luke’s story of Christmas is probably the most familiar to us. Matthew best fulfils the prophecy that a virgin would give birth to a son, who would be known as Emmanuel, meaning “God is with us.” However, in Mark’s gospel, John the Baptist introduces Jesus by saying to the crowd, prepare the way of the Lord, and Jesus is baptized in the River Jordan as a grown man.
But it is the gospel of John that says: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people (John 1:1-4).” Christmas, if you ask me, cannot be more straight forward than that.
Our familiar Christmas observance then, blends the two gospel accounts into one story so that the virgin mother, the star in the east, the shepherds in the field and the Holy family find themselves at the Manger in Bethlehem, and the wise men from Arabia come to offer gifts. My reading of the text affirms that it happened, but not necessarily in the way and sequence we often stage it in our Christmas pageants.
I believe we get that warm sentimental picture of Christmas more from our holiday music and the greeting cards we send and receive, and the movies we watch, and those picturesque scenes that decorate our lawns, where we often mix the sacred with the secular, where Santa becomes the gift bearer alongside the Magi at the manger, than we do from the faithful adherence to the Biblical text. That said, I will not attempt to retell or try to improve on what is written in Holy Scripture, or to change your mind about what you practice or believe about Christmas.
Instead, I would like you to think with me about a different way of seeing the Christmas story this year. Although Biblical, the events around the coming of the Messiah are not so neatly packaged as the story that many of us hear yearly, as told by the gospel writers, especially St. Luke and St. Matthew. I base my thoughts on Scripture. So, feel free to disagree with me in the comments.
As I read the Bible, and I do, and think about Christmas each year, I see a clear relationship with the coming of the Messiah to the East. I am not speaking of a specific country or political entity, just the direction by which Jesus comes to us. The prophet Baruch writes, “Look to the east Jerusalem, and see the joy that God is bringing to you (Baruch 4:36).“
The importance of the east is not limited to the fact that the Tabernacle and the Temple both faced east. Most worship spaces are built so that we enter with the Altars in the east, but we exit through the great west doors to follow Jesus Christ into the world, where we “live and move and have our being,” (Acts 17:28). We are even buried with our faces to the east. So, I guess at the general resurrection, we walk westwards. In the meantime, I see the east as being import for us to seek the coming of the Christ as both Alpha and Omega, the beginning, and the end. Keep this in mind as you continue to think with me.
It is written that the wise men saw a star in the east, and traveled from the east to find the infant Jesus. The Messiah, when he arrived, was meant to come from the east; specifically the Mount of Olives, which is to the east of Jerusalem. The east is the source of blessings and divine salvation.
We face east to see the past and the present, where the realms of memory and experience reside. We look east, to what has gone before, to see God coming, traveling towards us and if you want to be near God, we have got to travel with God, towards a future.
Here is the paradox. If instead, we misread the text about our directions to look east for the coming Messiah, and actually travel east looking for God, we are moving toward a place that God has left; we are going backward and may well find ourselves simply adoring the infant in a manger in Bethlehem. It may be an attractive place or an exciting place, but it is the past, and if I may use plain English, “God ain’t there no more.” God is with us, in our hearts.
So, traveling to the west may be symbolic of moving into the future, in the direction of God’s ongoing story. It is a dynamic thing. Actually, I believe to travel east is to go where God is no longer, it is to travel backward into exile, into captivity, less dynamic and more static, the way things used to be, away from God’s salvation. But the Christmas promise is to bring new life and hope to a fallen world. It is always coming to us.
People look east. God, who is Messiah, is coming bringing gifts of hope, peace, joy, and love. So, if you are still with me at this point, I hope you can see that even seemingly unimportant details in Scripture can teach us something about Christmas. That it may teach us something even about where we look to find the Christ, about love, and about light in the midst of darkness and about new life coming into the world. This is why love came down in the first place and why we celebrate Christmas year after year.
It would be good if we could make our annual pilgrimage to Bethlehem. But we do not have to go to Bethlehem in order to celebrate the birth of Christ. Bethlehem comes to us and leads us away from the old to the new, away from sin to life.
The Bible is essential in helping us chart our way to God. But it is also full of symbolic value, where angels and Shepherds in fields, and stars and mangers have layers of meaning that point us to the Christ, where we follow him and are informed by language and history and direction and divine revelation.
I hope this non-traditional Christmas column offers you a different way to think about Christmas, and that you will look for and receive the joy that is coming into the world and will lead us to a new place where we are led by God who became flesh and lives among us. I encourage you to think of other ways in which you may see God. Look to find God in the arts, especially in music this Christmas.
Here is one example that enriches my understanding. Meditate on these beautiful words, from the Advent/Christmas carol, by Eleanor Farjeon (1881-1965). This hymn can be found in the United Methodist Hymnal. But I know it from one of the Episcopal Church’s companion hymnals, “Wonder Love and Praise.” This hymn, with its upbeat dance-like French Besançon carol tune, captures the beauty of the coming of the Messiah at Christmas. In the first verse, Farjeon writes:
“People, look east. The time is near,
Of the crowning of the year.
Make your house fair as you are able,
Trim the hearth and set the table.
People, look east and sing today:
Love, the Guest, is on the way.”
The birth of Jesus is not something we celebrate just once a year. Instead, Christmas is an incarnated way of life that comes to us each and every day. And I say to you, as you “read, mark, learn and inwardly digest” Holy Scripture, and commemorate the Lord’s birth this year, “look east” for the light, and know that it is Christ, who is coming into the world. Merry Christmas!
Rev. Bill Alford is a retired priest who served St. Alban’s Episcopal Church for the last 30 years and who has been priest-in-charge of the Church of the Atonement in Hephzibah for the last three years. Originally from Albany, Ga., Rev. Alford is a Navy Veteran who sings with and who is on the Board of Directors for the Augusta Choral Society.
