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Phil Blackwell

“The Scandal of Christmas”
Christmas Eve, 2011

It is quiet in the Loop as the marketplace across the street in Daley Plaza closed at 4:00 p.m.; the last pretzel has been sold, the last ornament wrapped, the last glass of gluhwein drunk. Macy’s finally is silent, after being open for extended hours over the past few days. The theaters are dark for a night, offices locked up, banks shut down; there are a few restaurants open to cater to the occasional diner. But, it is quiet tonight in the heart of the city.

Some have sounded the alarm that there is a “war on Christmas” in America; if so, there is a ceasefire tonight. “But, we must rise to the occasion to battle back. They are taking away our right to say ‘Merry Christmas’ instead of ‘Happy Holidays.’ They are not letting us call it a ‘Christmas tree’ anymore. They won’t let kids sing Christmas carols in school like in the old days. And it is getting harder to put up a manger scene in the public square.” Though, in fact, in Daley Plaza over near the eternal flame where the pigeons huddle for warmth just before you get to the row of portable toilets, there was a life-size crèche on display for weeks, with a menorah nearby casting a kindly light on the baby Jesus. I went over to look for it today, and it was gone, taken down not by the city, I suspect, but the citizens who had put it there. Maybe the Holy Family took an early flight to Egypt.

But, to tell the truth, none of this really has to do with the Christian story of the birth of Jesus the Christ. Not trees, not lights, not saying “Merry Christmas,” not full-size plaster shepherds, not wreathes, not holly, mistletoe, not stockings hung by the chimney with care. No, the truth is that we who call ourselves Christians make a much more demanding claim – in Jesus born in Bethlehem God has come into our midst to show us what it means to live a faithful life. God in the flesh, God fully human and fully divine, present in the person of Jesus the Messiah, the Lord, the Christ.

Perhaps, the most disclosive Christmas account of all the gospels is found in the opening verse of John, where there is no birth at all; no angel, no shepherds, no wise men, no gifts, no Mary and Joseph. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Jesus, the Word made flesh, fully human, fully divine, God in our midst.

That is the scandal of Christmas; “scandal,” based on the Greek word for “stumbling block.”  The awe-filled truth of our Christian faith is that something unique has happened in Jesus that changes everything. This is not just a passing night of sentimentality, not just a festive season to end the year. This is a claim of what is most important, what is of ultimate worth, of what life means.

How do we talk about it? I do not know, even though I have spent forty years talking about it. “The Word made flesh” is beyond my explanatory vocabulary. It was beyond that of Luke and Matthew, too. Mark has no birth story, and John has this grand vision of the cosmic Christ. But Luke tells us about the journey to Bethlehem from Nazareth, the inn, the stable, the angel, and the shepherds. Matthew tells us a different, but parallel, story about Herod, the wise men, the three gifts, and the political intrigue that sends them home by a different route.

But when the two gospel writers get to talking about the true miracle claimed by Christians, that God has come to live among human beings in such a way that we can see how we are to live, they each posit a virginal conception. Surely, this man Jesus must have had a different origin than the rest of us. How else can you turn out to be fully human and fully divine at the same time? They admit this paradox by employing a theological metaphor to account for Jesus’ appearance in Mary’s womb. They are not constrained by biology; they are witnessing to their faith in Jesus’ uniqueness, that, as Paul writes, “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto God’s own self.”

And it is that which is the scandal, the stumbling block. Paul admits this right off in his first letter to the Christians in Corinth. “We proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to all who are called, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”

Something big is going on in Jesus the Christ, but its enormity may trip us up or make us look silly to others. It is easier to reduce the Christian faith to something smaller – like good advice for how we are to live. Shrink Jesus down to having been a good man with wise sayings about how to get along with others. In some ways I learned that as a child in church. “Jesus said, ‘Be a good boy,’ so sit still, be quiet, stop chewing your gum so loudly, and listen to that man up there saying whatever it is that he is on about.”

Certainly a more erudite reduction of religion comes in a comment from Christopher Hitchens, who died a few weeks ago. Hitchens was a lively contrarian about most everything, but especially religion. He dismissed all religious constructs by saying, “Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it.” Religion does not even keep people in line but has hijacked morality and baptized it as its own invention.

In a like manner, there was an article in the local paper a few weeks ago about researchers having observed one rat assisting another rat to get free from a cage. That prompted a letter writer to deduce that altruism is inherent in the animal kingdom. “Rats have no religion,” he wrote. “They don’t need God to tell them to be good to each other; neither do we. Rewards in heaven, or even Santa Claus bringing you presents, should not be the reason for you to behave decently.”

Exactly. The Christian faith is not a code of conduct to keep us moral. It is much more subversive than that. It proclaims that God was in Christ reconciling the world to God’s own self. That the Word has become flesh and dwelt among us. The “Incarnation,” in the flesh. That is a stumbling block to those who cannot imagine that; it is foolishness to those who safely think inside the box. But for those who can imagine, who do believe, it is life-changing.

In all of the recent talk about the 99 percent and the 1 percent, I have been thinking about both categories. The 99 percent–Jim Wallis, the inspiring leader of the Sojourners movement, pokes fun at those bewailing the “war on Christmas.” Wallis writes, “Making sure that shopping malls and stores greet their customers with ‘Merry Christmas’ is entirely irrelevant to the meaning of the Incarnation. In reality it is the consumer frenzy of Christmas shopping that is the real affront and threat to the season. Last year, Americans spent $450 billion on Christmas. Clean water for the world, including every poor person on the planet, would cost about $20 billion. Let’s just call that what it is: a material blasphemy of the Christmas season.”

The scandal of Christmas, God reconciling the world through Christ, condemns us in our own scandalous behavior, revealing for all to see what it is that we think is most important, most worthy, most meaningful. The poor go without clean water while we buy things we can go without.

But also the 1 percent. I have been thinking about a bank president who was a member of a congregation where I formerly served. Maybe he was not financially part of the 1 percent, but clearly he was near the top of the scale. Something must have sunk in during all those Sundays that Gregg and his family sat in the congregation. Gregg was the chair of our Church Council, an important administrative position. He was in his third year of that role when he said, “Phil, I am sorry that I cannot be the chair of the Council any longer. I have been asked to head up the board of the single room occupancy program in Lakeview on the north side.”

And I responded, “Gregg, don’t apologize. We will get another leader, and we always will make it through a Council meeting. Don’t worry about that; Methodists are good at making it through meetings. But, don’t you see, you are being asked to engage in ministry? You are uniquely qualified to direct the outreach to hundreds of needy people who are trying to make it from the streets to a place into live. You go with our blessing and our support.”

His life was changed by the gospel sinking in and reordering his life. He now was to become the Word made flesh for others.
The miracle of Christmas is the transformation in our lives when we finally catch on to the profound seriousness of this baby born in Bethlehem.
Bill Coffin, at one time the chaplain at Yale University, and then the minister at Riverside Church in New York City, was asked if he believed in miracles.

“Did Jesus really walk on water? Did he really change water into wine?” And he answered, “I do not know. But this I do know: faith must be lived before it is understood, and the more it is lived, the more things become possible.” And then he added, “I can report that in home after home I have seen Jesus change beer into furniture, sinners into saints, hate-filled relations into loving ones, cowardice into courage, the fatigue of despair into the buoyancy of hope. That is miracle enough for me.”

The scandal of Christmas, that somehow in some way the Word became flesh and dwelt among us in Jesus the Christ, fully human and fully divine – that is a theological statement, not a biological one. And its truth goes to the very heart of what it means for us to be human, to that place where gifts and tinsel and trees and warm punch and greetings of “Merry Christmas” cannot go. If there are some who want to go to “war” over those things in our culture, so be it. It is irrelevant to the peculiar Christian claim of the Incarnation, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to God’s own self.

Stumble as we may, foolish as we appear, that is what we say and what we believe. And it shapes who we are.
May it be so this Christmas. “God bless Us, Every One!” Amen.