This final class entry will include both the final discussion questions, as well as extended excerpts. Maybe their inclusion will help continue the explorations/discussions of the class.
Chapter 7 – Light Against the Darkness
Are you familiar with archetype's use in spirituality?
Can you think of Hebrew Bible stories with light as an image?
Can you think of New Testament stories/parables with light as an image?
What were Matthew's light images that the book mentioned?
What were Luke's light images that the book mentioned?
Had you ever considered Revelation as the source of the 3rd Biblical nativity?
Chapter 8 – Jesus as the Fulfillment of Prophecy
Did you know that Matthew uses a third of his formulaic lines, “fulfilled...spoken by the prophet” in his nativity?
Were you familiar with the use of the “fulfillment of prophecy” proves Jesus is the Messiah?
Do you see Matthew's 5 prophesies as supporting the fundamentalists or the debunkers?
Does it sound plausible that Matthew mined the Hebrew Bible to support his community with testimony, witness, & conviction?
What might be an xmas gift purchase example of testimony, witness, & conviction?
Does Luke's use of familiar phrases from the Hebrew
Bible in his 3 hymns give you the sense of Jesus as fulfillment of God's promises?
Did you know that Luke's first two chapters were written in the style of the Greek version of the Hebrew Bible?
Does the law & prophets promise summary help you with expectations for the Messiah—land, descendants,justice & peace?
With the help of this book, do you see the hope aimed at this world, rather than the coming one?
How do you look at the meaning of “Jesus is prophesy fulfilled?”
Chapter 9 – Joy to the World
Can you see how the message of joy is interwoven with messages of light and fulfillment?
Does joy & conflict resemble any of your familiar nativity themes?
Have you ever wondered why the “Joy” hymn uses, “the Lord 'is' come?”
Do you see the parallelism between Lent/Easter & Advent/Christmas?
Did you ever wonder what Isaiah's connection was to the Advent lectionary?
When you hear “repent,” what do you think?
Were you familiar with the book's Hebrew Bible & New Testament definitions of repent?
Were you familiar with Meister Eckhart's Christmas' repentance preaching?
Does the advent story suggest to you another way of seeing politics of our present time?
Do you like the book's defining eschatology in terms of transformation, rather than mass immigration to heaven?
Which of the 3 understandings of eschatology – supernatural, participatory, or letting go – do you prefer?
Have you heard of Augustine's saying, “God w/o us will not; we w/o God can't?”
Do you have other favorite Gospel passages of light coming to a dark world besides the ones mentioned in the book?
We noted in Revelation that some of us didn't recognize a third nativity story until the book brought it to our attention. When we considered the nativity light images, it reminded us that later in the Gospels, as well as the epistles we had many other light metaphors/parables for Jesus.
These later metaphors/parables can be used where the virgin birth or other nativity stories fail as evangelizing tools. We heard of one failure of the evangelizing cliché, “that there are no atheists in foxholes,” in a recent npr interview. Similarly Borg & Crossan remind us that there are many more stories of Jesus outside of the nativity to convince children & non-believers of Jesus' glad tidings.
As we listened to the Bruce Cockburn “Cry of a Tiny Babe,” we could link modern images to his mix of Matthew & Luke nativities. Todd commented on, “... what if I had been - but I wasn't anyway...” He noted that Cockburn depicts Mary as an atypical, independent woman, rather than the subservient cliché for that era.
Below are the lyric's of Cockburn's song, as Todd distributed to the class:
Cry of a Tiny Babe – Bruce Cockburn--Nothing But A Burning Light
Mary grows a child without the help of a man
Joseph get upset because he doesn't understand
Angel comes to Joseph in a powerful dream
Says "God did this and you're part of his scheme"
Joseph comes to Mary with his hat in his hand
Says "forgive me I thought you'd been with some other man"
She says "what if I had been - but I wasn't anyway and guess what
I felt the baby kick today"
Like a stone on the surface of a still river
Driving the ripples on forever
Redemption rips through the surface of time
In the cry of a tiny babe
The child is born in the fullness of time
Three wise astrologers take note of the signs
Come to pay their respects to the fragile little king
Get pretty close to wrecking everything
'Cause the governing body of the whole land
Is that of Herod, a paranoid man
Who when he hears there's a baby born King of the Jews
Sends death squads to kill all male children under two
But that same bright angel warns the parents in a dream
And they head out for the border and get away clean
Like a stone on the surface of a still river
Driving the ripples on forever
Redemption rips through the surface of time
There are others who know about this miracle birth
The humblest of people catch a glimpse of their worth
For it isn't to the palace that the Christ child comes
But to shepherds and street people, hookers and bums
And the message is clear if you've got ears to hear
That forgiveness is given for your guilt and your fear
It's a Christmas gift you don't have to buy
There's a future shining in a baby's eyes
Like a stone on the surface of a still river
Driving the ripples on forever
Redemption rips through the surface of time
In the cry of a tiny babe
I'm reading Beatrice Bruteau's “God's Ecstasy.” I see her comment about the science versus religion debate as a parallel to this book. She suggests if we set aside the debate around supernatural design and investigate science as part of our spiritual formation, a more satisfying spirituality & theology can develop. This book analogously suggests we can set aside the nativity debates, such as the virgin birth, and mine the richness of the rest of nativity. In that way we can see how it points to the rest of New Testament to learn of the Good News that Jesus has for us.
Unlike the wppc newsletter, I have more space here to include Rohr's full article. I include it since he also makes note of Luke's identification with the marginalized as our book reminds us. Our wppc library has a few of his books. He is a master in showing how contemplation and social justice are an odd, but inseparable, couple. In 2009 we'll have a copy or two of the “Tikkun” magazine in the wppc library, which combines spirituality & social justice from a Jewish perspective. Tikkun published this article in its December, 2008 issue.
Is Christmas Christian?
by Richard Rohr
As a Franciscan priest, I think I have the right to ask that question. Frankly, it is much easier to ask in a non-Christian owned magazine! We from the Catholic tradition too easily presume that because the title is right, the train following it is on the right track. We are not often open to asking if the train has anything to do with the direction of the original engine. In this case, the birth and message of Jesus of Nazareth.
We all know that the date of December 25 is not derived from Christian tradition. It instead traces back to the third-century Roman feast of the Rebirth of the Sun—normally celebrated as soon as they could observe the same, sometime after the Winter Solstice. Right away, that tells us that the first few centuries of the Common Era had no interest in knowing when Jesus was born or even celebrating it. That came with calendars and the demarcating of precise time.
Frankly, we must confess that it was likely our founder, St. Francis (1182-1226), who began to make Christmas the sentimental celebration that it has become, although his intention was never at all in the direction it has taken. He was the great lover of poverty and simplicity, and would be aghast at the consumer- and group-defining feast that Christmas has become. He merely replicated the drama of the stable with live animals and music.
For Francis and the early Franciscans, “incarnation was already redemption,” and the feast of Christmas said that God was saying yes to humanity in the enfleshment of his Son in our midst. If that were true, then all questions of inherent dignity, worthiness, and belovedness were resolved once and forever—and for everything that was human, material, physical, and in the whole of creation. That’s why Francis liked animals and nature, praising the sun, moon, and stars, like some New Ager from California. It was all good and chosen and beautiful if God came among us “as Emmanuel” (Isaiah 7:14).
But groups need and create their identity symbols, and the celebration of Christmas became the big one for Christian Europe, just as Jewish people need Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and Muslims need Ramadan and pilgrimage. The trouble is that the meaning became group-defining instead of life-transforming. As we say today, it got “off message”! It was no longer God’s choice of the whole, but God’s choice of us! (In fairness, most religions make the same mistake at lower levels of transformation).
At those lower levels of civil religion or any religion as a “belonging system,” the original meaning is always lost and often even morphs into its exact opposite. Strange and sad, isn’t it? In this case, the self-emptying of God into humble and poor humanity (Philippians 2:7) became an excuse for us to fill, consume, dominate, use, and spend at staggering levels for ourselves. In fact, the days leading up to December 25 are the economic engine around which the entire business economy measures itself in Christian-influenced countries. One might think that the fasting of Ramadan and Yom Kippur might have been a much clearer act of solidarity with the actual mystery celebrated.
Well, this year we might be forced under duress to celebrate the feast of Jesus’ humble birth with honesty! Our economic meltdown is showing for all to see what our real gods have been. It is not the Lord of Israel or his Son that we love, nearly as much as we do our limitless growth, our right to empire, our actual obligation to consume, and our sense of entitlement to this clearly limited planet.
In Christian circles, when I call these false gods into question, I am invariably criticized on other grounds of heresy and church protocols, almost so we do not have to look at what our real loyalties have been and are. “Let’s keep talking about Biblical interpretation or papal infallibility so we never have to look at our lifestyle.” For far too many of us, our final loyalties have been to the system of America, to the free market, to the protecting of the top and not the bottom where Jesus was, and to what Pope John Paul II called “rigid capitalism.” He said in several of his encyclical letters that capitalism had to be critiqued and regulated just as much as socialist communism (e.g., Laborem Exercens). Strange that most western Catholics never quoted him on that theme!
So, come, let us celebrate the feast anew! May we who have consumed the mystery of Jesus now consume his whole meal, and may it free us from needing to consume so much of everything else. If you really have the One, you should not need more and more of the other. Maybe our humble Jesus is stealing our idols from us, and inviting us back into his Bethlehem stable.
Father Richard Rohr is a Franciscan priest of the New Mexico Province and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque. For more information please visit www.cacradicalgrace.org.
This article can be found at: www.tikkun.org/magazine/tik0811/frontpage/christmas
Lastly, I wanted to mention a another way of looking at “The Kingdom of Heaven.” Borg & Crossan in chapter 3 suggest more options. Other parts of the Gospels confirm we can go deeper. In Jim Marion's book, Putting on the Mind of Christ, rather than just being a synonym for heaven, we might experience this kingdom for ourselves. Marion's book is available from the Seattle Public Library.
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