Sermon

December 10, 2006

            Perhaps you have seen the bumper sticker that says, “God wrote it! I believe it! That does it!” Unitarian Universalists challenge this literal way of thinking. Each Christmas I offer us an opportunity to take a break from Santa Clause and other fantastic stories to gain another insight into why we are so glad to sing the wonderful Christmas Carols and hear the stories of the birth of Jesus. The fact is that we are suckers for stories of hope! And we are also especially drawn to stories of holiness coupled with random acts of courage and breakthrough thinking about social justice. The birth of one who represents all this interests us, intrigues us.

            We heard in the reading how the Hebrew Scriptures prophesied the birth of the Messiah, which means “anointed one.” Ancient societies were great believers in prophecy. In fact, a king would have on his staff of advisers one or more “prophets” or soothsayers, who could predict the outcome of, say, a war with Iraq. A king would decide whether or not to go to war based on the prediction of his favorite soothsayer. (In ancient times our modern soothsayers in the Whitehouse would have been fired for inaccurate prophecies!) The ancient prophet may have been a member of a group or school of prophets who would consult with one another about the future and about the meaning of their dreams. This is much like we see nowadays in the shamans of ancient tribes of the Amazon.

            But in ancient Israel, when it was just a collection of Hebrew tribes, the role of the prophet was not only a predictor of future events but also sometimes a bringer of hope in times of crises and hopelessness. The prophet was also a judge of bad behavior, especially that of the rich towards the poor.  People and kings listened to these seemingly crazy and cranky men (and sometimes women) for they seemed to say wise things. In fact, the prophets’ wise words were written down on scrolls and these words were consulted and referred to by future prophets and other writers, called scribes (and later called rabbis). A very early prophet, Nathan, about 900 BCE, spoke to King David, and said on behalf of God, “…I will raise up your offspring after you…and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for me. I will be his father and he will be my son; I will not take my steadfast love from him…but I will confirm him in my house and in my kingdom forever and his throne shall be established for ever…” [I Chronicles 17.11-14, Holy Bible, RSV]. While the reference probably referred to David’s son, Solomon, the Gospel writers might well have take these words as a prediction of Jesus’ coming. 

A prophet sometimes referred to himself as “son of God” probably because he felt himself chosen to speak his predictions with the authority of God. So the “son of God” language was well established in the words of the prophets.

            Let us look at a few more predictions of the birth of another son of God called Jesus of Nazareth. Let us remind ourselves that when the name of “Jesse” is mentioned, it is the name of the father of King David, Israel’s greatest and most ideal king. These words are from the prophet Isaiah in the eighth century BCE: “There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge….He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth…The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid…and a little child shall lead them.” [Isaiah 11:1-6] In Isaiah also, we read “For unto us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government will be upon his shoulder, and his name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” [Isaiah 9:6-7]

            From these words of Isaiah, the Gospel writers will give us the impression that the messiah will be a Prince of Peace. Other writings present him as the suffering servant. When the gospel writers create what we think of as the Christian scriptures, they always, always look back to the ancient prophecies to legitimate their current belief that this man Jesus was the one predicted of old to come from the root of Jesse, father of David. This is why they write an extensive genealogy for Jesus going back to Abraham. The gospel of Matthew tells us “So all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ fourteen generations. [Matt 1:17]

The gospel writers wanted to tie Jesus firmly to the line of King David, not only to Mary, a lowly teenage girl and Joseph a lowly carpenter from Nazareth, which was well known as a hick town. The gospel writers created a story that would fulfill the prediction that the Messiah will be born in Bethlehem and so they write that Mary and Joseph had to go to Bethlehem to register for a census. There is no such record in Roman history. The writers also have King Herod order all male babies to be killed. There is no record of this either and Herod was not even on the throne at the time of Jesus’ birth. However, the gospel writers would want to create a parallel story to that of Moses when Pharaoh orders that the first born sons of the Hebrews be killed. Jews would love to hear the connection to their other sacred stories. The Gospel writer even has Mary and Joseph flee to Egypt and stay there until it is safe to bring Jesus back. This is to fulfill the prophecy “Out of Egypt I will call my son.”

What do we make of these stories that we love so much and yet can find no evidence for them in history? The writers of the Gospels were doing what all writers before them did—they told stories that they didn’t necessarily intend to be taken literally. This practice is continued today in Judaism. The practice is called midrash. Liberal Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong says, “[Midrash] is the way Jewish people had always expanded their sacred story. The Gospels were created by the need to put into writing the oral tradition in which Jesus had been defined…So the Gospels were born—not as chronological biographies describing literal events of history, but rather as collections of [writings] created in the same way that the rabbis would create what came to be called the midrash rabbah. They pored over their sacred texts of the past to discover new meanings by which they might understand and interpret experiences that were occurring in their present.” (Spong, p.52) Bishop Spong expressed anger that he hadn’t learned this in his priestly training. He had to find it out while studying at Oxford University.

I am conscious that we have many visitors amongst us today and I have said that the birth narratives of Jesus are not true stories. I assure you that I do not in any way mean to diminish your own beliefs. What I offer from this pulpit is a result of my own study and reflection and all of you are free to make up your own minds. I am aware that the Catholic Church has built an entire theology around Mary, the mother of Jesus. The belief that Mary was a “virgin” in our modern day sense is a mistranslation from Hebrew to Greek. In Isaiah 7:14, we read “Behold a young woman (not virgin) shall conceive and shall bring forth a son and you shall call his name Emmanuel, which means ‘God is with us.’” The word “virgin” was simply mistranslated from Hebrew to Greek. The belief in a virgin birth is not part of liberal Protestant theology. But we are all free to hold our beliefs and I honor your beliefs as well. Of course, it raises the question of what is true. We simply have to decide for ourselves. And we agree to disagree while focusing mostly on the teachings of Jesus.

Like Bishop Spong, I have loved the Christmas stories but found them far fetched. I, too, was relieved to find out that the Jewish scholarly practice of “midrash” was the rabbis’ way of weaving meaningful stories out of their past history and wisdom. In this way, they extend scripture. After all, the important thing about the Christmas story is that a great teacher was born and those teachings are left to us to interpret in light of today’s world.

            However, the gospel writers were not only impressed with Jesus’ teachings. They were impressed by the person he presented himself to be. They had never met Jesus, only heard about him from others. Bishop Spong says that he believes that Jesus brought a God presence with him and so people were impressed by the sense of holiness they gained from him; and through his teachings they likely gained new meaning from their ancient scriptures as well.

            Did a new light come into the world as a result of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth? Yes, I think it certainly did. A new light came in and with it HOPE for a better world. May the meditation of our hearts, the hymns of our spirit, and the wisdom of ancient stories and teachings be with us always.

References

The following source has informed and inspired this sermon:

Spong, John Shelby. Liberating the Gospels: Reading the Bible with Jewish Eyes, San Francisco: Harper Books, 1996.

The Reading is from an article
by Dr. Richard V. Horner[1]

There are several reasons why the Hebrew Scriptures were understood to be central to the Christian faith from the beginning, but none is more important than the way in which those Scriptures had created a messianic hope by the time of the birth of Jesus. From the first pages of the five books of Moses through the Prophets and the Writings, the Hebrew Scriptures point to someone through whom God would bless the seed of Abraham and, through that seed, all the nations of the world. The passages that do this work are often puzzling and mysterious, and they are not easily interpreted. They…provide a glimpse of a heroic figure who was to come. Because this special person would be anointed by God, he came to be known as the “Messiah,” or Anointed One. The Greek word for Messiah is Christ, and it is important to remember that the name Christ is simply the Greek way of referring to the Hebrew Messiah.

Because the Hebrew sacred texts predicted this Messiah, and because early Christians saw Jesus as that Messiah, it is understandable that both Jewish and Gentile Christians saw the Hebrew scriptures as foundational to their faith. For Christians the Hebrew Scriptures became the Old Testament, predicting the coming of the Messiah, and the story of Jesus became the New Testament, developed around the conviction that Jesus of Nazareth was, in fact, the fulfillment of those predictions. He was the Messiah, or Christ, who was to come. He was that heroic figure Who, in agreement with the Scriptures, was the anticipated Son of Eve, the eternal King, a Priest forever, a sacrificial lamb, the great Shepherd, the messenger of the Covenant, the rising sun, a child and yet a Savior in whom…God himself had come into the world.