Well, after a couple of rough years:

welcome back to Christmas as normal.

 

At least…

that’s what it seems to have been last week at my local shopping centre…

with people stocking up for large Christmas celebrations…

with scarcely a metre of social distancing…

or a face mask in sight.

The pandemic, clearly, is over.

Except, it’s not!

You might not be able to find the statistics too easily these days…

but…

if you’re interested…

last week, in South Australia, there were more than ten thousand new cases––

although the actual number would be much higher given how few people now are being tested;

there were one hundred and ninety-three in hospital…

eight people in ICU and two on ventilators…

and twenty-four people died.

And, with all of the Christmas and New Year’s gathering transmission to come…

those numbers aren’t going to improve anytime soon.

We may have decided–– 

collectively and culturally–– 

that the pandemic is over…

but no one told the virus.

 

And yet… 

in raising all of that…

I sort of feel like the Grinch who stole Christmas.

After all, this is the “most joyous time of the year”––

or so we’re told.

We gather in church to sing our much-loved carols…

and to listen to a banally uplifting message about peace on earth…

and goodwill to all…

and all of that;

before going home to catch up with friends and loved ones––

even if it’s only a week or so since we’ve seen them––

eating, drinking, sleeping, and having fun…

all to excess.

And we haven’t really been able to do all of that for the last couple of years…

so, God help us…

we’re going to…

because it’s not really Christmas otherwise!

 

But you have to admit…

there’s something really quite bizarre about what Christmas has become these days:

the traditions that we have enshrined it with;

and the meanings that we have imputed to it––

consciously or subconsciously.

Isn’t it ironic… 

that we’ve created this ‘Festival of the Family’…

out of the story of an unwed-teenager giving birth…

seemingly isolated…

or even estranged… 

from any sense of family.

Yet, the whole cultural celebration of Christmas is really devoid of any meaningful reason or roots.

And for those of us who still go to church––

and who wish to retain a religious core to it all––

we really need to ask ourselves:

What are we actually doing?

What are we really celebrating?

 

In nineteen-thirty-three…

in the wake of Hitler’s rise to power––

and the unification and nationalisation of the German Church…

under a Nazi-aligned Bishop––

the dissident theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer told his students…

that ‘humanity’s only hope lay in the baby born to unwed Jewish parents in a desolate byway of Bethlehem’.

For Bonhoeffer, the birth of Jesus––

the whole point of the Christmas story––

was a direct challenge to the repugnant ideology of German nationalism…

and antisemitism.

For Bonhoeffer…

the Christmas story was inherently subversive;

the Christmas story was, in a sense, an inconvenient truth.

When the author of Luke’s Gospel crafted this Christmas story––

one that we know so well, and that we heard read again this morning––

he deliberately and quite specifically…

highlighted the fact that it took place in the reign of Caesar Augustus…

during the Roman occupation of Judaea;

he deliberately and specifically held up Jesus as an alternative––

and, hence, a threat––

to the power of Rome and its Emperor.

He announced that peace and salvation had come through Jesus––

and not through Rome and its Emperor…

as the imperial ideology proclaimed.

For the Lukan author, the birth of Jesus was an inconvenient truth.

And, in fact, we see that…

in every carefully placed brushstroke of his literary masterpiece:

a story of peasants, not the powerful and privileged;

set in a backwater, not a bustling metropolis;

announced to shepherds––

the first century’s equivalent of bogans and bums,

not its leaders or literati. 

And no one else––

outside of this small and motley cast of characters––

seems to have noticed anything…

despite, supposedly, the skies being filled with chanting cherubim.

Every detail of this story screams its subversiveness.

And, indeed… 

the story fulfils and enfleshes the provocative pronouncement…

of that poor, peasant girl…

when she discovered that she was pregnant:

rejoicing in the God who lifts up the lowly…

and casts down the mighty;

the God whose intention for creation is a direct inversion…

of the way that we have structured and maintained it.

 

But…

through the centuries…

we haven’t noticed that;

or we haven’t wanted to.

In our celebration of Christmas…

the details of the Christmas story have been an inconvenient truth.

And they still are.

While most of us are happy to put some money into the Christmas Bowl…

or to give some food or presents to be distributed to the homeless…

we don’t think of Christmas as a direct challenge to the way that our society operates…

or how most of us benefit from that…

and how, in our heart of hearts, we don’t really want that to change.

Not really.

After all, we can’t even manage the slight inconvenience of wearing face masks…

in order to protect the vulnerable…

and our over-stretched health system.

 

If we really took the Christmas story seriously…

if we took to heart that, in choosing to reveal God’s self to us––

in metaphorically being born among us, born as one of us––

God chose a poor, peasant girl…

who was not yet wed when she gave birth;

an ‘irregular’ family that was…

seemingly…

looked down upon and treated as a shameful embarrassment…

and shunted into the only space available;

far from home and any sense of family;

and surrounded by some unsavoury characters––

if we took all of the actual details and the context of the story seriously…

and theologically…

as a reflection upon the nature of God…

and where God is to be found…

and what, as people of God, our values and priorities ought to be…

then we really need to admit that it’s a pretty inconvenient truth for us, too;

and not something we want to be reminded of amid the saccharine sentimentality of our celebrations.

If we really took the implications of this story seriously—

if we tried to reorder and restructure our society…

and our values accordingly;

if we tried to reimagine it––

then what would it mean?

 

It would mean a pretty fundamental change to how we live…

and how our world works.

It would mean… 

surely…

that our number one priority–– 

in terms of how we structure our society and our way of life;

how we allocate resources;

and the sorts of narratives that we tell––

ought to be centred on the well-being of those who are… 

now…

the marginal and vulnerable:

the unwed mothers…

the homeless…

the poor…

the refugee…

the victims of violence, injustice, and climate change;

and it would mean no longer pandering to the powerful and privileged…

and maintaining structures and systems that simply reinforce their––

our––

power and privilege.

 

At its heart, the Christmas story is a very inconvenient truth.

 

Perhaps it’s just safer to drink another glass of champagne…

and eat some more cake…

and try not to think too much about it––

or it might cause serious heartburn.