Message of Christmas is what matters

This year might be a good one to contemplate just how unlikely and yet inspiring the Christmas story is.

Christmas, of course, celebrates the birth of Jesus, who, Christians believe, came to Earth to save humankind from its multifarious sins and transgressions, to offer hope of salvation to those who believe. Yet the accretion of custom and the romanticization of the story sometimes keep us from seeing just how improbable, in terms of the ways of the world, this story is.

If one thinks as the world does, one might have expected such an important child, destined to be the savior of the world, to have been born in a royal palace, surrounded by servants and luxurious trappings. And surely such a personage would be born in one of the imperial political capitals of the world at the time.

Yet Jesus was born in a politically insignificant backwater of the leading empire of the time, Rome — a province acquired almost offhandedly and noted mainly for its capacity to irritate its rulers rather than contribute much to their splendor.

Instead of being born in a royal palace, Jesus was born in a stable or a cave, his parents having been turned away from every decent inn in town. His earthly parents were not notables even in their local region, but modest people. And because of the improbable story about being conceived by the Holy Spirit before the marriage of Joseph and Mary had been consummated, he came into the world with more than a whiff of scandal surrounding him. Even viewing him as respectable challenged the rightthinking people of his village.

His birth was not announced to the political leaders and luminaries of society, but to a band of shepherds — an important occupation in a land where sheep were important both economically and symbolically, but hardly a high-status occupation. The manner of the birth was not only an affront to respectability as understood by the rich and powerful of the Earth, it was seen as a threat to the powers-that-be of the day. The first reaction of kings and princes who heard about the birth was to want to kill the child.

The birth of Jesus, then, was both an affront to the powerful of the Earth and a direct challenge to their selfimportance. The child who would be proclaimed the Son of God came from the meek and lowly of the Earth and sent the message that God placed no importance on worldly power or riches, that he would place his hopes for universal salvation on a child who would grow to be an itinerant preacher — or, perhaps even less grandiosely, a storyteller — in a country of self-proclaimed prophets and preachers. Whether or not one is a believing Christian, these insights into the nature of the God Christians profess — often enough only faintly understood or almost completely misunderstood by believers themselves — offer an important window into authentic Christianity.

If this year of uncertainty and vague fear is an occasion to help us understand that the truly valuable things of this life are not found in power and riches but in our relationships — in our capacity to cherish our families, love our neighbors, stretch out a helping hand to those less fortunate and seek reconciliation with those who would be our enemies, perhaps it will be a rich and blessed Christmas after all.

The child who would be proclaimed the Son of God came from the meek and lowly of the Earth and sent the message that God placed no importance on worldly power or riches.