Faith Matters: The First Christmas

The earliest written words about Jesus, the letters of Paul, make no mention of the Christmas birth. Neither does Mark, the first of the four gospels. The Gospel of John is a silent night except for a vague reference to “one born under the law.” The earliest followers of Jesus in the Jerusalem Church were not interested in miracle stories about Jesus but were more interested in what Jesus preached in his public ministry.

The two references of the birth tradition are in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, written some 80 or more years after the life of Jesus. They were more interested in adapting the story of Jesus to the gentile churches in Rome and Greece.

In Matthew, the Holy Family lives in Bethlehem where Jesus is born and then they move to Nazareth. He portrays Jesus as the new Moses and his gospel is written in the style of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible.

Luke has the Holy Family living in Nazareth and traveling to Bethlehem for the birth. Luke’s gospel centers on Mary and on the Holy Spirit as the guiding principle in Jesus’s life.

Both Matthew and Luke replace the two Caesars, Julius and Augustus, who were worshiped as the sons of God, with Jesus as the son of David. Their emphasis on the miracles of Christmas and the Divinity make it difficult to discern the message of Jesus’ public ministry.

Christmas is not about an ornament taken form the attic to hang on a tree and then be returned to the attic on December 26th. Christmas is about which path we will follow to find the Beloved Community of the People of God here on Earth today: victory through power and violence, or peace through love and justice.