Merry Christmas
(The Real Story)

Given by James Covington on December 18th, 2005

Merry Christmas, everyone! Someone said to me this week: “Jim, you’re not going to talk again in your sermon on Sunday about how when you were a child your father got drunk every Christmas Eve and ruined everything, are you? You’re not going to do that again, are you?” Well, I guess not! So Merry Christmas! I know there is much debate these days about where and when that phrase can be spoken. I’m not going to get into that baited bickering arena with you today. Hell, I just want to say Merry Christmas. Yes, Christmas is commercialized beyond our wildest bank accounts. As we were viewing a commercial recently on television, Suzanne and I looked at each other and knew we were thinking the same thing: “What’s wrong with this stupid picture?” But, we can choose to bust our accounts or not. No one is forcing us.

And yes, the world is grim in many ways. Heartbreaking. I’m outraged everyday by some other inhumane violence or partisan self-interest policy or character assassination. In desperation to escape, I turned on the car radio a couple of weeks ago while I was driving to a wedding to officiate and scanned to a radio station playing nothing but Christmas music. I loved it. I said to myself, I don’t care how much in the Christmas mood I am not, I’m going to enjoy this. And I did and still do. Tuned in this morning, on the way up here. That’s because the Christmas music reminds me of the past—bad times and good times. Yeah, call it nostalgia. So what is so wrong in being reminded of loving connections and parties, and Christmas trees and opening presents, gulping eggnog, singing “Frosty?” But you know something? The music also represents a hopeful mood created by a story. It really does. Today, I want to remind you that, after all, this time of year is a celebration of a story about hope and peace. Not only is that true of the Christmas story, but also of the Hanukkah story, which we also celebrate this time of year.

Ah, the power of stories. I believe that at some deep level we are hard wired to respond to narrative. Telling stories is as old as civilization and as old as language. My father use to tell stories of his childhood poverty, being the youngest of 11 children and his mother dying when he was only two years old. And I sat still as a mouse, listening. Garrison Keillor tells stories, funny ones, and we all laugh with knowing and rapture. Long before writing was invented people told stories about the origin of the earth and of life, stories about gods, stories about animals, stories about groups of stars, stories about great heroes, stories about ancestors. Through stories thousands of generations have passed on their culture and their identity. In an oral culture, stories told from memory got embellished in the retelling. Think of the stories you tell among friends and family about events in your own life some years ago.

On Christmas Eve, Suzanne and I will assemble with our family members as we have for years and years. We will hear stories, some old, some new, some embellished with age. Stories change a tiny bit with each telling. Stories often have morals to teach—lessons about bravery, loyalty, determination, enduring suffering, showing compassion.

Think for a minute how important stories are to children. Children love to hear stories. In fact, they love to hear the same stories over and over (and over!) again. We read bedtime stories to children. Nobody reads bedtime essays, bedtime editorials, bedtime avant garde poetry, bedtime literary criticism, much less bedtime sermons. It is stories that we long to hear. Stories touch our hearts in a special way. All the holy days we celebrate this time of year begin with stories.

Interestingly, the celebration of Christmas and the Christmas story have become so embedded in our culture that we assume it was always so. It wasn’t. Even in the days of colonial America Christmas was not a big deal.

What is even more surprising is that the earliest Christians do not appear to have celebrated Christmas. The old English word that eventually became “Christmas” does not appear until the twelfth century and the word “Christmas” itself, meaning Mass of Christ, does not appear until the sixteenth century. The earliest evidence of a celebration of the nativity does not come until the third century. The date of December 25 appears to have originated as a major pagan festival celebrating the winter solstice and the triumph of the sun over darkness. As Christianity replaced pagan traditions in the Roman Empire, people merged the old pagan festival with a celebration of Jesus as the “Sun [S-U-N] of Righteousness.” There is no mention of the time of year of Jesus’ birth anywhere in the Christian scriptures.

Today I would have us look at the familiar Christmas story as just that–a story. Let’s think of the story as a myth or a legend, not as history. As with all stories, let’s not get too worried about the facts.

The story as we know it begins, of course, in the Christian scriptures. However, we need to remember that the scriptures were the writing down of oral traditions that had been around for decades. An amazing thing happens when we look again at the scriptures. They describe the birth of Jesus differently.

For example, the consensus among scholars of the Christian scriptures is that the book of Mark was the first Gospel written, probably more than 30 years after the death of Jesus.

The first thing we notice is that Mark has no birth story at all. Jesus appears at the beginning of Mark as an adult, being baptized by John the Baptist. Mark describes Jesus as being from Nazareth. Why, one wonders, did the writer of Mark think it unnecessary to have a story of Jesus’ birth?

In the book of Matthew, Jesus is born in Bethlehem. In this account wise men, or astrologers, came following a star seeking a king. They find Jesus in a house, not a manger. No mention of a manger. There were no camels.

The familiar nativity scene comes from the book of Luke. But Luke begins not with the birth of Jesus, but with the birth of John the Baptist. Mary and Joseph are introduced later, when the angel Gabriel tells Mary that she will bear a child of the Holy Ghost. For some reason Mary and Joseph go to Bethlehem where Mary gives birth and lays Jesus in a manger because there is no room in the inn. But there was no such thing as an inn or innkeeper. The Greek word Luke used was kataluma, as in There was no room for them in the kataluma. Scholars agree that the word describes a spare room of some kind or perhaps a common room for travelers who need a rood over their heads.

So you see, there is wonder and mystery in this story, much of it hiding between the verses and in the silences that cry out to pilgrim readers. Luke’s soft words give us the gentle and polite details, but the real story was one of pain and surprise, of grace, beauty and brutality. Sounds all too human to me!

I’m fascinated by how we have filled in the gaps over the years. In building our own Christmas story, we have padded this bare account with cultural details, many of which are anachronistic or simply unlikely.

Now, my purpose in this is not to be a kind of theological Grinch. My purpose is quite the opposite: I want us to revel in the story. I want us to celebrate the great story that Christmas has become. I am just fine with lambs and cows at a stable. I’m fine with a story about Mary with her blue shawl riding on a donkey. Wise men on camels are OK with me. (Heck, I can even be reconciled with a little drummer boy.)

The fact that probably none of it happened does not make the story any less true. The truth is in the story. I do not mean that we should be indifferent to facts. I mean that we should not confuse a religious story, a story that is still alive and changing, with a news story.

It would be absolute folly for us to reject the deep emotional and spiritual truths of the Christmas story—and there are many. We don’t reject the truths about human life in Shakespeare’s accounts of Julius Caesar or King Richard or Hamlet because they are not historically accurate. That would be to miss the point.

The real Christmas story is just that, a story. It is a story about hope and possibility. It is a story about how the embodiment of the sacred comes not as a powerful king, but as a helpless, impoverished baby. The story has become a desperately needed story of the coming of a prince of peace, a story that reminds us of our desperate need for peace in our hearts and peace among the peoples of the earth. The Christmas story has become a story of generosity, compassion and justice.

The real Christmas story is not an exclusively Christian story. Again, it is a human story. It is a story that expresses our deep longing to live in harmony with one another, our deep longing to be with friends and family again. The real story includes raising our voices together in familiar song once more. The truths in the story are the enduring human values and hopes that the story contains. The real story of Christmas is your story and my story. The real story of Christmas is as accessible to Jews and Muslims and Buddhists and pagans and agnostics as it is to Christians.

At Christmas we ponder the wonder, mystery, and promise of birth, not only the birth of the baby Jesus, but our own wondrous, mysterious, and promising births as well. We are not born good as many liberal theologians claim. Nor, as the Calvinists and fundamentalist claim, are we born evil. We are born — if not completely fettered by circumstances– free: free to grow, free to change, free to give and by so giving to receive, not the gift not of life, which comes without our asking, but the gift of a more meaningful and fulfilling life. We are born, in a sense, to be born anew whenever new birth is called for in our lives.

Right now we are buying gifts for our loved ones. This is just fine. Christmas and Hanukkah gifts are good, they are just not good enough. The only truly good gift we can give one another is our self. Not wrapped, but unwrapped. No fancy ribbons and bows, just us, as we are and as we want ourselves to be. That’s because we can all make a difference in each other’s lives.

There is an old Jewish story about this, because there is an old Jewish story about everything.

A small synagogue was struggling to stay alive. There was no generous spirit there, nothing to rest in, and the people had taken to bickering (Things are changing…they are not the same…can you believe what she said? ) Finally, one of them set out to visit this great wise rabbi in the next town, to ask his advice. He told the rabbi their sad story.

“Well,” the old man said, “Your problem is that you are suffering from the sin of ignorance. The Messiah is among you, and you are ignorant of this fact.” When the man returned to his small synagogue and related these words, nobody could believe them. “How could it be one of us?” they would ask. Then, to prove that it couldn’t be true, they would go down the list of each one of them, outlining all the reasons it certainly couldn’t be that person, or that person, or any of them.

Still, the old rabbi was known for a surprising kind of wisdom. So they thought, “My God, what if it is that person? Or that person? And just in case it might be, they started treating one another much more generously. AS you can imagine, this changed the spirit of the place completely. They had found a bigger spirit in which to reside, and as they resided in it and it in them, both they and their synagogue grew into a very great blessing in the world.

That’s a kind of Hanukkah story, a kind of Christmas story, a kind of holy music sung by a choir of angels. The music is set to the words of that wise old rabbi. It contains the secret of this season, and the secret of finding that bigger place in which to rest.

Our sin is a sin of ignorance. The Messiah is among us, and we are ignorant of this fact. What is the Messiah that can save us? It is the spirit of life carried in good music performed and sung with love. It is the generous spirit that feeds the hungry, helps those in need right here in Westchester, seeks to affect positive change in the world, even in places like Darfur and the middle east. It is the yearning to join a church, to join together in an all too human community, fraught with human foibles, but a community of spiritual seekers and finders who are committed to rising above the foibles. These are some of the Messiahs among us, some of the spirits big enough to rest in.

But there’s more, too. The Messiah, the light of the world and hope of the future is also within us—within each of us—and we are often ignorant of that fact, too. But not now, not in this moment! Here we are! Light and hope reside within each of us waiting to be born anew! That’s the real story!

So, let us celebrate Christmas! Let us rejoice in the real story of Christmas. Let the story of a poor baby bringing hope to the world touch you again in the deepest part of your soul. Feel the joy of Mary and the amazement of the shepherds. Let the wonderful songs of Christmas—Silent Night, Joy to the World, It Came Upon a Midnight Clear, We Three Kings, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, and all the rest—let these songs sing in your heart and lift your spirit.

What a beautiful story Christmas is. May the real Christmas story bring hope, warmth, and joy to our hearts. May we open our hearts to the rebirth of hope and the promise of peace. Let what is sacred and holy, as embedded in that prophet of long ago, come into our hearts and dwell among us. O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.