The Fantastical, Improbable, Story of Christmas
For the past three years I've posted this story on Christmas eve. Here it is for 2020:
The fantastical, improbable, story of Christmas.
An artistic God, who some gazillion years ago created earth and people out of stardust decides to visit the planet and people - in the form of a Jewish baby. The baby is born to a virgin teenager named Mary and her bewildered fiancé, Joseph. Mary had been alerted to the sexless and imminent birth by an angel named Gabriel. He tells her there is nothing to fear. She gives birth to the child in a small town in Judea called Bethlehem. Mary names the boy Yeshua (in Hebrew, something like rescue, save, or deliver). Translated to Greek? Jesus.
It’s not long before the young family is on the run. Herod, the Roman king of Judea takes an interest in the baby boy, somehow sees him as a threat, and concocts an evil plan to flush him out and kill him. Then it just gets more unreal from there.
By the age of 12, Jesus is so well-versed in Torah that he’s hanging out in the temple with Rabbis asking questions, giving answers. Jesus becomes a teacher and accrues to himself a few disciples and some general interest among the population. He gets some publicity outside religious circles with Jewish historian Flavius Josephus writing of “Jesus, the so-called Christ.” The Roman politician, Pliny, referenced that Christians worshipped Christ as a god and that they demonstrated a “pig-headed obstinacy.”
In crazy-making fashion, Jesus affirmed it all (except the pig-headed part). He explicitly claimed that he was the Messiah of Israel (the Christ) and God in the flesh. Jesus said so many outlandish things that two thousand years later writer C.S. Lewis wrote that Jesus is either a lunatic, liar, or Lord (Messiah/God in the flesh). I suppose Jesus anticipated this since he used to ask people, “Who do you say I am?”
In very short order, Jesus did everything he thought needed to done in order to communicate the arrival of a new time for humanity. He called it a kingdom, something the entire populace of the time would clearly understand. Yet, Jesus meant a different kind of kingdom - one not seen before on earth. Jesus was holding out an opportunity to join in with him in being a new kind of human community “on earth as it is in heaven.” He was basically saying, if you come with me, the whole earth is your hometown.
Then things got weirder.
He was arrested on trumped-up charges and sentenced to crucifixion on a cross between two other criminals. As intended, he died, and then was buried in a borrowed tomb. Three days later, Jesus was up and at it, appearing to just enough reliable witnesses, both men and women, to make clear he’d done the impossible. Jesus had been resurrected – from death to life. Shortly thereafter, he vanished into thin air with the assurance that he’d be back, and that he’d appoint the Spirit of God to direct, correct, comfort, and care in his absence. That’s pretty much where the story is at this point.
What’s inexplicable, by any measure of logic or common sense, is how this Jesus and his improbable tale got any traction at all. Yet, Jesus is the most followed, talked about, studied, written about, person in all of recorded history. No person or life has inspired so much art, music, literature, or just caring for people and culture (hospitals, universities, orphanages, conservation etc.).
Similarly, Jesus has to be the most co-opted individual in history too, for better and for worse, both by the well-intended, and the evil using his name for their cause or gain.
So, fantastical and improbable? Absolutely. Impossible? No, not if it’s true. Jesus is quoted as saying as much - "with God all things are possible (Matt. 19).” It only takes a speck of faith to step into the evolving story of Christmas and find out for yourself. All are welcome. Come freely. Fear not.
Photo: Bethlehem, © National Geographic