The
Birth Stories
During
these days preachers will be planning their Christmas messages.
They
will, of course, have to turn to the Gospel Infancy Narratives of
Luke and Matthew as their first source of information. Here they will
have to make a choice. Will they take off from what the stories say
or from what they mean? Most preachers take off from what the words
say and use their imaginations to embellish the stories with details
and interpretations. These often lead to a sentimental and child-oriented
message. The can often belie the fact that in Scripture the birth
of Jesus is only of secondary importance to his death and resurrection.
The meaning of his birth is understood properly only in the light
of his life, death and resurrection.
While
the approach of such preachers has some value, it is, in a sense trying
to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. It is trying to make something
out of the texts that they were never intended to convey. It is trying
to make the texts tell us what happened when they were intended to
tell us why things happened. It is trying to learn how events happened
from a text was intended to convey the meaning of what happened. To
try to see what was the original meaning of the text may not seem
so attractive at first but it is ultimately a more fulfilling way
of reading them and profiting from them.
Luke
begins with two Annunciation stories. First, the angel Gabriel appeared
to Zachariah, an old man whose wife was beyond the age of childbearing,
to tell him that Elizabeth would conceive a son. The Old Testament
often used the literary technique of saying that someone was conceived
of a mother beyond childbearing years to highlight that this person
was called by God to a special mission. But if being born of a woman
beyond child-bearing years was remarkable, how much more extraordinary,
and how much greater the person must be destined to be, who is born
of a mother without the intervention of a human father! The story
of the two annunciations are a way of highlighting the dignity and
importance of Jesus.
St
Luke tells us (2:7) that Mary "gave birth to her first born and
wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, because
there was no place for them in the inn." The thrice repeated
word manger is the most important word in this account. The child
will be found in the manger because it is in the person lying there
that people will find the sustenance of God. The finding of the child
in the manger is a sign that God wants to be found by his people again
and to be recognised once more as the people's sustenance. The Child
was wrapped in swaddling clothes which suggest a royal child, a son
of King David.
Very
often the shepherds are presented as devout people who spent their
time praying for the coming of the Messiah while tending their flocks.
Actually, in the literature of the time, they were looked down on
by society and often mentioned with tax-collectors and whores! So
Luke's point in making them the visitors to the manger is to say that
the savior of sinners and outcasts has been born. He is a savior who
makes the last become first and for whom there are no outcasts. The
angels singing "Glory to God in the highest and peace to men
with whom he is well pleased," is a literary way of saying that
God was present at the birth of Christ who would bring salvation to
all people.
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Taken
from Sundays
into Silence - A Pathway to Life. Copyright © 1998 by Claretian
Publications
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