Tuesday, December 23, 2014

The elegant tale is told again

The story is perhaps the most familiar of stories. A writer we know as Luke, a terrific reporter, editor and crafter of narrative, begins it this way in Eugene Peterson's The Message:

"About that time Caesar Augustus ordered a census to be taken throughout the Empire (giving it immediately a Star Wars-ish feel). Everyone had to travel to his own ancestral hometown to be accounted for.

"So Joseph went from the Galilean town of Nazareth up to Bethlehem in Judah, David's town, for the census. As a descendant of David, he had to go there. He wet with Mary, his fiancee, who was pregnant. While they were there, the time came for her to give birth. She gave birth to a son, her firstborn. She wrapped him in a blanket and laid him in a manger, because there was no room in the hostel."

Simple.
Elegant.
Precise.
Practical.

With little theological undermining.

Here's the facts, Jack. Caesar Augustus caused the fuss by ordering a census.
The census had to be taken everywhere in Palestine.
Everyone had to go to HIS own hometown.
The count had to include every male.
Joseph led his family and child to be, going from Nazareth in the North to Bethlehem in the south, despite the wording being "up to."
Bethlehem was a small "town" but it was most famous for being "David's town."
Mary was his fiancee, but she had mounted a donkey to go to Bethlehem. We are giving no reason for Joseph having moved from Bethlehem to Nazareth. Plenty of people were visiting Bethlehem, so much so that there was no room in what Peterson describes as a hostel.

There. Luke's investigation discovers these words. The piece has little else to say. There is no time frame for the journey. There is no sense that the couple has plans other than short-term. They left what was their home only for the census, nothing else. They apparently didn't plan on staying there long enough to have the child for it seemed to be a bit of a surprise to them the child would come while they were there.

The most important event in human kind to that moment was at best a surprise to be happening in the manner in which it did.

Look, many of the details that most of us have memorized don't come from Luke. There is no innkeeper in the story in Luke, no indication of a long search on a night before the day of the birth. The family probably ends up in a stable or a cave, but Peterson describes it as a hostel. Swaddling clothes are not mentioned in this portion of Luke. It is a plain description to a plain birth of a plain baby.

Amazingly, Matthew has even fewer of the details that most of our nativity scenes are washed in. If you are looking deeply for creativity, you will come away drained of beauty.

But here's the key to all this. Yes, it is a wonderful tale. Yes, it was an incredible night. Yes, we've added to the tale with our own dreams of starry, starry nights. Through it all, when push comes to shove, the narrative becomes a twist of cinnamon, a shaker of vanilla, a wisp of wrapping paper.

Mary's birth struggle, the pains of child birth, come normally. Jesus is born with no less strain that babies of all sizes and normality.

Whether the tale is told in Luke, or in Matthew or not touched upon in Mark or John at all, it happened. Whether we sit our kids down around beautifully trimmed trees and tell the beautifully trimmed story one more time or we hold onto the traditions as if our very lives counted on it does not matter. The tale of shepherds and wise men and fathers and mothers struggling against time and the currency of miracle is as eternal as it ever was.

Tomorrow night, it all starts again. The beauty of the miracle will be just as gorgeous as it ever was or ever will be.

For it is Christmas. Again ... and again.






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