REVOLUTIONARY CHRISTMAS

Reflections on the Nativity of the Lord (Christmas): Isaiah 52:7-10: Hebrews 1:1-6, John 1:1-18

Between the cuteness of the cribs and the soft melodies of the carols, is Christmas losing its revolutionary meaning? The Christmas liturgy wakes us up to the surprisingly radical message of the birth of Jesus.

1. At Christmas, GOD REVOLTS against the culture of hegemony: Jesus irrupts into the lives of a people reeling under the political dominion of the Romans (Luke 1:5), the social and religious upper-handedness of the elite Sadducees, Pharisees, Scribes, etc. (Matthew 23), the ever-widening economic gap between the rich and the poor (Luke 6), and the growing marginalisation of those in the peripheries. Logically, therefore, it would have made sense for ‘the messiah’ to take birth in a place of power: the palace of Caesar or Herod or the family of a Sadducee or a rich merchant. Instead, God revolts! He chooses the cover of the midnight darkness and the anonymity of the Holy Family to reject the hegemony of power and to announce salvation (first reading) in a Bethlehem stable.

God revolts against the idealisation of power in its many forms by distancing himself zones of social, political, and religious upper-handedness. What the angels announce to the shepherds is the surest sign of God’s revolt: “a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger” (Luke 2:12). In many ways, Christmas 2024 welcomes Jesus to a world that is not very different from that of the first Christmas. Our societies, each in its unique manner, continue to reel under the weight of hegemonies, violence of those in power, and the unholy indifference of the middle class. Christmas continues to announce the Good News of God’s revolt against the hegemony of these powers that be.

2. At the birth of Jesus, GOD TROUBLES the culture of violence: Matthew reports, “When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him” (2:3). Why would the arrival of the magi and their enquiry about the birth of an unknown “king of the Jews” trouble Herod and Jerusalem? Herod, born to a Idumean-Jew and a Nabatean Princess (Jordan), was not a Jew himself and therefore not a legitimate heir to the throne. The Gospel of Matthew (2), the Talmud (b. Baba Batra 4b), and even Josephus (Ant. 17:304–308) question his legitimacy to the throne. The ruthless Herod, however, usurped power by convincing Caesar and even murdering several members of his own family. He ruled with violence, imposing crushing taxes, and systematically eliminating oppositions. Contemporary parallels, here as elsewhere, are glaringly obvious!

The possible birth of a descendant of David (legitimate heir), therefore troubles him and his political establishment in Jerusalem built upon the culture of violence. He seeks violent ways to do away this threat first through the unaware magi and later by ordering the slaughter of the holy innocents. God troubles Herod’s culture of violence and his illegitimate throne by speaking ‘the language of love’ through His Son (second reading). His final word is love. Herod was probably expecting a militant messiah accompanied by a soldiery armed to the teeth. God, instead, sends His son as a newborn baby, fragile and small but the surest sign of God’s love (John 3:16). This unarmed and disarming King continues to trouble our contemporary culture of violence through the counter-cultural language of love.

3. At the manger, GOD REVERSES the culture of popularity. It is not a coincidence that the story of the birth of Jesus is intertwined with story of the census ordered by Emperor Augustus. Biblically, God is known to have a problem with census. Even his beloved David, when he ordered a census of Israel despite the objections of his general Joab, God became so enraged that 70,000 people died as a result (2 Samuel 24:1-17). Why? At a time when military weaponry wasn’t as advanced as it is today, the strength of a political power was measured by its strength in numbers. Thus, a census, apart from its obvious usefulness for taxation, also became a tool to establish the popularity of the ruler. This popularity of Roman imperialism was advertised in the colonies through poems and inscriptions, coins and images, statues, altars, and structures.

In the silence of the manger at Bethlehem, God reverses this culture of popularity by choosing the peripheries over power centres. Today’s Gospel notes, “He was in the world but the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, but his own people did not accept him”. While the star of the newborn king was there for everyone to see, not many except the three wise seekers understood its significance. God sends his army of angels to announce the mystery of incarnation not to theologians and experts of the law but to the illiterate and penniless shepherds, whom even the census seems to have forgotten. The crib is crowded not with bureaucrats and influencers but with cattle.

The revolutionary message of Christmas inspires us to revolt against the culture of hegemony through anonymity, trouble the culture of violence through love, and reverse the culture of popularity through our consistent option for the peripheries. Happy revolutionary Christmas!