The Three Roads to Bethlehem
Gary Cox, University Congregational Church
Wichita, KS
(12/23/01)
Last week, as we embraced the mystery and wonder of the
season through the choir’s outstanding performance of Rutter’s Gloria, we
reflected on the story of our faith. We
considered how our story is a beautiful combination of poetry and history, from
the moving creation myths which bear the startling truth that our God created
everything that is out of nothingness, to the historical account of Israel’s
struggles through the millennium leading up to the birth of Jesus.
And we concluded our reflections by
acknowledging that everything in our story revolves around and is anchored upon
Jesus Christ. We Congregationalists
have a tendency to analyze everything, including the elements of our
faith. We don’t like to accept
something as the gospel truth just because somebody tells us it is the gospel
truth. We put it out on the table, shine
a light on it, and make an honest attempt to see if it really deserves to be a
part of our belief system. After all,
if our faith is going to be the foundation of our lives, that foundation should
be comprised of rock-solid ideas on which we feel confident to build our lives.
At this time of year, the
theological journals to which I subscribe always go into great scholarly detail
about what we can and what we cannot truly know about the birth of Jesus. After years of wrestling with all that
scholarship, I have come to a conclusion.
The stories surrounding the birth of Jesus have a justifiable place at
the heart of our faith. I realize that
there are only two accounts of Jesus’ birth among the 27 books of the New
Testament, and that those two accounts—one in Matthew and one in Luke—have very
different recollections about the events surrounding the birth of Jesus.
But that doesn’t bother me. Sometimes we don’t recognize the significance of certain events
until hindsight grants us a more perfect vision. For those of us who believe that in some mysterious way Jesus
Christ is the Son of God, it doesn’t matter so much whether a star miraculously
hovered in the sky, or angels made proclamations to shepherds, or wise men came
from the East. Looking back we believe
the arrival of Jesus into this world was the most significant event in human
history, and celebrating the arrival of Christ in our traditional way reveals
at least a glimmer of the wonder and joy we feel in our hearts.
For the birth of Jesus to evoke such joy, one has to
believe he was something more than a great teacher. I would never take anything away from his teaching, and I think
the world would be a much better place if humanity would give real credence to
what he taught, and to how he lived.
But many Christians believe Jesus was much more than a great
teacher. We believe we can call him the
incarnation.
Now, this is where theology can get a little
messy. To say that Jesus is the
incarnation is to say that in some way Jesus embodied the divinity of God. In other words, incarnation is the idea that
God came to live among us in this world, and that through Jesus, God
experienced what it is like to have a body like ours, and a mind like ours, and
all the other little things that make us human. For me, this is not a proposition at which we can arrive through
our normal analytical methods. It is a
mystery. It is illogical. It is irrational.
True to my Congregational foundation, I reject all the
explicit creeds that attempt to explain away this mystery. Over the centuries the church has developed
many creeds--written formulas--explaining the relationship between God and
Jesus. Most seem to say that Jesus and
God are the same thing, which I believe entirely misses the point, since when
Jesus walked the earth God was still everywhere in all of creation, holding
everything that is in being. Jesus
wasn’t everything God is. But in some
mysterious way Jesus was a reflection of God’s divinity. To say more than that on the subject, for
me, is to speak of things we cannot understand.
The idea of the incarnation is something heartfelt. Trying to logically explain it only makes it
sound more absurd. So I won’t try to
convince you of the truth behind the incarnation. I saw a sign in a friend’s church office a few weeks back that
said, “Faith is believing in spite of the evidence, and then watching the
evidence change.” Perhaps that’s the
only way to approach the incarnation.
But the idea of the incarnation is so important to
me. I have come to the conclusion that
to arrive at the heart of the Christian faith we have to go through
Bethlehem. Because Bethlehem is the
place God came to us through the birth of a child. The Bethlehem I’m talking about is not only the little town that
existed two-thousand years ago in ancient Israel. It is also a place that exists just as surely today in the heart
of the Christian. It is found deep
inside each of us—that place we usually keep hidden from the world, where
mystery and wonder both gnaw at the often mindless way we go through our daily
routines, and at the same time offer us hope, even in the midst of a suffering
world, that somehow, someway, in the words of Julian of Norwich, “All will be
well, and all will be well, and all manner of thing will be well.”
In that hidden place, that secret heart, the ancient
world of Jesus mingles with our own, and the border between Jesus’ world and
the world we live in today is hard to distinguish. In both worlds there are oppressive governments and unfair social
practices; there are downtrodden people crying out for a chance at happiness;
there is disease and famine and cruelty that make the world seem shamefully
unjust. But in the depths of our hearts
where those two worlds meet, we find an island of tranquility, as a mother and
father hover over their firstborn child lying in a manger. This is Bethlehem, and lying in that manger
is the Savior of all earth, the Son of God, and in this place there are indeed
angels in the skies and shepherds in the fields and wise men following a star
in search of a new king.
If we have to go through Bethlehem to get to the heart
of the Christian faith, the question for you and me is, “How do we get
there?” Well, our traditional Christmas
story points to three of the most common routes to that most important place in
the Christian faith. One of those three
roads is traveled by the wise men, another by the shepherds, and the third by
Mary and Joseph.
Most of us, at one time or another in our lives, have
found ourselves on all three of these roads.
Consider the first road to Bethlehem, which is the route taken by the wise
men. The wise men, or magi, take the
path that is mapped out by great learning.
Through diligent study they have learned to interpret the movements of
the planets and stars, and it is this knowledge of the heavens that guides
their journey.
Two things should be noted about the wise men. First, they are astrologers, which means in
that first century context that they are scientists. Second, because Matthew’s gospel tells us they are “from the
East,” they are not Jewish. These men
are from somewhere beyond the borders of Israel, perhaps Arabia or
Mesopotamia. And this tells us two
important things about their particular road to Bethlehem. They have no knowledge of Judaism, and hence
no reason to think the arrival of a new king has anything to do with the
awaited Jewish Messiah. They simply
have come to the conclusion that such astronomical events indicate the arrival
of an earthly king. Second, there is no
“awe” in their journey. There is no
indication they have a sense of wonder at the appearance of the star. As scientists, they are simply investigating
the phenomenon they have discovered.
Relating this to those who in the modern world take
the wise men’s road to the heart of the faith—to Bethlehem—this is the
scholarly route. This road is the way
of study, the route filled with books on the Bible, and theology, and church
history. This is not the path of blind
faith. This is the path of reason, and
logic, and study. And I would think
that every person who seriously embraces the Christian faith, at some point in
his or her journey, walks along this path for a time, even if it is not their
primary path.
Compare the route taken by the wise men to a second
road to Bethlehem—the road taken by the shepherds. The shepherds are ordinary people going about their everyday
routines. Shepherds were among the most
marginalized and poverty ridden of all working people, and these guys are just
minding their own business, trying to make a living as they tended their flocks
on a winter’s night. But these shepherds
were surely Jewish, and they would have heard the stories about the coming
Messiah, probably giving it all the consideration the average Christian today
would give stories of the Second Coming of Christ.
And then, they are instantly terrified as an angel of
the Lord appears and says, “Do not be afraid.
I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been
born to you; he is Christ the Lord.” In
the next instant a great company of the heavenly host appears, praising God and
singing, “Glory to God on highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men.
This is one of the all-time great epiphanies. These shepherds no longer harbor any sort of
doubts about the glory of God. There is
no way they can ever be the same. And
following the instructions they receive from the heavens, they hurry into
Bethlehem to discover Jesus lying in the manger.
Many have at least had a glimpse of this road to
Bethlehem. Many of us have had some
sort of spiritual awakening in our lives.
People often experience such moments in the presence of great natural
beauty, such as snow-peaked mountains, meandering brooks, or the simple quiet
of a colorful sunset. These are the
moments when all of creation seems perfect, and all things seem in balance, and
we feel as if from the dawn of creation we were meant to see exactly what we
see in that moment of perfect beauty.
For some, they find themselves on this road to
Bethlehem as the result of a blinding and unexplainable experience of the
divine. The Apostle Paul surely had
such an experience on the Damascus Road, as he was confronted by the Risen
Christ for the evils he was perpetrating against the people of the early
Christian faith. And today, everywhere
from homeless shelters to great mansions, from prisons to executive offices,
there are people who come face to face with their own evils, and in turning to
Christ find themselves in the presence of God’s unspeakable love. This is the second road to Bethlehem, very
different from the first, logical road taken by the wise men, but just as real,
and just as valid.
The third road to Bethlehem is the road taken by Mary
and Joseph. They arrive in Bethlehem
simply going about the business of daily life.
They are drawn to Bethlehem not because they are in search of scientific
answers, and not because of an inexplicable intrusion into their lives by a
host of angels ordering them to go there.
They are going to Bethlehem because the king ordered a census, and
Joseph, being in the lineage of David, must register in the town of
Bethlehem. Their arrival in Bethlehem
comes in the midst of their everyday lives.
This is the path most of us are on, most days. We don’t spend our hours pouring over
complex theological dissertations in search of a new spiritual insight, nor do
we spend our days responding to an unspeakable experience of the presence of
God. We just go about our daily
routines, hardly aware that God is in our midst, and every now and then we slow
down long enough to realize that God is performing miracles right before our
eyes, even in the most mundane of circumstances. And in those rare precious moments we become radically amazed
that God has created this universe, and put us on this beautiful blue and green
planet, and given us people to love.
Three roads into the heart of our faith: the path of
study, the path of divine intervention, and the path of everyday living. All three roads are acceptable ways of
arriving in Bethlehem, because all three roads take us to the very depths of
our being where Bethlehem is found. And
once we arrive there, whatever route we choose to take, we must then confront
what many refer to as “the scandal of the Christmas story.”
Because we are raised in a culture where the story of
Christmas is common, we have a tendency to treat it as a fairy tale, turning it
into something almost trite. And we
sing songs about the birth of Jesus, and we feel warm all over as we imagine
Mary cuddling the baby Jesus in his swaddling clothes, and that is okay. It should make us feel warm all
over. But we have to be careful that we
are really hearing this story—not the sanitized version of the story as told in
popular culture, but the story as it is understood in Bethlehem.
This is a scandalous story, this idea that in some
mysterious way God came into human history as a helpless infant, whose parents
had no place to lay him other than a manger—a feeding trough. This scandalous story does not have God
entering the world with bright lights and wild fury and majestic thunder as he
is placed upon the highest throne while earthly kings bow humbly at his
feet. Instead, God slips unobtrusively
into human history, as a helpless newborn, lying in a feeding trough, in a
little-known province, far from the centers of earthly power, loved only by his
unwed or newlywed young parents.
When we travel the road to Bethlehem, we find a God
who is radically different than the one we were expecting. Remember the life of Jesus with all its ups
and downs: from that night in the manger to his baptism in the Jordan River;
from the miracle at the wedding in Cana where the water is changed to wine, to
the walking on the water in the Sea of Galilee; from the feeding of the five
thousand with the miraculous multiplication of the loaves, to his
transfiguration in front of Peter, James and John; from the thought provoking
parables he told his followers to the often witty and stinging aphorisms he
aimed at his detractors; from the Last Supper and his betrayal, to his violent
death upon the cross.
Through it all, Jesus was at his most divine when he
was at his most human. I love reading
all the stories about the amazing things the gospels say Jesus did. But in my eyes it is not the miraculous
feedings, or catches of fish, or healings, or any of the other great miracles
attributed to Jesus that reveal his divinity.
Rather it is his helplessness in the manger; his love of the disciples;
his pain at his betrayal; his tears shed in the Garden of Gethsemane; his
ultimate surrender to death; these were the times when the true divinity of
Jesus was revealed. Jesus proved he was divine by fully entering into his
humanity. It was when he was at his
most humble that he was most fully human, and it was when he was most fully
human that he was most fully divine.
And that is the lesson we take from this season, from
this day: that we ourselves walk through life as Christ did so long ago; that
it is in our own weakest moments that we are called most fully into the
presence of God; that God exalts us finally when we learn to humble ourselves;
that it is when we ourselves are most humble that we are most human; and that
it is when we enter into the depths of our humanity that we become divine, and
our true nature is revealed—children, born in the image of God, capable of
great love, and journeying always closer and closer to Bethlehem.
And
now we go forth, journeying together on the road God has given us to travel,
with our feet moving ever closer to God’s kingdom, and our hearts moving ever
closer to Bethlehem. In the name of the
holy child whose birth we celebrate in this season, we pray, Amen.