The Subversive, Confrontational, Emboldening Stories of Christmas {Part Two}
The Christmas stories in Matthew and Luke served as preludes, or overtures, to those gospels. They encapsulated in miniature the “good news” of the larger piece and are the lens through which to read it. For readers living under the weight of imperial violence, including systematic economic and religious oppression, spying, collective punishments, rule by fear, and outright aggression in the colonies—violence that during the conflict in mid first-century Palestine burst into all-out war with accompanying rape and torture and tens of thousands crucified, the Christmas stories would have been emboldening, and in certain ways satirical. If we’re going to understand them at all, we must remember that this context inspired the gospels and their Christmastide overtures, and what it meant for a poor man like Jesus to show us and invite us to participate in the incarnation of the Divine in this world—what it meant for him to be lauded with appellations reserved for the Caesar.
In Luke, an angel appears to shepherds (a particularly low status) to herald the birth of this child Jesus who they call “Savior” and “Lord,” absconding Caesar’s titles—titles imperial subjects were imprisoned and killed for refusing to ascribe to the Emperor. Later, Luke portrays Jesus being recognized in the temple by the prophets Simeon and Anna as the one who would be “the redemption of Jerusalem,” the city those reading the gospel in the decades after its creation knew to be recently decimated by Rome. In Matthew, after a long genealogy linking Jesus to the patriarchs, an angel appears to Joseph explaining to him that Mary, his betrothed, will miraculously give birth to a child who will be the salvation of Israel….. {Read remainder of article on Patheos HERE.}