How Christmas was a
political event
long before litigating Manager Scenes
Tuesday, December 2, 2014
Jeff Lampl
Jeff Lampl
This blog by
John Frye helps us to understand the Christmas message from an angle few of us
consider.
“The
gospel tradition is full of conflict. Often the conflict is violent.
All three synoptic Gospels begin and end with conflict, the most prominent
being the crucifixion of Jesus by the Romans, followed by his vindication in the
resurrection. . . . . Far from avoiding or transcending such conflicts, however,
Jesus himself enters into them and even exacerbates or escalates them”
(Richard A. Horsley, Jesus
and the Spiral of Violence: Popular Jewish Resistance in Roman Palestine,
page 156).
Against
the popular myth that Jesus as the Good Shepherd wandered around Galilee,
Samaria and Judea with a Breck
Girl hairdo and a laid-back, peaceful, agrarian demeanor, Horsley, who has
paid scholarly attention to the violent socio-politico-religious environment of
the “holy land” during the time of Jesus, paints a far more turbulent
picture. Horsley compellingly presents a Jesus living in, facing, and
standing against the terrorist realities of his day. Jesus, in a sense,
woke up every day to the sound of bombings, not to soft musical favorites all
the time, all day long.
When the
angels sang about “peace on earth” at Jesus’ birth, they did not see a
gentle Bethlehem stable with soft snow on the ground and bright stars twinkling.
They saw blood running in the streets of Jerusalem. Heaven was aware
of the hate-driven plots of many Jews to retaliate against the inhumane
oppression of Rome. Not too long after Jesus was born, the blood of
infants flowed in the streets of Bethlehem as Herod viciously sought to kill the
new rival “king.” John the Baptist was capriciously beheaded.
Jewish dissidents were crucified by the hundreds yearly.
Assassinations of Roman soldiers and Jewish compromisers with Rome by
Jewish sicarii
during the Jewish great feasts in Jerusalem were common and expected.
Reading
our own culture’s “separation of church and state” into the Gospels is a
serious interpretive error.
Every
religious thing Jesus did and said was highly politically-charged with
resistance to the Jewish abandonment of their hope in and purpose for God.
Rome cautiously tolerated Israel’s quirky theocratic ways, but Jesus did
not. Jesus’ assault on the Temple was equivalent to protesting the
Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. Jesus as the Shepherd walked in the
valley of the shadow of death every day of his life. Green pastures and still
waters were a national memory and a desperate hope, not a daily option.
In the
midst of all this, the Essenes chose a cottage village by the lake (escapism).
The zealots chose the bloody sword. The Herodians and Sadducees
chose traitorous compromise “with the powers that be.” The Pharisees
narcotized themselves on endless religious minutiae. Rome chose
intimidating military power. Wading neck deep into it all, Jesus chose
self-giving love.
The love
of God in Jesus Christ is the greatest threat to terrorists and escapists and
compromisers and religious nitpickers and imperial power brokers. God’s
love was their only hope; our only hope; my only hope. . . .
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