In his account of Jesus’ birth, the Gospel writer Luke shows us what Christmas is all about. More than a birthday story, Christmas has a meaning for which two well-known Christmas stories only scratch the surface. We know both main characters carry childhood insecurities into adulthood with hearts that are petty, jealous, and cynical.
First is the Grinch whose heart is two sizes too small. He decides to ruin everyone’s Christmas by stealing their presents only to realize he cannot steal the love that is in their hearts. Only then does the Grinch grow up, and his heart grows three sizes that day.
Second is the hard-hearted Ebenezer Scrooge who never grows beyond the loneliness and neglect of his childhood. He instead grows a heart for money that leaves him with a wretched life. Once he lets go of his childhood insecurities, he wakes up with a new heart of love.
Christmas is a time to celebrate a child who is born with the heart of God — the Christ child. Every year, we tell His story in a sometimes plain and simple way, but this is no sentimental story. When we consider how the earliest Christians heard it, we can realize Luke wants us to hear it not as a story of one king but of two.
2 Kings
The first king is the Roman emperor, Caesar Augustus, who lurks in the distant background and calls for a census throughout the Roman Empire. This king uses the largest army in the world to terrorize his empire into submission. Monuments scattered around that empire proclaim him to be savior, son of god, and bringer of Roman peace. The early Christians for whom Luke writes his Gospel certainly know those messages very well.
Our word Gospel means “Good News,” which is English for the Greek word, euangelion, from which we have our word, “evangelist” — the messenger of good news. When the Roman emperor (or his general) was victorious in battle and marched home with his army, he would send messengers (evangelists) ahead of him with an euangelion, that is, they would proclaim the good news of his army’s victory, and that a victory parade would soon follow.
So, now the story of the second king.
Luke takes us to shepherds outside of Bethlehem where an angelic messenger — evangelist — announces: “Do not be afraid … I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.”
But where is the victorious army and the king who sent this evangelist on ahead with this good news?
The heavenly evangelist tells the shepherds about the victorious king, announcing that this king is not the one who lives on the Palatine Hill in Rome, but in Bethlehem, saying: “Today in the city of David a savior has been born for you who is Messiah and Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.”
Only then does the heavenly army appear, and the victory parade is complete with an evangelist announcing Good News, an army, and a king who sleeps in a feeding trough of hay, or, as the singer Bono puts it, as “a child born into straw poverty.”
Victory
Luke subverts the messaging that runs throughout the Roman Empire. The real King is victorious over whatever might separate us from God. For people in his day, the world’s attention now shifts from Caesar Augustus to Jesus, who is the true Savior, the true Son of God, the true Prince of Peace. He can be found in the humility of a manger, where people go to be fed by Him.
Jesus’ birth begins a movement meant to be defiant, subversive, and upending of the normal order of life. This child is born with God’s heart, and, through His Death and Resurrection, we will be victorious over death and anything that separates us from the heart of God.
Again, in the run-up to Christmas, we easily find ourselves in the well-known stories of the Grinch and Ebenezer Scrooge who learned to let go of their cynical and fearful hearts. And yet, it is in the face of our very human insecurities that a heavenly evangelist began his message of Good News, saying, “Do not be afraid!”
This movement out of fear and insecurity is part of still another well-known child’s story, which truly gets it right.
In the classic, “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” the insecure Charlie Brown asks: “Isn't there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?” He then finds his answer in Linus. Stepping into center stage, this young evangelist shows he has a heart for God when he lets go of his ever-present security blanket to proclaim the source of true security that he possesses in his heart. Speaking from that heart, Linus recites for us Luke’s account of the shepherds, a heavenly evangelist, a heavenly victory parade, and the victorious king “born into straw poverty.”
Linus concludes, saying: “That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.”
Perhaps this Christmas, we might take a moment to ask ourselves what our own security blanket is — and what it would mean, even briefly, to let go of it and trust the Good News we have heard.
Merry Christmas. God bless us, everyone.
