We gather this Sunday morning to honor and celebrate the Christmas holiday. Most people who live in the Western Hemisphere know that the story of Christmas is about the birth of Jesus. He was, from one version of the story, the son of God and a very very cool young woman named Mary. While some people don’t talk about Mary much, when I was in Turkey last year, we visited a church that was filled with mosaics that chronicled her life, and let me tell you, from what I know, Mary had special powers and her life was a blessing from beginning to end and the fact that Jesus was her son, and his life was a blessing from beginning to end is no surprise to me.
But what about this Jesus story? As we saw from the music video (there is a lot of learning going on through Youtube), Mary became pregnant, without the help of her husband Joseph, now there was a special man if we want to talk about special people. And when she was almost ready to have a baby, a decree came from the Emperor Augustus that said that everyone had to go to the place where they were born to register so that he could know how many people were in his kingdom I hear so that he could tax them. (We all know about taxes and maintaining the life and wealth of kings.) So Mary and Joseph, being responsible sort of people and descendants of King David, definitely wanted to be counted in Bethlehem so they set out for the long journey. I had heard that they walked, in the video, Mary rode a donkey. Stories are like that, in the telling the details start to get changed. We’ll talk more about that later.
And they arrived and much to their chagrin there was no place in the inn, because everyone had arrived in order to be counted. So with Mary going to go into labor, they had no choice but to take refuge in the barn with the animals.
Meanwhile, as our carols told us, there were three wise men who saw a bright star in the sky and thinking that it was highly significant, they used it as a compass. Not surprisingly, it led them to Bethlehem. They were not the only people to see that star, shepherds saw that star, as they were often in the fields at night, watching over their sheep. Things were different then, and I’m not sure whether they had fences but I know they didn’t have huge factory farms where they produced sheep for market. No, the shepherd’s work was to watch over their flocks, to take care of them and to make sure that they are okay.
So the shepherds saw the amazing star in the East, and they couldn’t follow it because they couldn’t leave their sheep. How would that be, to go satisfy a curiosity or a desire and then come home and have that which you were responsible trashed? But the wise men followed that star.
And they arrived in Bethlehem where they found that the star was right over the manger. They were amazed and they called this little baby, the king of kings, because that was the world they lived in and people with power were the kings. The wise men offered the baby their riches: their gold, frankincense and myrrh.
It’s a great story. It has a interesting plot, a variety of characters, a bit of mystery, adventure, heartwarming moments and we can relate to it because it is human centered. It speaks to us.
But the thing to remember about this story is that it was interpreted through the eyes of the people who lived 2000 years ago. People who didn’t know the things that we know. Who lived without science, or YouTube. But people just the same, who had many of the same traits that we do. The same traits that all humans share.
Now because this story is a sacred story, the lessons that it has to tell us need to transcend time. So what happens when we interpret this story from our perspective? After all, we don’t really know what the angel said to Mary, or what Joseph to Mary, what Mary said to Elizabeth or what the light of the star was actually trying to tell us.
Maybe the starlight shining on the human baby was carrying the message that we are all made of stardust. Maybe Jesus was born among the animals because we needed to understand that we are all connected beings on this planet and the home of the animals is our home and like the shepherd we need to take care of it. Maybe the wise men gave the baby all of their riches because they knew that their emphasis on money was a sin against creation, against the stardust, against the miracle of a baby’s birth. Maybe they named him “king,” the highest authority in their time, because he represented our connection to the earth?
Maybe the story got told in a different way because the people who weren’t there, the ones that were behind their closed doors filled in different details, and by noontime Bethlehem was filled with a rumor and the wise men were in a hurry to go and spread the good news and just couldn’t figure out how to tell them that we are all connected. Would people really believe that we are all stardust, that we are one with the animals, the land and the stars? Maybe they figured it was Jesus’ job to eventually tell the people. Maybe that is why Jesus had to spend his life taking about radical relationality, telling people to take care of their neighbors, to feed and give to the poor and to understand that the kingdom of God was heaven on earth. On earth, paradise was on earth.
It could have been, right? Well, actually there’s more truth to my conjecture than my sense of fun and play about this story. Sacred stories are sacred because they hold wisdom that traverses the ages. And stories change and take on different meanings when things around them change. Science and the acceptance that we are indeed all stardust is actually forcing theologians to consider a shift in thinking about the nature of God and the interpretation of how humans are related to the universe. And this emerging planetary worldview we begin to emerge as a new interpretation of scripture. Rather than seeing God and His creation as the playground to be used up for humankind, theology, particularly Christian theology, is moving toward a more inclusive images of creation as the universe, and putting forth that we are all stardust, radically connected, part and parcel of the earth and all living life forms who share it with us.
Interesting, the role that humans have to play in this planetary interpretation is the same. We are the shepherds. We have the responsibility to watch over our sheep, and we, and only we, are responsible for their safekeeping, the safekeeping of the earth, this moment, this hour, this day, in everything that we do.
