By Cliff Reed, minister emeritus, Ipswich Unitarian Meeting
The Christian fast of Advent is traditionally a time of preparation for the feast of Christmas, the festival of the Nativity. Advent is supposed to be a solemn time, not the hyper-commercial hullabaloo that can make Christmas into an anti-climax by the time it finally arrives. It is right to look forward to Christmas, to get ready for it and, of course, to reflect on its spiritual significance, but to start the celebrations with four – and more – weeks to go is to miss the point, it is to rob Christmas of both its sacredness and its magic. Which is why keeping the fast of Advent is important. Fasting doesn’t necessarily mean going hungry, although you might enjoy the Christmas dinner a bit more on Christmas Day if you haven’t already had several in the preceding weeks. Fasting in Advent can mean looking more closely at the stories surrounding the Nativity, finding a deeper meaning there, thinking about what Jesus taught and how his ministry and his life were to end. It is also a time to reflect on the potential in each human birth, for every child is a sister or a brother of Jesus, and what that implies for our stewardship of this beautiful, fruitful yet afflicted planet. Advent may enchant us as the twinkling lights of Christmas begin to appear, but it is also a time to recall the sorrow and suffering of Jesus and of the humanity he was a part of, and to ask ourselves what the implications are for us.
The weeks of Advent, in traditional Christian practice and its incarnational theology, focus on the prophecy quoted – or misquoted – in Matthew’s gospel where it says, “ ‘A virgin will conceive and bear a son, and he shall be called Emmanuel,’ a name which means ‘God is with us.’ “ (Matthew 1: 23). The doctrine of the Virgin Birth rests in large part on this verse, although what the prophecy actually says is that “A young woman is with child, and she will give birth to a son and call him Immanuel.” The idea that she was a virgin resulted from a mistranslation – deliberate or accidental – when the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek in the second century BC. It was this translation, known as the Septuagint, that the early Greek-speaking Christians used as scripture. But does any of this matter? I suppose it depends on how human you believe Jesus to have been!
The doctrine of the Virgin Birth may or may not seem important to us, although it is very important for most of those Christians who regard themselves as orthodox in their beliefs. But the doctrine of the Virgin Birth is only important to orthodox Christianity because of its integral relationship with the doctrine of Original Sin. The Virgin Birth, in orthodox belief, extracts Jesus from the chain of inherited guilt that supposedly reaches all the way back to Adam and Eve and which is communicated to each succeeding generation through the natural reproductive process. Because he was born of a virgin, Jesus was – so it is believed – free of the taint of sin that attaches to everyone else from the moment of conception. It was his ‘sinlessness’ that made him the ‘perfect sacrifice’ when it came to the crucifixion.
But what if you have long ago left these doctrines behind, as I think its fair to say that our own Unitarian tradition did a long time ago? Does that mean that the Advent tradition has no meaning for us? Certainly not! To believe that Jesus was the natural son of two natural human parents does not diminish him in any way – quite the contrary, in fact. Nor does it mean that he – any more than they – was somehow guilty of what his foreparents are supposed to have done. Sadly the idea of inherited guilt, of supposed responsibility for other people’s misdeeds, is still with us today, and not only in orthodox Christian theology! And it certainly doesn’t negate his role as a teacher and exemplar of profound, unique and world-changing significance; as a supreme symbol of the divine within the human – of God with us and within us. He reveals what is true, not of himself alone, but of us all – if we will only realise it and live accordingly. Jesus as the Christ, meaning the Anointed or Messiah, is still one of us, fully and unequivocally human and not some supernatural semi-demi-god. He reveals our potential as spiritual beings and this is something to celebrate, which is why the anticipation – in Advent – of the festival of his birth is not only legitimate for us, but important.
The coming of Jesus, with his radical message of love, is the proper occasion for a festival of light amidst the darkness of human suffering, human folly and human wickedness. And it is symbolically appropriate that it should coincide with the winter solstice, when our half of the world tilts towards the light, so linking the spiritual with the natural – something that, perhaps, has never been as important as it is today. And this too is worthy of our reflection and resolve in Advent.
As a Christian fast, Advent rests on the stories told in Matthew’s and Luke’s gospels. Matthew’s seven-verse version is a masterpiece of brevity, considering the mountain of theology that has been erected on it. Mary is betrothed to Joseph. She is found to be pregnant “through the Holy Spirit”. Joseph wants to “quietly set aside the marriage contract”. An angel appears and puts him in the picture. Now content, Joseph “took Mary home to be his wife”. And the scene is set for Jesus to be born.
Luke’s version is much longer. It includes the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth and the birth of John the Baptist. It has the detailed encounter between Mary and the angel, the joyful sojourn of Mary with Elizabeth, and then the Song of Mary – the Magnificat – that exultant hymn of revolution, liberation and salvation. And it goes on to the prophecy of Zechariah, with its promise of dawn breaking on “those who live in darkness under the shadow of death.”
But even Luke’s extended preamble to the Nativity account wasn’t enough for some people. More elaborate versions were written, most notably the so-called ‘Infancy Gospel of James’. It is here that we find the lengthy story of Anna and Joachim and the miraculous birth of their daughter, Mary. At the age of three, she is handed over to the priests at the Temple when, we are told, “she danced, and the whole house of Israel loved her.” She lives there until she is twelve when, as she has reached puberty, she has to leave so that “she won’t pollute the sanctuary of the Lord our God.”
A search for a husband is ordered and results in a widower and carpenter named Joseph being chosen. He takes Mary home then goes off “to build houses” while Mary is chosen by the priests to weave threads for “a veil of the temple of the Lord.” Then comes the encounter between Mary and the angel and the revelation that she is to give birth to Jesus. She visits Elizabeth but there is no Magnificat. There is then a long account of the trouble that occurs when first Joseph and then the priests find out that Mary is pregnant. Only when this is sorted out does the story proceed to the Nativity, which takes place in a cave. The beautiful incident when Joseph finds himself in the midst of a universe standing still to honour the birth of Jesus, is but one aspect of the story that isn’t mentioned by Matthew or Luke.
Such stories show that many myths and legends arose about the birth of Jesus, all intended to emphasise his importance as a spiritual figure, but interestingly other traditions make nothing of the Nativity. Mark’s and John’s gospels have no Nativity accounts at all and their authors clearly didn’t regard them as relevant, necessary or important, let alone factual. Mark saw the baptism of Jesus as the crucial starting point as did John, although he prefaced it with his mystical insights about Christ’s origins in God at the beginning of all things. There was clearly no unanimity about either the circumstances or the significance of the Nativity in the Early Church so there is really no justification to make any belief about it necessary to be judged ‘orthodox’ or not. Rather it provides us with a rich source of myths and legends, images and traditions with which to adorn our own worship and celebration as we approach “the brightest festival”.
But whatever the circumstances, Jesus was born, he did conduct a remarkable and charismatic ministry. He was put to death as a rebel and a revolutionary by the Roman authorities. And, as experienced by his followers, his spirit and his message survived his execution and inspired one of the great religious traditions of humanity, and the one that means the most to me. Jesus tells us that we are, above all things, called to love and to establish, as best we can, the Rule of Love in this world which needs it so badly. And that is why it is fitting that we anticipate his coming in Advent. And if that means telling old stories to make the point, that’s all to the good, because we human beings need stories – as long as we remember that’s what they are. But the heart of it all is that the divine comes to us in the human, that God is with us and within us, and that Jesus came to show us how to be human to the best of our ability.