Christmas in the Gospels

By Zeth    16th December 2002    0 responses

John 1:1-2   Expand passage

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

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Each winter, especially for me in cold rainy England, we look forward to Christmas; we never stop being excited. At Christmas we make time to see our families. Children get excited because they get brightly wrapped presents, adults know they will have good supplies of socks and shampoo for the rest of the year but get excited because we take time to relax from our busy lives. We think about the more important things in our lives; the things that are more permanent, the ones that have lasted since Christmases before and will last to see Christmases again. Hopefully one of these things we remember will be Christ himself. We may even meet in a church with others and celebrate Christ’s coming, so we don’t forget the fantastic gift within the commercial wrappings.

Adverts will tell you that Christmas is about Marks and Spencer’s, Woolworth’s, Jamie Oliver’s latest book, buying DVDs and changing your mortgage. I personally don’t have a mortgage, a DVD player or a desire for cooking books. Even so, I venture that even if I did have all these things, Christ-mas would still be about Christ.

We have four accounts, often called ‘gospels’, a form of writing probably invented by the writer Mark, invented to tell about the Good News of Jesus Christ. They are named after their writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Mark is the first gospel, written sometime between 60-69AD. John is the last gospel to be written, sometime just before 100AD. Jesus’ birth was about 0AD, give or take a couple of years. Since Jesus left earth around 33AD, the gospel writers were all contemporaries of Jesus and had access to many hundreds of eyewitnesses.

We will have a quick look at the beginning of each of the gospels to begin to understand what they have to say about Christmas. If you have a bible then you may want to have it open and follow with it. Then you can decide for yourself if you think the text means what I am about to say it does.

Beliefs about Christ in the bible can be summarised into a series of comings: coming to humanity as a man, coming to Jerusalem, coming out of the grave, coming back in glory to claim his kingdom. Christmas is the first of these, where Jesus became human and part of humanity.

All four gospels, in their different ways, begin with God becoming human. All four build up to Jesus’ baptism and recognition by the God himself that Jesus is the Son of God. At Christmas we remember all four narratives, often we weave them together and call them the Nativity. At the heart of this is the incarnation. This word just means that God ‘become flesh’. God took human bodily form, “…Lord Jesus Christ…God from God…came down from heaven…and was made man” as the Nicene Creed puts it.

Mark, the first gospel, doesn’t have an account of Jesus’ birth as we may expect now, with biographical information about when and how Jesus was born. Instead Mark reflects and sums up the Jewish prophetic tradition, which was many hundreds of years old even then. Isaiah was considered the greatest prophet, the yardstick with which to compare other prophets. So for Mark, Isaiah represents all of the Jewish prophets, and if you want to make general statements about the Jewish prophets you have to talk about Isaiah.

With that in mind, the first few verses of Mark make more sense. Mark says “It is written in the Isaiah the prophet:” (1:2) and then gives two quotes, the first from Malachi, the second from Isaiah himself. By quoting Malachi the last prophet and Isaiah the greatest prophet, Mark is saying that the coming of John and Jesus is a theme that runs through all of the prophesies in the Hebrew Bible. Quite a bold statement but not as bold as what comes next, after the quotes comes the line “and so John came”. John the Baptist is presented as another prophet, modern but in the line of Hebrew prophets represented by Isaiah. Even more bold is that these prophets represented by Malachi, Isaiah and John the Baptist, are all preparing the way for Jesus’ coming. In Mark’s account, Jesus promptly comes and is baptised by John and proclaimed by the heavenly voice of God as the son of God.

Matthew’s account starts with a genealogy which includes Abraham, Jacob, Ruth, David, Solomon and lastly Joseph. Matthew does this to show that the whole of Jewish history is leading up to the point of Jesus’ birth. Similarly, if you scan through Matthew you will see many quotes from the Old Testament prophesying the coming of Jesus, a good edition of the bible (Such as the NIV, NRSV and so on) will break the text where Matthew quotes and will give you a footnote so you can go to the Old Testament and look at the evidence yourself.

In Matthew, the Magi have come from the east which shows that Jesus’ birth is important for the whole world. Also the Magi bring gold, incense and myrrh. Gold because Jesus is our king. Incense because Jesus is our priest, interceding with God on our behalf. And lastly myrrh to anoint a corpse, because Jesus was born to die for us (see Word of the Week #15). After the Magi come, Mary and Joseph become asylum seekers in Egypt, after that comes John the Baptist. Jesus is then Baptised and God reveals that Jesus is the son of God.

Luke’s Christmas narrative starts rather than ends with John the Baptist. John becomes more central and we receive biographical information about the family background of John the Baptist and Jesus, i.e. Zechariah, Elizabeth, Mary and Joseph. Then Luke goes on to the angelic visitation to Mary (see The Faithfulness of Mary) and the birth of Jesus and the visit of the shepherds. Then to John the Baptist.

In Luke there are two angelic appearances which follow the same pattern. The first one is to Mary, in whose womb God has decided to become incarnate and who the angel Gabriel calls the one who is “highly favoured” (see Luke 1:28). The other appearance is to the shepherds who represent both humankind and those that God has chosen to be his people. The angels say (in 2:14) that “his favour rests” on humankind because God has become part of it.

And last but definitely not least we have John’s gospel. John reflects on the Trinitarian God, who was Trinitarian even in creation and especially when God became flesh. “In the beginning was the Word” (John 1:1a), Jesus did not begin to exist with his earthly birth but existed before the universe was created. See the deliberate parallel with Genesis 1:1. Next it says, “and the Word was with God” (John 1:1b), so Jesus who is the Word of God is with God. The Trinitarian nature of God is the characteristic of God. Lastly “and the Word was God” (John 1:2), Jesus is an equal member of the trinity not above or below but in community.

Skipping onto verse 14, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us”, Jesus becomes a man – becomes a child in fact. Among who does he make his dwelling? Among me and you. Note that here the Word of God is not the bible but is God, Jesus Christ, the Son of God; who does not become a book but becomes a man. At the root of the incarnation is that God doesn’t show himself as a mighty ruler storming Downing Street but comes as a poor refugee child. Why? So we can become children too, we can have “the right to become children of God”(verse 12). Not automatic change but the possibility to begin it. Of course, John’s account then leads on to John the Baptist.

In the gospel narratives there are those who understand the significance of the incarnation and are excited waiting for Jesus’ coming. Above we looked at John the Baptist, the shepherds and the Magi, all of whom were there waiting when Jesus came. You can also see Simeon and Anna waiting in the temple (in Luke 2) and Nicodemus (in John 3) faithfully trying to understand, who eventually succeeds in time for the crucifixion.

We have looked briefly for some common themes across the beginnings of all the gospels. I’m sure you can see many more using the same methods. However, this is not purely an undertaking out of interest, the events we have looked at are relevant for us now. Will you accept that there is a God who became a son of man, in order that we might become children of God? Will you like the Magi, allow Jesus to be your king, priest and substitute?

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