What have they done to the Story?

It was a Muslim woman student at Duke University who raised the question. She was amazed at what she saw at Christmas time. My memory seems to recall that she made her observations in the campus newspaper. But she found it incredible that Christians put up with Christmas. She wondered why in the world Christians have allowed Christmas to be such a mess. She seemed to suggest, and the reaction of Muslims to cartoons of Mohammad seem to support her idea, that Muslims would not allow or tolerate their Holy celebrations to be so commercialized by the culture and perverted by Santa Claus.

The celebration of Christmas in most Christian congregations does seem to have forgotten an awful lot of the story in the New Testament, and when efforts are made to reintroduce the lost dimensions of the Christmas story from the scriptures the response is that we want Christmas to be a happy time. Because when you read the story in the New Testament there are a lot of hard and challenging things that need to be heard.

There is John the Baptist out there in the wilderness calling for good people to repent and be baptized. His character is rather harsh and wild. His language is not very pleasant, sweet or mild. He insults the leaders of the community, and he laughs at our claims to have privileges because of our race or class. You have a pregnant young woman traveling with child on a long journey. They can not find shelter for the night so they get a stable. She gives birth. This could not have been easy or warm and tender.

Luke makes every effort to pin this story to a particular event about the birth of particular child that happened at a particular time in history. For Luke this is no "once upon a time" or "Long, Long ago in a galaxy far, far away." You may not believe the story but this is a story about a particular child. This is not Santa Claus.

And there is a terrible consequence to his birth. The battle begins immediately. The kingdoms of this world and the Kingdom of God begin a horrible conflict at Christmas that is still waging and only the Easter story gives us some hope as to which side wins. Clint Eastwood made the movie Mystic River about two men from the same neighborhood. One is on the side of law and order and the other makes his own laws. At the end of the movie there is a parade down main street and one is on one side of the street and the other is on the other. The parade is the sign that the battle between good and evil goes on. Well, Herod's slaughter of all of the young male children under two years old is the first battle between the kingdom of God as presented in Jesus and the kingdoms of this world. Where is that story in the Christmas celebrations we have?

The young woman is right about one thing. Unless we Christian people get serious about knowing our own story, about knowing the Bible, about knowing our own creeds and doctrines the Christian faith and teaching our children the stories of the Bible, there is not much future left for the Christian church as we know it today. It is a story about salvation and a future but you would never know it begins at Christmas.