Christmas – The mystery of God becoming man
View(s):By Lenard Ranjith Mahaarachchi
The event of Christmas can be interpreted as God becoming Man, a promise God made at the beginning of time. Christmas therefore should not be treated as a mere birth of a baby nor should it be misunderstood due to the very manner it is celebrated by Christians worldwide. Christmas is a holy birth.
Reporting on the sacred event, the Synoptic Gospels of Mathew and Luke detail it with precision, whereas Mark, another Synoptic writer, makes no mention of it at all. John does not mention it either, but for him, God’s Incarnation as a poor mortal is the fulfilment of the promise of a Saviour. For John, Jesus is God and had no genesis. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God.”
To John, Jesus is the Word of God, by which all things were made. Continuing he says that this ‘Word’ became man and dwelt with us. According to the narratives of Mathew and Luke, there were angels that sang in the night sky, and the immediate neighbours of baby Jesus were sheep and oxen. But these events have now been debunked by no less than the present Pontiff, Pope Benedict XVI, in his new book on Jesus’s infancy. Be that as it may, after 30 years no-one remembered either a star or the singing angels, to identify the simple preacher of Palestine during His three-year public ministry.
The birth of Jesus had been foretold in the Jewish sacred writings in the Old Testament, but oddly no-one during His time identified Jesus with such prophecies or miraculous happenings, such as the appearance of the star or the visit of the Magi. The Jews of Jesus’s day failed to identify Jesus as the promised Messiah. Jesus was so misunderstood that His listeners questioned His authority. (Jn 10/24) Jesus did not answer them, maybe because He needed to keep His mission unencumbered by what the holy writ said of Him. (Ibid 25-29)
“Our law tells us that the Messiah will live forever, how can then you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up?” (Ibid 12/34-35). This shows that the Jews did not know that Jesus was the Messiah let alone that He would live forever.
Christmas was first celebrated in 335 AD. The early church expected the imminent arrival of Jesus, and hence there was no necessity to celebrate His coming in the flesh as a baby. The second reason was that celebration of birthdays was taboo in the Roman Empire, save those of the Emperor. So no Christian dared to court disaster by celebrating Jesus’ birth. But after Constantine became emperor and converted to Christianity, Christmas came to be celebrated with alien rituals getting mixed with the holy birth.
The name given to the Son of God by His parents was Jesus, in keeping with what the angel announced to Mary. It was a common name at the time. Historian Josephus mentions about 20 people with that name, half of them were contemporaries of Jesus of Nazareth. In the New Testament we have Jesus Justus and the sorcerer Paphos called Bar _ Jesus, meaning son of Jesus, (Colossians 4/11). Jesus’s second name, Christ, associates Him with His people’s history. Christ means Messiah, the redeemer of the Jewish race. The birth of Jesus divided time as BC and AD. Jesus is known as the ‘Only Son of God’ indicating His relationship with God the Almighty.
So if Christmas is the memorial of the birth of Jesus, why do Christians make a pantomime of the holy occasion and spend it in a spree of eating and drinking? Christmas today has no meaning, unless it relates to the Glorious Second Coming of Jesus. Christmas today needs to prepare us for His coming in majesty.
The church needs to teach people about the sanctity of the birth of Jesus rather than allow Christians to perpetuate meaningless rituals and other extra religious activities that desecrate the holy birth. Please make Christmas meaningful so that non-Christians may understand what it is about: The birth of the Son of God as man on earth to save man from what he is.
A holy Christmas to you all.
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