Christianity without Christmas?
Second Sunday in Advent, 4th December, 2005
The Rev'd Dr Craig D'Alton
Assistant Priest, St Peter's, Eastern Hill
Can you imagine what Christianity might look like without Christmas?
One of the great advantages of the three-year lectionary under which we operate is that it is possible to gain at least some sense of the differences in emphasis between the three synoptic Gospels – Matthew, Mark and Luke. This Advent we embark upon the most austere of the three options – the Year of Mark. One of the interesting things is that, at various key points, our liturgical calendar requires that Mark's narrative be augmented by readings from the other Gospels. As well as the usual interpolations from John, Matthew and Luke coming rushing to the aid of a narrative often stark and spare in detail, a narrative which leaves out entire sections that many would regard as central to the Christian story. Perhaps the two starkest of these omissions are, first, that in the shorter and generally-agreed more original ending of Mark, there is barely a hint of the resurrection. And second, whichever version of the text you choose to use, there is absolutely no Christmas.
Imagine, then, Christianity without Christmas – imagine, if you can, a Markan Church, without the beautiful stories of Luke and Matthew – no babe in a manger, no angels singing Gloria, no Shepherds in the fields, no wise men, nothing – not even the Word made flesh of St John. Just John the Baptist crying in the wilderness – prepare the way of the Lord, repent for the forgiveness of sins!
In the darkness of a world where states commit murder, terrorists randomly kill and maim; in the darkness of a country where rights are forfeited in the name of security, where the rich and powerful are becoming more so and the poor and helpless are losing even that which they have; in the darkness of a society where people are suspicious of their neighbours and acts of simple human decency are deemed the work of heroes rather than something to be expected, there is much demanding repentance. Perhaps, then, it is not such a bad thing that in the weeks leading up to Christmas we consider, at least for a moment, a Christian narrative in which Jesus emerges on the scene not as a helpless babe, but as a prophet, a preacher, a teacher and healer, the successor and fulfilment of those who have come before, the harbinger of God's judgement, wrath and favour.
Mark's prologue is the fulfilment of the vision of Isaiah, the greatest, or at least the most prolific, of the prophetic writers. Although most scholars would today talk of two or even three authors of what we know as the book of the prophet Isaiah, Mark would have understood there to be only one – and he the greatest of all. Isaiah, augmented in Matthew and Luke by Micah and others, stands solo in Mark. His is the voice of new beginnings, not so much of incarnation as of eschatological hope – a bringing in of the end time, the announcement of the coming of the Son of God.
Comfort, tenderness, the end of war, the pardoning of sin, the revealing of the glory of the Lord, the end of fear, the coming of God, the feeding of the flock, the embrace of the lambs. These are Isaiah's vision which Mark echoes – not a vicious, War of the Worlds end-time, but the coming of the Prince of Peace – a concept remarkably close, in fact, to the more prosaic birth narrative of Luke.
And in the midst of all this we stand – readers and hearers of the Word; the Church of the Incarnation and of the Resurrection, perhaps just a little bewildered by the starkness of Mark, who seems to trim Isaiah down to a bare outline, a shadow of comfort, scarcely shielding us from the heat of the fire.
What message of hope, then for Church and for society, in Mark's Christmas-less Gospel?
Mark's Jesus is, above all else, a doer. Scholars often link Mark's Gospel with the letters of St Paul, particularly the Letter to the Romans. Some regard the author Mark as a first-generation Roman follower of the Apostle Peter, and set his concrete gospel of action against the more theologically driven Pauline gospel of grace. For Mark, Jesus is the anointed Son of God who, through his teachings and action, proclaims in Galilee and the surrounding regions the imminence of God's reign. This teacher and healer is misunderstood and opposed at every turn, and finally rejected in Jerusalem, where he is killed both for what he has done and taught, and for who some people are beginning to understand him to be. In the words of one commentator, Jesus is "the embodiment of Psalm 22, the psalm of the suffering righteous person". (Donahue & Harrington, The Gospel of Mark, p.24) One important message of Mark, then, is that bad things can and do happen to good people – and that when they do, God in Jesus Christ is in there with us. When we sit in a pit of despair or rejection, Jesus is there. Moreover, when, despite the attacks and misunderstanding of others, we continue to proclaim the coming of God's Kingdom, we are making a Jesus response to a hostile world.
Second, in Mark Jesus is above all the Son – sometimes Son of God, sometimes Son of David, sometimes Son of Man. The first of these titles is announced, as we have heard, right at the very beginning. The key here is relationships – as the heir of God the Father, as the messianic heir of David, and as the human heir of Adam. Jesus embodies all three of these hopes – and we, as his followers, are invited into a relationship of inheritance of a hope that is divine, eschatological and yet fundamentally human. This Jesus is no super-Angel or latter-day prophet. This is the one for whom the Baptist will step aside, and who will baptise with the very Spirit of God.
Putting these ideas together, then, we may see that although there is no overt story of incarnation in Mark's Gospel, nevertheless Mark's Jesus is a thoroughly incarnate, thoroughly en-fleshed, thoroughly human divinity. He is that very Lord God who feeds his flock like a shepherd and gathers the lambs in his arms – a God who brings comfort and love, even into a world of darkness and rejection. This is Mark's Jesus, and our Jesus too – the adult Son of God who calls us out of the world of sin and rejection, to a share in the inheritance of a loving deity.
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