December 24, 2006
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See also: [2006 Proper III ]Of Related Interest:[Cobb on Incarnation]
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Micah 5:2-5a
Luke 1:46b-55
Hebrews 10:5-10
Luke 1:39-45
The movement through Advent into the Christmas season takes us on a journey through expectation into joy. In all the hustle and bustle of preparations and shopping, however, it is easy to lose the concrete reasons for joy in a sea of abstraction. Even to focus on the coming of the Christ is inadequate if we fail to probe the concrete meaning that this event has in terms of the actual conditions in the world that make us long for something new and different—that is, the realities of oppression, conflict, and despair.
It is hard to imagine a more graphic way of depicting the joy of the season than Luke’s account of the leaping of the child in Elizabeth’s womb at the sound of Mary’s voice. Elizabeth herself also expresses that joy when she pronounces Mary “blessed among women” and marvels at her own inclusion in the process that will lead to the Messiah’s birth. This story achieves its full impact, however, only in connection with Mary’s song, which follows immediately afterward; for it is here that we find the concrete reasons for the joy.
A major theme in the song is the inclusion of the marginalized, which pervades the entire gospel of Luke and extends also into Acts. Mary’s reference to her status of lowliness picks up on Elizabeth’s surprise and, together with the very fact of the strong roles (including speaking parts) granted to the two women, enhances Luke’s consistent emphasis upon the inclusion of women in God’s plan. But the most powerful aspect of the song is found in the verses that manifest the theme of reversal of status. In vs. 51, Mary celebrates the fact that God’s action “has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts,” and in vv. 52-53 the reversal is made explicit: God has “brought down the powerful but “lifted up the lowly” and “filled the hungry with good things.” And the reference to the help God has sent Israel reverberates with political overtones when we consider the long history of the oppression of God’s people by a succession of empires.
The joy associated with the birth of the Messiah therefore has an undeniable socio-political and material dimension. What is to be celebrated is God’s action on behalf of the lowly and oppressed. The specifically political aspect, moreover, comes out also in the reading from Micah. The coming one who is to emerge from tiny Bethlehem—the city of King David—is to be a ruler of Judah, who will bring a time of security and peace. This emphasis upon justice, moreover, is quite compatible with the emphasis upon relationality in process thought. As a vision “for the common good,” the process perspective supports a prophetic witness against all forms of social and economic organization that result in power imbalances and all forms of oppression.
The Hebrews text goes in a very different direction, emphasizing Christ’s role in the forgiveness of sins and contrasting his “once for all” sacrifice to the burnt offerings in the Temple that he abolishes. Since it will be a major challenge to any preacher to find a way to combine these passages in a coherent message, one may well want to choose one route or the other. The Hebrews passage presents difficulties in and of itself, however, in that it can easily be used to support a supersessionism that denies the continuing validity of God’s covenant with Israel. One way to deal with this latter problem might be to abstract from the passage the more general theme of movement from the old to the new in such a way as not to negate the old; and one could guard against anti-Judaism by pointing out (in good process fashion!) how all revelations—including that which is given in Christ—undergo revaluations through changes in time and circumstance and encounters with new modes of thinking. And it might also be possible to use this strategy also as a way of forging a link with the Lucan passages. The fulfillment of Israel’s expectations that Christians claim in Christ necessarily involves modulations on the earlier statements of those expectations. The Jesus who appears in Luke does not, after all, free Israel from its oppressors in a literal sense or actually function as king in the political sense. In fact, Whitehead’s notion of a “contrast” is relevant to all fulfillment texts, since aspects of the original forms necessarily drop out as they are brought into relation with the revelation that is in Christ. The challenge remains, however, of making a point like this without disparaging Judaism.
Russ Pregeant is professor of religion and philosophy, and chaplain emeritus, at Curry College in Milton, Massachusetts. He is the author of several books in New Testament studies, including Matthew, in the Chalice Commentaries for Today series.
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