Lord’s Christmas

Readings: Is 9:1-6; Tit 2:11-14; Lk 2:1-14

In Luke’s Gospel, while the birth of John the Baptist is narrated in two verses (Lk 1:57-58), as many as twenty verses are devoted to that of Jesus (Lk 1:1-20).

In this account Luke summarizes the message of the entire Gospel:

1. Jesus’ true humanity: “This is the sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger” (Lk 2:12). Luke uses “crude” terms: “brèphos” (Lk 2:12,16), denoting the fetus to be delivered or just delivered, and “gennòmenon”( Lk 1:35), designating the fetus in the womb;
   Jesus’ divinity: After the annunciations to Mary and Joseph we can speak of an annunciation to the shepherds (Lk 2:9-13). Again, the angels are in the scene, singing the “Gloria in excelsis”: this chorus that comes from the lips of “the whole heavenly army,” as Luke biblically calls the angels, will be revived from earth to heaven when Jesus enters Jerusalem for the last week of his life. On Christmas night the angels sing, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men (object) of the (divine) good will” (this is the more correct version of Lk 2:14, where the scene is God’s love and not so much human will). At the threshold of the Passion, during the entry into Jerusalem, the disciples will sing, “Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” (Lk 19:38). “It is a touch full of fascination that the multitude of the heavenly militia proclaim peace on earth, while the multitude of the disciples proclaim peace in heaven: the two passages could almost become an antiphonal responsory” (R. Brown) to the ‘mighty God, Father forever, Prince of Peace’ mentioned in the First Reading (Is 9:1-6).
2. There is, however, amid the choreography of angelic epiphany a specific message, addressed to the shepherds. In the original Greek Luke calls it a “gospel” and it has an exquisitely theological content: “Today there has been born to you in the city of David a savior, who is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:1). Here again we have a small Christian Creed that revolves around three basic titles attributed to the Child: Savior, Christ (i.e., Messiah), Lord (i.e., God). Paul is also familiar with this Creed and quotes it in writing to the Christians in Philippi, “We are waiting for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ” (3:20). He makes it explicit to Titus: “our great God and Savior Jesus Christ” (Second Reading: Titus 2:11-14).
3. The choice of the poor: Jesus is born with the poor of his time, “laid in a manger because there was no room for them in the ‘katalyma’” (Lk 2:7), i.e., the part of the cave, where Joseph’s family was staying, used as a shelter for men and not for animals (same term used for the room at the Last Supper; but it does not speak per se of birth in a cave or stable). His birth is announced not to the great or the wise, but to the “unclean,” as were the shepherds, who become the first disciples. In the Sanhedrin treatise (25b) of the Talmud, the great collection of Jewish traditions, we read that shepherds could not testify in court because they were considered unclean, because of their cohabitation with animals, and dishonest, because of their violations of territorial boundaries. Their civil status was, therefore, at the bottom of the social ladder, and their living conditions were far less “georgic” and idyllic than Virgil or Theocritus have accustomed us to think. Well, the first to flock on pilgrimage to Christ the Lord are the last of the earth, anticipating a saying dear to Jesus: “The first shall be last and the last first” (Mt 20:16). The entire Lucan account is peppered with verbs of motion and surprise: “let us go, let us know, they went, they found, they saw, they reported, they all heard, they were amazed, they returned glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen.” The family in Bethlehem is surrounded by shepherds, the rejected by the Sanhedrin, the marginal ones whom Luke, however, sees as the prefiguration of the Church of Christ…
4. Christmas in Luke is immediately connected to Easter: Mary “wrapped Jesus in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger” (Lk. 2:7), as Joseph of Arimathea “wrapped in a sheet and laid in a tomb” (Lk. 23:53) the body of the crucified, and such “bandages ‘shall lie empty’ (Lk. 24:12); in Bethlehem it is the “unclean” shepherds who are the first witnesses of Jesus’ birth (Lk 2:8-20); in Jerusalem it will be the “unclean” women who will be the first witnesses of his resurrection (Lk 23:55-24:10); in both events, there are angels to make sense of the mystery (Lk 2:9-14; 24:4-7). “In the little Jesus – according to the orientation of the infancy Gospels – we can already glimpse the glorious risen ‘Lord’ proclaimed by the Paschal faith of the Church” (G. Ravasi).

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• spazio + spadoni