Last night our retirement community choir put on its annual Christmas concert. I love old voices. Their beauty comes from talent plus years of experience plus a deep sense of spirituality. I felt the sacredness of the occasion. And of the story. I enjoyed the appropriateness of sharing the story in community. Again.
The images have been engrained in
most of us since our own infancy, passed down through the generations in the
voices of parents and Sunday school teachers, envisioned through sacred art
(some of which seems strange to our modern eyes), and sang about in countless
carols. The baby in the manger, shepherds astonished by choirs of angels
splitting the night sky with their Halleluiahs and Hosannas, wise men and
camels, a haloed virgin mother and a bewildered papa. Some of us imagine a
pristine setting (no cow poop anywhere) and others try to envision a cave for
animals as it might have really been, mess and all.
Christmas pageants help us image
the story. Some pageants are spectacular, like the one in Southern California I
had to buy a ticket for; angels actually flew around (attached by
semi-invisible ropes), live camels loitered in the background, and baby Jesus
cried real tears. But for most of us, our local congregations give proud
parents the opportunity to see their small children enact the story, sometimes
with doses of humor spicing the production. Even with this messy simplicity, we
can sometimes glimpse the glory.
But we don’t really know what that
first Christmas was like for any of the characters. We can only gather up the
facts we have and imagine. Thank God for imagination.
One of the greatest resources we
have for stimulating our imaginations (and our faith) is the biblical book of
Revelation. And, believe it or not, the book of the Revelation contains the
Christmas story. This is a version of the story that rarely gets told as part
of our annual celebrations. It’s terrifying and hard to reconcile with the
stories in the Gospels.
This is jarring. I tried to
imagine a Christmas pageant following this version of the story. Here’s the
poem.
Christmas Pageant Re-imaged
The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so
that it might devour her child the moment he was born. Revelation 12:1
Mary stumbles on stage,
balancing the universe on her head,
crying out in pain.
Her adversary enters stage-left,
hovers over her. He grins
from each of his seven faces.
No gentle Joseph in sight. No shepherds.
No silent night.
As the terrors of childbirth are compounded
by the threat of infanticide,
the audience boos.
In a surprise move, God kidnaps
the newborn, then disappears from the scene.
Mary crawls off stage,
seeking a place to hide and heal.
Enter a mob of angels
dressed in battle fatigues.
The stage erupts in chaos.
The special effects guys outdo themselves.
The play reaches a climax,
takes a dramatic turn.
The serpent, bloodied and defeated
but not yet dead, is hurled
into the audience.
Screams everywhere.
Merry Christmas.
Now is that weird or what? It
seems to me a wide-angle-lens perspective of the whole Gospel story, an
allegory of the global significance of the coming of the Christ-child into the
world. One clue is that immediately after the serpent-dragon is hurled to the
earth, a voice from heaven proclaims, “Now have come the salvation and the
power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Messiah. For the
accuser of our brothers and sisters, who accuses them before our God day and
night, has been hurled down.” The song continues, announcing victory by the
blood of the Lamb and by the testimony of believers, giving, in a capsule, the
whole salvation story.
A lot to meditate on. A lot to
imagine.
Maybe on Christmas morning this
year, along with the version in the book of Luke, we’ll read Revelation 12
aloud.
And sing our own Hosannas.
[Some free-image paintings I
took from the Internet:]
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