Christmas – The Rest of the Story

We all know the Christmas story, right? Even if we don’t realize that the angels and shepherds and wise men don’t really belong together in our Nativity scenes we know the basic story from Matthew and Luke and its key point, don’t we? Sure we do – the Savior is born in the manger to a virgin named Mary! And that’s all we really to get, isn’t it?

Well, apparently not – because the Bible has a 3^rd Christmas story! Yeah, it really does. And in the most unexpected place. The last place you’d think to look for it. Literally the last – the book of Revelation. That’s right, the book of Revelation.

Smack dab in the middle of that strangest of biblical books sits a birth story of the Messiah. Radically and strangely different from Matthew’s and Luke’s stories, I am tempted to borrow Paul Harvey’s trademark phrase and describe John the Seer’s version as “the rest of the story.” It’s found in Revelation 12 and goes something like this:

“Revelation does not mention shepherds and an infanticidal king; rather, it pictures a dragon leading a ferocious struggle in heaven. A woman clothed with the sun and wearing a crown of 12 stars cries out in pain as she is about to give birth. Suddenly, the enormous red dragon enters the picture, his tail sweeping a third of the stars out of the sky and flinging them to the earth. He crouches hungrily before the woman, eager to devour her child the moment it is born. At the last second, the infant is snatched away to safety, the woman flees into the desert, and all-out cosmic war begins.”

Behind the comforting bucolic Christmas images we can at least imagine even if we have not experienced them ourselves lies this bizarre scene that seems like something out of Star Wars not the Bible. There’s nothing Christmas-y here. Nothing at all. Certainly nothing comforting. I mean, a dragon, war in heaven, a new-born in danger of becoming dragon food, stars knocked out the sky, a woman wearing the sun. Where’s the good news of a Savior born in Bethlehem here?

John the Seer is given a glimpse behind the scenes, as it were, of what we experience here on earth. Christmas, as experienced in human history, as told in Matthew’s and Luke’s stories has its strange moments to be sure which suggest more is going on here than meet the eye. And they spend the rest of their stories of Jesus’ life spelling out what that “more” is. What John sees and shares with his readers is that whole story compacted into these few verses dressed up in symbols with multiple levels of meaning from both the Jewish and Gentile worlds to expound the human and more than human, that is, cosmic, significance of Jesus’ birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension.

The Bible can’t tell its story adequately without telling it as a tale in which what happens in heaven and on earth are related and that is some ways what happens on this terrestrial ball is part of the larger drama enveloping both heaven and earth.

The rather tiny blip on history’s radar made by the shadow of Jesus of Nazareth, an obscure Galilean prophet from a backwater village in 1^st century Israel is cast on a cosmic scale in Revelation 12. It places him in a larger story than just his personal narrative. Larger even than his nation’s history and heritage. No, its throws his shadow against the backdrop of heaven and eternity, square into the middle of God’s eternal plan for his creation and its creatures.

And what is the eternal divine plan of which Jesus is God’s chief agent, indeed God himself coming among humanity as one of them to fulfill his eternal purpose? In short, to create a planet to serve as a temple for himself and his human creatures to share life together, the latter serving as God’s royal priests throughout the length and breadth of the creation. Even though humanity defaulted and rebelled against God’s plan he never acquiesced in their rebuff. Instead God launched a reclamation and restoration project to fulfill his creational purpose. Jesus was the culmination and climax of that plan as Immanuel, God with us, come to “descend into hell” which we had created by our continual rejection of his gracious overtures of forgiveness, acceptance, and welcome. God as Jesus would have become human even if we hadn’t ever sinned. Remember that was always his intention – to live with, among, and even as one of us to be in closest possible fellowship and shared life with us. But after humanity’s rebellion in the garden of Eden his coming became more complex. Now he had to resolve the problem created by human sin – thus it became a project to reclaim humanity by dying for its sin and obtaining forgiveness for them and restoring them to their original dignity and vocation to fulfill God’s eternal purpose by his resurrection. His ascension to heaven exhibited and certified his achievement of all this and an assurance that we too will share in his victory and live together with God – Father, Son, and Spirit – on this globe forever. All that is going on in Jesus’ earthly ministry!

In John’s picture all this is compressed into the birth of child of the woman clothed with the Sun (a symbol for Israel and Mary with the Jewish and Christian traditions). His whole life lies under threat from the dragon, God’s ancient foe whom this passage identifies as Satan. 

This terrible reptile apparently gained some allies among heavenly beings and waited in bloodthirsty rage for the birth of the child. But miraculously upon his birth he is taken away to heaven (resurrection) to God and the enraged dragon, deprived of his prize, fights a battle in heaven which he loses and is banished forever from heaven left only to seek vengeance against the woman and her children (God’s people). They, however, have been provided divine protection against his assaults. His tie to persecute the woman is short. His defeat in heaven portends his defeat on earth. His defeat here will cleanse the earth of all sin and evil making it the temple it was meant to be, a fit habitation for eternal divine-human fellowship.

We too easily, I fear reduced the Christmas stories in Matthew and Luke to sentimental stories about a poor young couple giving birth to their child under difficult circumstances. The shepherds, angels, and wise men become sort of cardboard cutout scenery that enhances the lovely story of a child’s birth. We speak of this as the birth of God’s son, even the savior, but I suspect this is more convention than conviction.

John the Seer won’t let us get away with such sentimentalizing nonsense. His vision, our 3^rd Christmas birth story, tells us what’s really going here. And that should make us uneasy if not undone by affirming this birth and our commitment to this child for the simple reason that a child stalked by the devil is not one we may want to get to close to, especially if by following him we become the devil’s target too.   

Matthew and Luke, each in their own way, tell Jesus’ story with the same accents and emphases John the Seer does. But convention, sentimentality, and familiarity dull their impact and sharp edge. John’s harrowing account strips all that away and leaves us with a skeleton of cosmic terror and warfare that is the deep reality of human life and history. That’s what we sign up every Christmas Eve as we think about the child’s birth (if we do think about it). 

Following him is neither safe nor easy. Life with him and in him is a contested life. Struggle, hurt, and even death are what following him entails. We are protected ultimately from the dragon’s harm. But the way of victory, the way of protection, is the way of Jesus, living, suffering, and dying for others. This is how God defeats the dragon as Jesus unforgettably displayed. And it how we will share in Jesus’ victory over him – by walking this same path.

It may be that Revelation’s birth story is the only one that can save us for truly following Jesus in our world.