Marginal Christianity

Ponderings for Christmas We start with the ridiculous and move toward the sublime. Or maybe it’s the other way round. Or ,maybe, even, the sublime is found in the ridiculous. Decide for yourself. Christmas with Calvin and Hobbes Does God “ever show himself and prove his existence”? Nor do I! Seems to work for Christians in the US, huh? Martin Luther and the Christmas Tree According to tradition, Luther may have also popularized the tradition of the Christmas tree as a way to express and teach theology to his family. The story goes that, while he was on his way home one evening, he became overwhelmed by the incredible beauty of a fir tree positioned against the backdrop of the brilliant starlit sky. He so desperately wanted to describe what he had seen to his family, but the words failed him. So he ventured back outside and chopped down one of these trees, bringing it home to share with his family. He even decorated the tree with candle ...

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 shepherd...

I am a Scrooge at Christmas, I admit it. It frustrates my wife. Exasperated, she asked me the other night why I dislike Christmas so much. I’ve been thinking about how I would answer that since then. As far as I can tell, I think a certain experience, family experience, and theological development play key roles. That certain experience happened when I was about 10 years old. My family went to the Christmas Eve service at our church. We arrived late enough to find empty space only on the first pew. I was seated on the aisle. As the choir began to process down the aisle to the choir loft past me, I suddenly burst into tears. Sobbing uncontrollably, my parents tried to settle me down without drawing embarrassing attention to my outburst. I could not explain why I was crying. But after I settled down a bit, I realized that the onset of the service sparked a question in my mind that I couldn’t get rid of and it saddened me deeply. “Why did they have to kill him (Jesus)?” was the q...

Posted on   January 6, 2019 by  carolyncustisjames A careful reading of the Gospels reveals that the birth of Jesus takes place amid dark political machinations. Despite generations of Christian efforts to make the story suitable for children in cheerful Christmas pageants, Christmas has a menacing subtext of  poverty, marginalization, the threat of an honor killing, angel warnings, bold escapes from danger, a ruthless tyrant, and the actual killing of countless baby boys.  Epiphany marks the final episode of the Christmas story: the magi’s visit to the Christ child. By the time we reach this day on the calendar, the holidays are over, kids are back in school, and with a sense of relief we’re packing up Christmas decorations and settling back into our normal routine. Taking one last look back at events surrounding Jesus’ birth seems almost anticlimactic. Yet to close the books for another year’s round of Christmas celebrations is to mi...

The Third Birth Story This last post on the season of Christmas takes us to the third of Jesus’ birth stories in the New Testament. Yes, that’s right – a third birth story. And it comes at the heart of the last book in the Bible – the book of Revelation. In Rev.12 we hear a tale of a fantastic woman giving birth to a son even as a mighty dragon waits eagerly to devour the child when he arrives. The child is snatched away, however, before the dragon can execute his dastardly plan. Enraged the dragon does battle with archangel Michael who defeats him and banishes him and the angels who support him from heaven to earth. Not your Matthew and Luke kind of story, is it? Not one for the Hallmark Christmas cards. This tale of cosmic warfare is John the Seer’s retelling of Jesus’ story in its largest horizon. Here the story is not set among the Abraham trajectory as Matthew’s is, nor the Adam trajectory as Luke’s is. In this birth story it is cosmic warfare against the devil and hi...

The Christ mass, by contrast, is  “the feast of Nicene dogma.”                                                                                                                                                   Fleming Rutledge , Advent : 1164 Theology rests on the na...

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it” (John 1:5) The Conflict We meet the darkness again. Yes, that darkness we met in Advent. The darkness God calls his people to engage to prepare themselves to serve in the new movement God is about initiate to reclaim and restore his hijacked creation to its proper Lord and proper ends. In Christmas we acknowledge and celebrate the beginning of this movement. Into the darkness the light we glimpsed through God’s call in Advent comes. Up close and in person. Ready to do hand-to-hand combat with its defenses and forces. The verse from John cited above makes this clear. From the time God began this reclamation and restoration movement with Abraham and Sarah and promised to give them a people whom he would bless and protect and through whom he would bless the world (Gen.12:1-3), he’s been aiming for this moment. “ But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son” (Gal.4:4). Though humanity ha...

Did you realize there are three stories of Jesus’ birth in the New Testament?  There’s Matthew’s and there’s Luke’s and there’s . . . John’s.  No not the John of the Fourth Gospel but John the Seer of book of Revelation fame! Yes, he too has a birth story of Jesus.  It’s found in the twelfth chapter of his visions of the “revelation” of Jesus Christ (1:1).  In it he takes us back behind the personal and historical dramas we find in Matthew and Luke (though, of course, they hint and allude to this in various ways in their stories too).  We might say that if -the John of the Fourth Gospel takes us back to find Jesus in the eternal being of God, and   -Matthew and Luke tell us of his actual birth from the perspectives of Joseph and Mary respectively, then -John the Seer takes us into the heavenly realm itself and reveals the cosmic meaning of what Matthew and Luke narrate for us.  In his enigmatic (to us) imagery and lurid detail the Seer e...