Christmas: The God Who Comes (3)
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...