I am so old that I can actually remember when there was a difference between the number of "shopping days" until Christmas and the number of calendar days. They always ran a little box with that magical number on the front page of the Cleveland Press, itself now a faded memory. (For those of you under a certain age, this was because in the day most stores were not open for business on Sunday. Can you believe it?) I am, however, not too old to recall worries that the central message of Christmas was being overshadowed by commercialism and consumerism. The truth is, I am not sure whether Baby Jesus was much on my mind the Christmas right after I turned six, but that Lionel HO gauge double-diesel locomotive electric train with realistic horn was on my mind quite a bit. I am happy to report that, like Ralphie's Red Ryder BB gun, the train was there on Christmas morning. (I am also happy to report that unlike the Parkers in that 1983 film, we were never reduced to having Christmas dinner in a Chinese restaurant.)
The truth is, I would have to be really old to remember such a time since it goes back at least to the days of the Pilgrims who, along with contemporary Presbyterians, Quakers, and Baptists, chose not to celebrate Christmas exactly because it seemed to them to cloud a true understanding of what was essential to the Christian faith. Not only were there unseemly associations with Roman Catholicism, but they reasoned that since the fourth commandment forbade work and play on one day of the week it implicitly commanded them on the other six. So farmers slaughtered animals, and farm wives went about their chores on December 25. It was no accident that Samuel Goodrich wrote that the cellar of his family's house in Connecticut "had been dug in a single day, and that day was Christmas." It has been observed that, "The Puritans argued that ‘they for whom all days are holy can have no holiday.' Eighteenth-century New England associated Christmas with royal officials, external interference in local affairs and improper behavior. Celebrations on December 25 had become a symbol of all the things that threatened New England's holy mission."1
While we either smile or grimace at such history, I don't think one has to be the Grinch to be aware of the continuing relevance of these matters. Not many years ago, while in Bangkok, Thailand, a country that is 99.9% Buddhist, I did a little shopping in a large urban mall that was actually owned by a Japanese firm. I was a little bemused to receive my purchases in bags wishing me a happy Christmas season. The month was May and these bags were not leftovers: They were anticipating the season still seven months away. They may be Buddhists, but Japanese/Thai merchants, at least, have discovered the commercial value of the season. It is legitimate to ask, "What is really central about this celebration?" And an interesting — although it may at first seem unlikely — place is Paul's introduction to his letter to the Romans in today's lesson. As you know, he was penning this letter to a church he had not only not founded but had not yet visited and so was particularly careful to lay out his beliefs. His introduction to that letter is packed with what he considered to be essentials of the Christian message, and some aspects of it are good reminders of what is really essential about the celebration of Christmas.
Paul began by conspicuously calling himself a doulos of Jesus Christ, a term that is difficult for translators. The NIV translates it "servant," while the NRSV does the same in its main text but with a footnote indicating that the Greek would more properly be translated "slave." Some versions straddle the fence by using something like "bond-servant" to remind us that most of the slaves in Rome were economic slaves, whether they had sold themselves into bondage or been sold by others. Slavery did not carry all the negative connotations that the American experience of the African slave trade did. I don't know about you, but when I hear the term "servant," I tend to think of Jeeves the Butler or someone's gardener. Insofar as the English term "servant" suggests a maid or chef who could just as well quit to take a job elsewhere, it is wholly inaccurate. Slaves (douloi) had no rights, no property, and no prospects for things to get better. Indeed, their only status (if that is even the right word) came from representing whom they served. The head slave (servant) of a king would, obviously, be treated with considerably more deference than a slave of a merchant class person, so it can be argued that Paul is introducing himself in a way that emphasizes his status as a servant of the Lord of the universe, Jesus Christ. While there is a grain of truth here, we are all aware of damage that has been done to the cause of Christ by those who claim a special status or special privileges because they are Christians. (I have been embarrassed to be in settings where pastors, for example, were demanding their 10% or 20% discount.)
To fully grasp Paul's use of this word, we have to recognize Paul's unique ability to straddle many cultural divides, in this case the Jewish/Gentile split. Paul, a devout Jew, was nonetheless a Roman citizen who had enjoyed a fine secular as well as religious education. In writing to the Romans, he often assumes that there were not only Jewish converts within the Roman Christian community, but that non-Jews had somehow been educated in the basics of biblical (for him Old Testament) theology. So for Paul, it is not just the secular understanding of "slave" but the biblical one that is important, and in the Old Testament "slave/servant" is the most common expression for serving God. When Moses is referred to as "the servant of Yahweh" at the time of his death in Deuteronomy 34:5, it certainly sounds like a title of honor, and it is clearly such a title when it is used repeatedly in the book of Joshua.
It is the suffering servant of Isaiah 49 and elsewhere Christians have always believed foreshadowed the suffering and death of Jesus. If it is an honorific title in these contexts, it is not so much because of the one served but because of the totality of the service. Jesus did not teach the disciples that when they became preoccupied with matters of honor and control, "You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many." Paul himself summarized this attitude in the great hymn in Philippians 2:
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. (Philippians 2:5-7)
The point in Paul's introduction of himself as a slave is not that he is the slave of the most high God and therefore deserving some honor. It was rather that he understood himself as a totally obedient slave of the one who took on the form of a slave. He saw himself, like all the Roman Christians (Romans 1:6), called to serve others as Christ did, in a manner found disdainful by the larger society.
We do have a way of focusing a little too much on the precious little baby in the starlit manger rather than the human baby in the cave, on the smelly hay with animals that couldn't really talk. So a non-cranky question to ask as we roll into the Christmas celebration is "Whose slave are we?" Can we participate in the secularized celebration of Christmas without becoming enslaved to it? Were the Puritans correct or is there a middle ground? In his 2006 Jefferson Lecture sponsored by the NEH, Tom Wolfe, author of The Right Stuff, Bonfire of the Vanities, and other popular novels, coined the phrase "statusphere" to describe the class-conscious, money-driven world in which many of us live. Whatever it means, living in the "statusphere" is surely incompatible with the birth of the one who came to be servant of all.
To complicate matters a little, Paul goes on to describe himself not just as a slave, but as one who has been "set apart" for the gospel. There may be a little irony here because Paul, who himself had been a "Pharisee of the Pharisees," uses the same term the Pharisees used to denote their own "set-apartness" from the average Jews whom they felt were deficient in their devotion to God as displayed by their lax adherence to the law and the traditions of the elders. While we tend to read "hypocrite" when we run across the word "Pharisee," such a reading is not helpful. First, because in the Old Testament it meant "set apart" for particular service to God. It is used to describe the birth of Samson and Jeremiah, for example, as well as to describe the "set apart" nature of God's people (see Isaiah 44). And it is not useful because the Pharisees of Jesus' day were set apart by their religious devotion (somewhat misdirected as it may have been) but not by non-participation in society. In fact, as a relatively small lay movement, most Pharisees supported themselves by normal jobs and pursued their extraordinary devotion to the law on their own time, as it were. Paul, we know, was a tentmaker or leather worker; Nicodemus may well have come to Jesus by night in John 3 because of his day job.
Because modern-day Hasidic Jews trace their movement to the Hasidean predecessors of the Pharisees, the Amish are sometimes pointed to as the Christian equivalent of Pharisees. While I think that is wrong on several levels it helps us once more focus on the question swirling around our celebration of Christmas: How are we to be separate from the prevailing culture? If we, like Paul and the Roman Christians, are to be "set apart" for the gospel, how exactly does that relate? Looking at the average congregation would suggest that we do not interpret it to mean that we are called to be "odd," to dress or speak in a distinctively different manner, or to live in separate communes or communities. But it ought to mean something! If our lives are indistinguishable from everyone else's, including adamant non-Christians, there is a problem. When Christmas fell on a Sunday in 2005 and many churches scaled back or cancelled services, there was widespread criticism that those particular churches, mainly megachurches, were capitulating to our culture's undue influence and thereby showing their true (and presumably unchristian) colors. Others, including as respected a figure as Richard J. Foster, author of the modern classic, Celebration of Discipline, saw that criticism as cheap shots at large congregations. But what does it mean?
Paul says he is set apart not for the sake of being different but for the gospel of God. He is no doubt using the term here to mean that particular message he had spread around the Mediterranean basin (clearly not the books that later came to be known by it). By this term Paul is again reminding us how he — not so much unlike ourselves — was standing at the intersection of two worlds. In the Jewish milieu it had to do with the good news of Isaiah 40:9: "Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good tidings; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings, lift it up, do not fear; say to the cities of Judah, ‘Here is your God!' " It recalls how a messenger came to Jerusalem with the good news of Babylon's defeat and the astoundingly good news that it would once again be possible for exiles to return to Jerusalem. But this same word, gospel, good news, was used to announce the accession to the throne or the birthday of a ruler or emperor. So the very use of this term is both a promise that the old prophecy had been fulfilled in a new and exciting way in the person of Jesus and a challenge to all other rulers, what Paul refers to elsewhere as the powers and principalities of this universe. While widespread persecutions of Christians still lay in the future, Paul had already experienced the fact that to say "Jesus is Lord" was understood by at least some to imply, "And Caesar is not."
Paul conveniently gives a thumbnail summary of the gospel in Romans 1:3-6. What does it mean to say Jesus was "declared son of God"? While no one can prove it, it is likely that Paul had Jesus' baptism in mind. In Luke's gospel (and Luke was Paul's physician and traveling companion) baptism is clearly the beginning of Jesus' ministry when the heavenly voice declared, "You are my beloved Son in whom I am pleased." If we need more evidence, we find in Peter's sermon in Acts 10:38 Jesus' anointing with the Holy Spirit and with power is tied to Jesus' baptism by John. Then, of course, there is the declaration by means of the resurrection from the dead, one of Paul's very favorite themes. In fact, if you think of the gospel story found in the four gospels, Jesus' earthly ministry begins with his baptism and ends with the empty tomb. And the remarkable end of that earthly ministry marks the beginning of his new rule at the right hand of God. So, not long after the events of Pentecost, as Stephen was suffering as the first martyr he affirmed, "I see ... the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God" (Acts 7:56). Do we really have to drag the crucifixion and resurrection and martyrdom into Christmas?
I had a dean years ago who never tired of telling us, his faculty, how "Everything is connected to everything else." He loved the word "synergy" before it was common. He always irritated me because I knew he was right. We like to pretend that we can do something without influencing another area; that various areas of life can be compartmentalized. But they can't. Can't we just enjoy a good old-fashioned Dickensonian consumer-minded Christmas and let the theology go for another day? Well, no. Because as we were reminded two weeks ago, for Paul the past, present, and future cannot be separated. Everything is connected to everything else. Charles Wesley knew it:
Hark, the herald angels sing,Hark, the herald angels sing,
"Glory to the newborn king."Glorytothenewbornking.
Peace on earth, and mercy mild,Peace on earth, and mercy mild,
God and sinners reconciled....God and sinners reconciled....
A Christmas without theological depth isn't worth celebrating. I don't believe it means we have to be like the Puritans and not celebrate at all. We don't need to be odd and call attention to ourselves by spurning all the cultural trappings of Christmas. But we do need to be careful. We have to remember what it means to be called, to be set apart for a special purpose. A purpose of witnessing to the power and the saving acts of God. Because we, just as much as the Romans to whom Paul wrote, are called to "belong to Jesus Christ." And however we manage it, that needs to show. Amen.
1. http://www.stanleywhitman.org/puritanchristmas.html.