This started as lecture notes I wrote in 2006. Along with the post yesterday, these have both been updated over the years, and published more than once. The one posted yesterday is another approach to the same stories, and the same ideas. I decided to rewrite them and put them together, Together they form a final commentary before Christas Day. This may seem a bit repetitive, but the first part, posted yesterday, examines the longer Lukan nativity narrative; this part focuses on the two stories in Matthew and Luke.Israel as a country occupied by God.
Everything has a context, and we have to start here to understand what follows. Israel is an occupied country. It is occupied by the God of Abraham. God is the “creator” of Israel, in confession as well as reality. The prophets Ezekiel and Jeremiah (!) present the image of a God who forces compliance which, although its goal is good, is in tension with the will of the people, by being in tension with the will of the prophet. This is a necessary tension, but it is a tension, nonetheless.
Tension is an important concept. We think of peace as not just the absence of war, but as the absence of tension. But that's not peace, it's hegemony, it's thought control, it's everyone agreeing with me (else how is there peace? "Peace" is when you all agree with me. Isn't it?). The same problem attaches to love: love can be unconditional but still create tension. Can you stop loving a sibling, a child, a cousin, because of their addiction, their actions, their failures or successes? Is love the absence of tension between persons, or the managing of those tensions? Love in Christ, in God, is not the absence of tension; in some ways it is the activity of tension. Without tension, you come too easily to believe that God is you, and you are God, and all the others in the world are just extensions of you in space and time. But that's a child's view, and we quickly outgrow that, or we painfully outgrow that; or we never quite outgrow that, and a tension that should be healthy, becomes pathological, or merely painful. You are not me and I am not you, but love can still bind us even as the tension, however so slightly, repels us. Tension is an integral part of love because without it, love is just self-satisfaction, and it fades as soon as the satisfaction fades. We have to put each other in obligation in order to love, but we have to simultaneously recognize the obligation we are placed in. That tension is what makes love, love. (It is also what power Derrida's observation about the impossibility of the gift. But don't confuse that impossibility with this tension.)
For Israel, that tension reaches a breaking point with the Exile, the defining event of Israel’s history that supercedes even the Exodus in the psyche of the nation. Then Israel, having rejected occupation by God as intolerable, is made vulnerable to occupation by a human power; an occupation from which it never really recovers.
And it is from that occupation, that Exile and return, that Israel begins to hope to receive the Messiah. That tension is what makes the nativity stories so powerful, as well. It is the connection to that history that the Nativity stories of Matthew and Luke speak, and to which they reach out. And that connection, as the Christmas story has primarily been connected to generations throughout time, is made through songs.
Matthew:
The gospel of Matthew begins with the genealogy of Jesus Christ; which is not his last name, but his title. We should call him "Jesus the Christ." Matthew presents the family tree of the Anointed One, the Messiah, the Christ; and that fact alone recalls immediately the genealogies that the Exile made necessary, as families returning from Babylon and around the area tried to decide, a generation later, who was the child of who, who was a descendant of one of the tribes, who was another of the children of Abraham. And so Matthew begins: “The genealogy of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham.” And this itinerant peasant from Nazareth is immediately identified with the father of nations, and the greatest king of the nation of Israel. And we are reminded of the Exile, of the first occupation of Israel, in the time of the second occupation of Israel, and after the second fall of Jerusalem, and the second diaspora of Abraham’s descendants.
This is a story told during yet another occupation. Once again, the nation is occupied by foreigners, even as it struggles to remain occupied by God. And so the great break point in the genealogy is the deportation to Babylon, and then the time after that: fourteen generations from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the Exile; fourteen from the Exile to the Messiah. God still occupies Israel, and always will.
But occupation brings a sense of oppression, a sense of danger. Joseph is engaged to Mary, but to his shame she is pregnant. Only when he learns in a dream that this is to fulfill prophecy does he decide he can relax, and accept this pregnant woman as his wife. And when the child is born, Joseph names the child Joshua, Jesus in the koine Greek of the gospels, which means “Yahweh is salvation.”
Occupation brings not only the sense of oppression, but true oppression. The birth of the Messiah is not an event that can happen quietly. When God came to Moses on the mountain there was theophany: thunder and lightning and clouds. When God came to Elijah there was a wind, and then an earthquake, and then fire: God was in none of those things, but nature could not be quiet when God was present. And so Creation must announce the birth of Messiah, but who will read the signs? Magi; magicians; men of wisdom and learning from another land; for truly, as Jesus would later say, a prophet is not honored in his own country. And surely his own people will not know him first. So comes the epiphany.
And straight from scripture it comes: for here is the amazing thing. Does knowledge come from revelation, or does it come from discovery? Do we learn what is most important for us to know, what is of “ultimate concern,” or is it revealed to us? Matthew and the Hebrew people would say that it is revealed, and would point to the story of Abraham, of Joshua, of Samuel and David and the call of Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Ezekiel, of Amos and Hosea and even Jonah, as their proof. We do not seek God so much as God seeks us, and we do not know what is most important to know so much as God reveals it to us: if we will listen; if we will see; if we will learn.
And so the Magi come just as expected. But why do we know to expect it? Because Psalm 72 has told us it will happen. Not in the simple sense of prophecy, “as it is written:” but in the complex sense of a revelation, an enactment of what the Psalmist said would happen as a sign of God’s favor and the righteousness of the king to whom God gives God’s judgment.
20 The prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended.
There is much in that Psalm that repays study in light of the nativity stories, and the gospel stories. There is much that is connected to the ministry of Jesus, and to the songs of Luke’s nativity tale. But I want to pay attention to the kings who come bringing presents.
We call them “kings” because of this Psalm, even if we don’t know the connection between Matthew and Psalm 72. That isn’t what Matthew calls them: he calls them “magi.” He calls them “astrologers.” The Psalmist says the kings of foreign countries will come and offer gifts, the kings of Tarshish and Sheba and Seba. But Matthew lives under oppression, and any mention of foreign kings and any naming of nations is dangerous, so his “magi” come only from the East, from outside the Empire, and they are not kings, but wise men, men of deep knowledge. And they come with gifts, to fall down before the child, and serve him. And we think there are three of them, because Matthew mentions three gifts.
The word means “revelation,” but it also means “light, illumination.” Epiphanai, sings Zechariah: Epiphanai tois en skotei kai skia thanatou kathamenois: light to those in darkness and in death’s shadow. Epiphanai: light, to show us the way. And so the Christmas stories connect again, through music. And to our celebration in the darkest time of the year.
We shouldn't pass lightly over the other two songs in Luke's nativity. The Gloria of the Angels is perhaps the best known Christmas scripture of all, and it is the climax of Luke's tale. Everything in the story has been building up to this, and in a few spare lines the angels explode into song for the event. It echoes down to our time still in the Latin of the Vulgate: "Gloria in excelsis Deo."
Everything has a context, and we have to start here to understand what follows. Israel is an occupied country. It is occupied by the God of Abraham. God is the “creator” of Israel, in confession as well as reality. The prophets Ezekiel and Jeremiah (!) present the image of a God who forces compliance which, although its goal is good, is in tension with the will of the people, by being in tension with the will of the prophet. This is a necessary tension, but it is a tension, nonetheless.
Tension is an important concept. We think of peace as not just the absence of war, but as the absence of tension. But that's not peace, it's hegemony, it's thought control, it's everyone agreeing with me (else how is there peace? "Peace" is when you all agree with me. Isn't it?). The same problem attaches to love: love can be unconditional but still create tension. Can you stop loving a sibling, a child, a cousin, because of their addiction, their actions, their failures or successes? Is love the absence of tension between persons, or the managing of those tensions? Love in Christ, in God, is not the absence of tension; in some ways it is the activity of tension. Without tension, you come too easily to believe that God is you, and you are God, and all the others in the world are just extensions of you in space and time. But that's a child's view, and we quickly outgrow that, or we painfully outgrow that; or we never quite outgrow that, and a tension that should be healthy, becomes pathological, or merely painful. You are not me and I am not you, but love can still bind us even as the tension, however so slightly, repels us. Tension is an integral part of love because without it, love is just self-satisfaction, and it fades as soon as the satisfaction fades. We have to put each other in obligation in order to love, but we have to simultaneously recognize the obligation we are placed in. That tension is what makes love, love. (It is also what power Derrida's observation about the impossibility of the gift. But don't confuse that impossibility with this tension.)
For Israel, that tension reaches a breaking point with the Exile, the defining event of Israel’s history that supercedes even the Exodus in the psyche of the nation. Then Israel, having rejected occupation by God as intolerable, is made vulnerable to occupation by a human power; an occupation from which it never really recovers.
And it is from that occupation, that Exile and return, that Israel begins to hope to receive the Messiah. That tension is what makes the nativity stories so powerful, as well. It is the connection to that history that the Nativity stories of Matthew and Luke speak, and to which they reach out. And that connection, as the Christmas story has primarily been connected to generations throughout time, is made through songs.
Matthew:
The gospel of Matthew begins with the genealogy of Jesus Christ; which is not his last name, but his title. We should call him "Jesus the Christ." Matthew presents the family tree of the Anointed One, the Messiah, the Christ; and that fact alone recalls immediately the genealogies that the Exile made necessary, as families returning from Babylon and around the area tried to decide, a generation later, who was the child of who, who was a descendant of one of the tribes, who was another of the children of Abraham. And so Matthew begins: “The genealogy of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham.” And this itinerant peasant from Nazareth is immediately identified with the father of nations, and the greatest king of the nation of Israel. And we are reminded of the Exile, of the first occupation of Israel, in the time of the second occupation of Israel, and after the second fall of Jerusalem, and the second diaspora of Abraham’s descendants.
This is a story told during yet another occupation. Once again, the nation is occupied by foreigners, even as it struggles to remain occupied by God. And so the great break point in the genealogy is the deportation to Babylon, and then the time after that: fourteen generations from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the Exile; fourteen from the Exile to the Messiah. God still occupies Israel, and always will.
But occupation brings a sense of oppression, a sense of danger. Joseph is engaged to Mary, but to his shame she is pregnant. Only when he learns in a dream that this is to fulfill prophecy does he decide he can relax, and accept this pregnant woman as his wife. And when the child is born, Joseph names the child Joshua, Jesus in the koine Greek of the gospels, which means “Yahweh is salvation.”
Occupation brings not only the sense of oppression, but true oppression. The birth of the Messiah is not an event that can happen quietly. When God came to Moses on the mountain there was theophany: thunder and lightning and clouds. When God came to Elijah there was a wind, and then an earthquake, and then fire: God was in none of those things, but nature could not be quiet when God was present. And so Creation must announce the birth of Messiah, but who will read the signs? Magi; magicians; men of wisdom and learning from another land; for truly, as Jesus would later say, a prophet is not honored in his own country. And surely his own people will not know him first. So comes the epiphany.
And straight from scripture it comes: for here is the amazing thing. Does knowledge come from revelation, or does it come from discovery? Do we learn what is most important for us to know, what is of “ultimate concern,” or is it revealed to us? Matthew and the Hebrew people would say that it is revealed, and would point to the story of Abraham, of Joshua, of Samuel and David and the call of Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Ezekiel, of Amos and Hosea and even Jonah, as their proof. We do not seek God so much as God seeks us, and we do not know what is most important to know so much as God reveals it to us: if we will listen; if we will see; if we will learn.
And so the Magi come just as expected. But why do we know to expect it? Because Psalm 72 has told us it will happen. Not in the simple sense of prophecy, “as it is written:” but in the complex sense of a revelation, an enactment of what the Psalmist said would happen as a sign of God’s favor and the righteousness of the king to whom God gives God’s judgment.
Give the king thy judgments, O God, and thy righteousness unto the king's son.
2 He shall judge thy people with righteousness, and thy poor with judgment.
3 The mountains shall bring peace to the people, and the little hills, by righteousness.
4 He shall judge the poor of the people, he shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor.
5 They shall fear thee as long as the sun and moon endure, throughout all generations.
6 He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass: as showers that water the earth.
7 In his days shall the righteous flourish; and abundance of peace so long as the moon endureth.
8 He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth.
9 They that dwell in the wilderness shall bow before him; and his enemies shall lick the dust.
10 The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall bring presents: the kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts.
11 Yea, all kings shall fall down before him: all nations shall serve him.
12 For he shall deliver the needy when he crieth; the poor also, and him that hath no helper.
13 He shall spare the poor and needy, and shall save the souls of the needy.
14 He shall redeem their soul from deceit and violence: and precious shall their blood be in his sight.
15 And he shall live, and to him shall be given of the gold of Sheba: prayer also shall be made for him continually; and daily shall he be praised.
16 There shall be an handful of corn in the earth upon the top of the mountains; the fruit thereof shall shake like Lebanon: and they of the city shall flourish like grass of the earth.
17 His name shall endure for ever: his name shall be continued as long as the sun: and men shall be blessed in him: all nations shall call him blessed.
18 Blessed be the Lord God, the God of Israel, who only doeth wondrous things.
19 And blessed be his glorious name for ever: and let the whole earth be filled with his glory; Amen, and Amen.
There is much in that Psalm that repays study in light of the nativity stories, and the gospel stories. There is much that is connected to the ministry of Jesus, and to the songs of Luke’s nativity tale. But I want to pay attention to the kings who come bringing presents.
We call them “kings” because of this Psalm, even if we don’t know the connection between Matthew and Psalm 72. That isn’t what Matthew calls them: he calls them “magi.” He calls them “astrologers.” The Psalmist says the kings of foreign countries will come and offer gifts, the kings of Tarshish and Sheba and Seba. But Matthew lives under oppression, and any mention of foreign kings and any naming of nations is dangerous, so his “magi” come only from the East, from outside the Empire, and they are not kings, but wise men, men of deep knowledge. And they come with gifts, to fall down before the child, and serve him. And we think there are three of them, because Matthew mentions three gifts.
Those gifts repay a bit of attention. Matthew has his purposes in this story, and one of them is to presage the death of the child now two years old (or so) when the Magi arrive. They bring gold, truly a gift for a king, and as the Psalmist said they would; but they bring frankincense and myrrh. These are gifts also worthy of a king, but gifts associated with death, and burial. Without modern embalming practices a corpse rather quickly begins to smell. These perfumes were used for the wealthy and the powerful. They prefigure, here, what is to come. They underline, in other words, that this child, like all of us, is mortal; born of woman, and bound to die.
In the larger picture, Matthew lives under oppression, and the immediate sponsor of that oppression is Herod; Herod who serves the occupiers, and like them fears any challenge to his power. Herod, who with all of Jerusalem is disturbed to hear the news of this birth. Disturbed precisely because the Psalmist’s words were true: this king will have the Lord’s justice, and will deliver the needy and the poor and those who cry out for God’s justice. No wonder Herod and all Jerusalem are disturbed: the end of their time has been announced, and they have just heard of it. The time of their oppression is at an end.
And how is this revealed to Herod? By strangers coming to ask for information he doesn’t have, who bring the information with them that he needs and open his eyes to what the Scriptures say, but to which he hasn’t listened. And so he sends the Magi to Bethlehem, to find the child. And now the revelation of the Scripture, and the revelation of Creation, and the revelation of God, come all three together. An angel speaks directly to Joseph, and later to the Magi; the star that rises new in the heavens is the first clue for the Magi; and the Scripture that make sense of all of this for Matthew’s audience, reveal the last connections for the Magi between their curiosity, and their goal. Guided by their knowledge of nature, playing their part according to the psalm, they need scripture to complete the picture.
And the last song of Matthew is another snatch of scripture, this time from Jeremiah, from the heart of the Exile itself. Matthew folds this into the story of the Massacre of the Innocents, the murder in Herod’s order of all male children two and under in Bethlehem. Rachel weeps for the exile of the northern kingdom in Jeremiah, and Matthew cuts off the hope of recovery. He ends his citation before Jeremiah provides the response of the Lord to “keep your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears,” for “they shall come back from the land of the enemy, there is hope for your future.” But does Matthew leave that part of the poem, the song, the song of lament, out of his story of Messiah? Or does he incorporate it by reference, as he incorporates by reference to Psalm 72 the last line of that psalm: “The prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended.” Ended? Why? Because they have been fulfilled. Because Messiah has come and the prayers of David son of Jesse have been fulfilled in the incarnation of the Christ who is also son of Abraham, son of David. And because the psalm itself portends, in Matthew’s gospel, and ending, almost an eschaton, a close to history. Because the psalm does not say what gifts the kings will bring from Sheba and Seba, but Matthew does: they bring gold, the precious element fit for a king, and frankincense and myrrh; strange perfumes for a child, but appropriate to prepare a corpse for burial. These gifts point already to the end, the crucifixion. We who are born mortal are born to die, and while this child is Messiah, this child is also mortal.
Just as the innocents slaughtered by Herod were mortal. But where Matthew cuts the story short with his quote from Jeremiah, he invites the rest of the story in tacitly, sotto voce, beneath the wailing of the mothers for their sons. He reminds them, reminds us all, that the terrible price of oppression, the terrible power of the oppressors, cannot be denied, cannot be overlooked or passed by easily: but neither is it the last word. That last word is God’s, and that word of hope will be heard in the gospel that follows this nativity story.
Luke:
So then we jump to Luke’s nativity story, since we are following songs and scriptures and sources of revelation. Luke presents us with four songs, fitting for a Christmas story, and Luke’s is our favorite Christmas story: we fit the details of Matthew’s in around it, in our most common tellings. Our nativity scenes include shepherds and magi, a star and and angel, and always the iconic manger. They don't belong together, but we have our reasons. Where Matthew implies concern for the poor and the powerless, Luke makes it concrete: Jesus is so poor and so powerless that even his birthplace is the result of oppression, of an order from the oppressor that his family go to their ancestral home. But here the oppressor, as ignorant as Herod of what God plans to do, has already done, will do in days to come; is made to play a necessary role in the story, is forced despite his intentions, to arrange the pieces so that God’s will is made clear to all who will see, to all who will listen.
But God’s will is obscure, even to the priests who serve God in the temple. Luke opens his story with Zechariah, a man of priestly line who should know his story of Abraham better, because God made the promise to Abraham five times before it was fulfilled. But Abraham never doubted, and never asked for anything more than a sign once. Zechariah, on the other hand, wonders how the news of a child to be born to his wife Elizabeth is even possible (Sarah was not a young woman, either). And for that he is silenced. Luke works in reverse to follow the story of the scriptures: God speaks first to a man, one who is to father the forerunner of Messiah, and then God speaks to the mother of Messiah. But where Zechariah is clumsy, Mary is subtle, and wise in her humility.
And yet it is only after Elizabeth speaks to Mary that Mary sings her hymn of praise to God for what God has promised. It is only when her story is confirmed by her cousin, by another and older woman, that the younger woman rejoices in what God has done for her. And then she sings the most revolutionary song in the Gospels, one that echoes, but goes far beyond, the song of Hanna in 1 Samuel:
10 The adversaries of the Lord shall be broken to pieces; out of heaven shall he thunder upon them: the Lord shall judge the ends of the earth; and he shall give strength unto his king, and exalt the horn of his anointed.
It is the first of Luke’s four songs, and it is no accident that this song sings of apocalypse and eschaton and revelation. Hannah sings because the Lord has lifted her oppression: because her place in society was to be a mother, and that joy had been denied her, until the Lord saw fit to allow it. Sarah laughs when God tells Abraham she will have a son within the year. (Her laughter is so disruptive God asks Abraham why she laughs.) Elizabeth gives thanks that God has removed her dishonor. Position and society and expectation oppress as much as governments and tyrants, and God removes the oppression of all of them. God removes oppression and suppression, and how should we respond except to sing?
Hannah sings of reversal, of strong men distraught, the weak made strong, the hungry fed while the full beg for a crust of bread, and childless mothers bear seven children while the mother of children languishes. Just so Mary sings of the reversal of oppression, but oppression of the people, not of the society. God will level; God will reverse. The valleys will be filled, and the mountains lowered, so that all will see the glory of God.
And as soon as Zechariah fulfills the word of the Lord as spoken by the angel, he can speak again, and he sings. We call that one the Benedictus, because the Latin version begins: “Benedictus Dominus, Deus Israel.” Mary’s song praises what God will do; Zechariah’s song praises what God has done. Together they tie up the strands of history, past and future, and make them one moving knot through the present, but all of time connected through that knot, through the moving present. Ironically, Zechariah’s song also does one more thing, in a way Luke never could have foreseen or intended. It ends with the one use of the word “epiphany” in all the Gospels.
In the larger picture, Matthew lives under oppression, and the immediate sponsor of that oppression is Herod; Herod who serves the occupiers, and like them fears any challenge to his power. Herod, who with all of Jerusalem is disturbed to hear the news of this birth. Disturbed precisely because the Psalmist’s words were true: this king will have the Lord’s justice, and will deliver the needy and the poor and those who cry out for God’s justice. No wonder Herod and all Jerusalem are disturbed: the end of their time has been announced, and they have just heard of it. The time of their oppression is at an end.
And how is this revealed to Herod? By strangers coming to ask for information he doesn’t have, who bring the information with them that he needs and open his eyes to what the Scriptures say, but to which he hasn’t listened. And so he sends the Magi to Bethlehem, to find the child. And now the revelation of the Scripture, and the revelation of Creation, and the revelation of God, come all three together. An angel speaks directly to Joseph, and later to the Magi; the star that rises new in the heavens is the first clue for the Magi; and the Scripture that make sense of all of this for Matthew’s audience, reveal the last connections for the Magi between their curiosity, and their goal. Guided by their knowledge of nature, playing their part according to the psalm, they need scripture to complete the picture.
And the last song of Matthew is another snatch of scripture, this time from Jeremiah, from the heart of the Exile itself. Matthew folds this into the story of the Massacre of the Innocents, the murder in Herod’s order of all male children two and under in Bethlehem. Rachel weeps for the exile of the northern kingdom in Jeremiah, and Matthew cuts off the hope of recovery. He ends his citation before Jeremiah provides the response of the Lord to “keep your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears,” for “they shall come back from the land of the enemy, there is hope for your future.” But does Matthew leave that part of the poem, the song, the song of lament, out of his story of Messiah? Or does he incorporate it by reference, as he incorporates by reference to Psalm 72 the last line of that psalm: “The prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended.” Ended? Why? Because they have been fulfilled. Because Messiah has come and the prayers of David son of Jesse have been fulfilled in the incarnation of the Christ who is also son of Abraham, son of David. And because the psalm itself portends, in Matthew’s gospel, and ending, almost an eschaton, a close to history. Because the psalm does not say what gifts the kings will bring from Sheba and Seba, but Matthew does: they bring gold, the precious element fit for a king, and frankincense and myrrh; strange perfumes for a child, but appropriate to prepare a corpse for burial. These gifts point already to the end, the crucifixion. We who are born mortal are born to die, and while this child is Messiah, this child is also mortal.
Just as the innocents slaughtered by Herod were mortal. But where Matthew cuts the story short with his quote from Jeremiah, he invites the rest of the story in tacitly, sotto voce, beneath the wailing of the mothers for their sons. He reminds them, reminds us all, that the terrible price of oppression, the terrible power of the oppressors, cannot be denied, cannot be overlooked or passed by easily: but neither is it the last word. That last word is God’s, and that word of hope will be heard in the gospel that follows this nativity story.
Luke:
So then we jump to Luke’s nativity story, since we are following songs and scriptures and sources of revelation. Luke presents us with four songs, fitting for a Christmas story, and Luke’s is our favorite Christmas story: we fit the details of Matthew’s in around it, in our most common tellings. Our nativity scenes include shepherds and magi, a star and and angel, and always the iconic manger. They don't belong together, but we have our reasons. Where Matthew implies concern for the poor and the powerless, Luke makes it concrete: Jesus is so poor and so powerless that even his birthplace is the result of oppression, of an order from the oppressor that his family go to their ancestral home. But here the oppressor, as ignorant as Herod of what God plans to do, has already done, will do in days to come; is made to play a necessary role in the story, is forced despite his intentions, to arrange the pieces so that God’s will is made clear to all who will see, to all who will listen.
But God’s will is obscure, even to the priests who serve God in the temple. Luke opens his story with Zechariah, a man of priestly line who should know his story of Abraham better, because God made the promise to Abraham five times before it was fulfilled. But Abraham never doubted, and never asked for anything more than a sign once. Zechariah, on the other hand, wonders how the news of a child to be born to his wife Elizabeth is even possible (Sarah was not a young woman, either). And for that he is silenced. Luke works in reverse to follow the story of the scriptures: God speaks first to a man, one who is to father the forerunner of Messiah, and then God speaks to the mother of Messiah. But where Zechariah is clumsy, Mary is subtle, and wise in her humility.
And yet it is only after Elizabeth speaks to Mary that Mary sings her hymn of praise to God for what God has promised. It is only when her story is confirmed by her cousin, by another and older woman, that the younger woman rejoices in what God has done for her. And then she sings the most revolutionary song in the Gospels, one that echoes, but goes far beyond, the song of Hanna in 1 Samuel:
And Hannah prayed, and said, My heart rejoiceth in the Lord, mine horn is exalted in the Lord: my mouth is enlarged over mine enemies; because I rejoice in thy salvation.
2 There is none holy as the Lord: for there is none beside thee: neither is there any rock like our God.
3 Talk no more so exceeding proudly; let not arrogancy come out of your mouth: for the Lord is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed.
4 The bows of the mighty men are broken, and they that stumbled are girded with strength.
5 They that were full have hired out themselves for bread; and they that were hungry ceased: so that the barren hath born seven; and she that hath many children is waxed feeble.
6 The Lord killeth, and maketh alive: he bringeth down to the grave, and bringeth up.
7 The Lord maketh poor, and maketh rich: he bringeth low, and lifteth up.
8 He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among princes, and to make them inherit the throne of glory: for the pillars of the earth are the Lord's, and he hath set the world upon them.
9 He will keep the feet of his saints, and the wicked shall be silent in darkness; for by strength shall no man prevail.
My soul extols the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has shown consideration for the lowly stature of his slave. As a consequence, from now on every generation will congratulate me; the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name, and his mercy will come to generation after generation of those who fear him. He has shown the strength of his arm, he has put the arrogant to rout, along with their private schemes; he has pulled the mighty down from their thrones, and exalted the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. He has come to the aid of his servant Israel, remembering his mercy, as he spoke to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever. (Luke 1:46-56, SV)
It is the first of Luke’s four songs, and it is no accident that this song sings of apocalypse and eschaton and revelation. Hannah sings because the Lord has lifted her oppression: because her place in society was to be a mother, and that joy had been denied her, until the Lord saw fit to allow it. Sarah laughs when God tells Abraham she will have a son within the year. (Her laughter is so disruptive God asks Abraham why she laughs.) Elizabeth gives thanks that God has removed her dishonor. Position and society and expectation oppress as much as governments and tyrants, and God removes the oppression of all of them. God removes oppression and suppression, and how should we respond except to sing?
Hannah sings of reversal, of strong men distraught, the weak made strong, the hungry fed while the full beg for a crust of bread, and childless mothers bear seven children while the mother of children languishes. Just so Mary sings of the reversal of oppression, but oppression of the people, not of the society. God will level; God will reverse. The valleys will be filled, and the mountains lowered, so that all will see the glory of God.
And as soon as Zechariah fulfills the word of the Lord as spoken by the angel, he can speak again, and he sings. We call that one the Benedictus, because the Latin version begins: “Benedictus Dominus, Deus Israel.” Mary’s song praises what God will do; Zechariah’s song praises what God has done. Together they tie up the strands of history, past and future, and make them one moving knot through the present, but all of time connected through that knot, through the moving present. Ironically, Zechariah’s song also does one more thing, in a way Luke never could have foreseen or intended. It ends with the one use of the word “epiphany” in all the Gospels.
Then his father Zechariah was filled with the holy spirit and prophesied: "Blessed by the Lord, our God of Israel, for he has visited and ransomed his people. He has raised up for us a horn of salvation in the house of David his servant. This is what he promised in the words of his holy prophets of old; deliverance from our enemies, and from the hands of all who hate us; mercy to our ancestors; and the remembrance of his holy covenant. This is the oath he swore to Abraham our ancestor: to grant that we be rescued from the hands of our enemies, to serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days. And you, child, will be called a prophet of the Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare his way, to give his people knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins. In the heartfelt mercy of our God this dawn from on high will visit us, to shine on those sitting in darkness, in the shadow of death, to quide our feet to the way of peace.--Luke 1:67-79, SV)
The word means “revelation,” but it also means “light, illumination.” Epiphanai, sings Zechariah: Epiphanai tois en skotei kai skia thanatou kathamenois: light to those in darkness and in death’s shadow. Epiphanai: light, to show us the way. And so the Christmas stories connect again, through music. And to our celebration in the darkest time of the year.
We shouldn't pass lightly over the other two songs in Luke's nativity. The Gloria of the Angels is perhaps the best known Christmas scripture of all, and it is the climax of Luke's tale. Everything in the story has been building up to this, and in a few spare lines the angels explode into song for the event. It echoes down to our time still in the Latin of the Vulgate: "Gloria in excelsis Deo."
And suddenly there appeared with the messenger a whole troop of the heavenly army praising God:Glory to God in the highest,and on earth peace to people whom he has favoured! (Luke 2:13-14, SV)
This song pivots the entire story from anticipation down to conclusion, but that conclusion doesn't come until the appearance of Simeon.
Simeon's song is the "Nunc Dimmitus," the "Lord now lettest thou."
When the parents brought in the child Jesus, to perform for him what was customary according to the Law, he took him in his arms and blessed God: "Now, Lord, you can dismiss your slave in peace, according to your word, not that my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all the peoples--a revelatory light for foreigners, and glory for your people Israel. (Luke 2:27b-32, SV)
"Revelatory" there is a word we are familiar with, but not as a "revelation." "Eis apokalipsin," writes Luke; an apocalpse, a revelation, a revealing, light to the nations.
Again the song is short, simple, and to the point. With the Gloria of the angels the reversal sung by Mary has already started. This news does not come first to the wise or the powerful, but to the outlaws, the shepherds, up late and with nothing else to do. As Mary sang, and Hanna before her, and the Psalmist, these are the ones favored by God, the poor and the oppressed to whom God listens. And again, their oppression is lifted, because they are the first invitees into the kingdom this new-born will grow up to proclaim. With the parting song of Simeon, an old man who now will die in peace and contentment, as old age should bring, the present is passed to the future, the old gives blessing and thanks for the young and what is to follow.
Conclusion:
So these songs set the themes of the gospel stories. The Psalm and the lament of Jeremiah set the framework of Matthew’s nativity, and set it inside the story of the revelation already told by the Jewish people to themselves, already recorded and revered in their scriptures. Luke, the Gentile, speaks to a Gentile community of ostensibly Jewish matters, so the witness of scripture is not as strong a pull on him. But he, too, needs scripture to anchor his story, to give it context. Scripture, and songs, because the truth is revealed in dreams, and sung in inspiration. The Benedidictus and the Magnificat bookend the kerygma of the kingdom, the proclamation of the change that is coming, a change that will comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. The Gloria is sung to those whom God favors, and it is not those we would expect; and the Nunc Dimmitus, much like Matthew’s gifts from the Magi, presents the eschaton, the end that awaits this family and this baby.
Unconnected with Matthew, still the stories are connected, and connected to the gospels they precede. They set the tone and themes for each gospel’s version of the story of the life of Jesus of Nazareth: a story of a peasant born under oppression; oppression both social and economic, and political. Each of those sources of oppression and repression are challenged in the nativity stories, and shown to be undone by God’s hand, by God’s action in history. Both encompass, from the beginning, outsiders, which means people like us, and people still not like us. So both stories offer us challenges, today.
And if there is a lesson for us today, it is that oppression and suppression take many forms, and many of them are imposed on us not just by governments, but by groups, by societies and communities. Matthew’s community was occupied by evil rulers; Luke’s community was dominated and defined by the Roman Empire. Like them, we are always struggling against what holds us, and always looking for liberation. But the question both these gospels present to us, from the very beginning of their stories, is: in what form does our liberation come, and is it what we are looking for? Are we always ready to recognize our epiphany?
Conclusion:
So these songs set the themes of the gospel stories. The Psalm and the lament of Jeremiah set the framework of Matthew’s nativity, and set it inside the story of the revelation already told by the Jewish people to themselves, already recorded and revered in their scriptures. Luke, the Gentile, speaks to a Gentile community of ostensibly Jewish matters, so the witness of scripture is not as strong a pull on him. But he, too, needs scripture to anchor his story, to give it context. Scripture, and songs, because the truth is revealed in dreams, and sung in inspiration. The Benedidictus and the Magnificat bookend the kerygma of the kingdom, the proclamation of the change that is coming, a change that will comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. The Gloria is sung to those whom God favors, and it is not those we would expect; and the Nunc Dimmitus, much like Matthew’s gifts from the Magi, presents the eschaton, the end that awaits this family and this baby.
Unconnected with Matthew, still the stories are connected, and connected to the gospels they precede. They set the tone and themes for each gospel’s version of the story of the life of Jesus of Nazareth: a story of a peasant born under oppression; oppression both social and economic, and political. Each of those sources of oppression and repression are challenged in the nativity stories, and shown to be undone by God’s hand, by God’s action in history. Both encompass, from the beginning, outsiders, which means people like us, and people still not like us. So both stories offer us challenges, today.
And if there is a lesson for us today, it is that oppression and suppression take many forms, and many of them are imposed on us not just by governments, but by groups, by societies and communities. Matthew’s community was occupied by evil rulers; Luke’s community was dominated and defined by the Roman Empire. Like them, we are always struggling against what holds us, and always looking for liberation. But the question both these gospels present to us, from the very beginning of their stories, is: in what form does our liberation come, and is it what we are looking for? Are we always ready to recognize our epiphany?
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