The Christmas story sounds strangely familiar, not just because it is well known history but because it is in part our story, too. Who of us has not experienced shocking interruptions of what we had hoped would be a predictable course of events?
More than 2,000 years ago, no one was prepared for God to actually do what had been long predicted by the prophets. It was easier to believe that a Messiah, a Savior, would come some day than to think that it could happen in their lifetime.
A baby? Did the angel say "child?" Was that an angel? Who was ready for a baby?
Reactions to surprise varies between believing it is from God and immediately submitting, like Mary, or deciding to quickly dispense with the discomfort, assuming someone has done something wrong, like Joseph's first reaction to Mary's condition.
Part of the surprise was the original cast of characters God chose. Mary was an unwed teenager who had "never known a man." She likely thought of herself as a poor prospect for motherhood. Joseph was a descendant of religious leaders, surely expecting the propriety of a traditional marriage before fatherhood. Herod was a paranoid political figure. The Magi were foreigners, educated scientists of the day, who were not a part of the Jewish faith. The shepherds were just regular working folk, unlikely to be esteemed in religious circles because they could not keep all the ceremonial laws. Who out of that cast would expect to be chosen?
And circumstances were just as inconvenient. A pregnant woman traveled 80 miles walking or on a donkey to give birth in a stable for animals because the government had passed a decree demanding a census. An angel, then a host of angels, announced the arrival of the baby who would be God's presence on earth. In this story, God does not come in the form of a conquering hero. In fact, His answer to our hopes and fears is a baby that needs human care and patient attention before He saves us from our own destructive ways. How odd it is to demand that humans expend energy to help God.
No one in the Christmas story can receive Him without some adjustment to their regular lives. In fact, as they receive Him, their lives are not just regular anymore. Now they will live in adjoining worlds -- the baby who will become a great teacher, and give his life as a sacrifice, is the door to heaven. Those who receive him experience an access to heaven while living on earth because heaven came to earth in him.
Of course learning to bridge two worlds is a risky and uncomfortable business. Joseph and Mary become refugees to escape the political figure's attack. The Magi return to their home by a way that will avoid contact with those who demand destruction of the competition. The shepherds return to the field, praising God but wondering how what they have seen relates to their everyday lives.
God came in a way that would reconcile the differences and distances between groups. If shepherds and Magi, if a poor couple and the Roman Caesar, if stars and animals and crowds unaware can be combined in the story of God's special arrival, then cooperation among different groups for the good of all would seem to be God's way.
Once upon a time, God interrupted the lives of people to make them part of a special story. Those of us who commemorate the story are also part of it. During Advent we prepare for Christmas not merely as a ritual but as a hoped-for divine interruption. We look to recognize in the interruption of our routines a chance to see God's arrival again. We are hoping that He will use us with groups that would ordinarily not be in the same story. We are hoping that as our families get together, as we personally ponder in our hearts (as Mary did) all the facets of the Christmas story, God will use us to do something extraordinary in the world again.
The "Glory to God in the highest [is] on earth peace among men [as in male and female humankind] with whom He is pleased" (Luke 2:14).
During this solemn season of Advent, the preparation to re-live the birth of Jesus, we have a choice: We can focus on decorations and gifts and food, some of it fun and bonding. Or we can focus on the door, once a baby, adjoining heaven and earth. We can get ready to worship God in such a way that we will be ongoing agents of reconciliation. We can long for and work for a world where different and distant groups are all a part of the same story -- His.
Ira Glasser: Christmas Day in a Louisiana Dungeon
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There are many questions we should be asking here with the historical account of the birth of Messiah.
Why did so many cultures speak of God being born as a man?
Who is Messiah/Christ?
Why is Yeshua's birth significant?
How did the Magi find out about the birth of Yeshua and who were they?
What were the Sheherds doing in the fields and why were they seeing angels?
What does "glory to God in the highest" mean?
What is the significance of Yeshua being a direct descendant of King David?
Why does something so good get such a bad rap?
How is Yeshua still a threat to governments to this day?
Why do so many people believe in Yeshua against all odds?
Why are so many people so silent about the most influential person of all time?
Who is this King of Glory?
How is it that every knee will bow and every tongue confess that this baby Yeshua is the Lord?
Why does Yeshua's name mean "the Salvation of the Lord"?
Why are there records of genealogies from Yeshua going all the way back to Adam and Eve?
Why do so many people not ask any of these questions?
"Why are so many people so silent about the most influential person of all time?"
Some don't think he was the most influential person of all time, they think others or another was and so they are talking about someone, or something else.
Also.
They either don’t know, think they know, or fear to know, or don't want to know. Silence. And when there is no one willing to speak, or share, or question, silence exists.
"Why does Yeshua's name mean "the Salvation of the Lord"?"
As opposed to what, the law?
I would say that if it was the Lord who condemned through the law, and the law was unjust, it is the Lord who must save through just law, rational law, not insanity, or irrationality; who else could, given mankind’s penchant for habit/tradition and/or forced conformity.
Well maybe three:
"What were the Sheherds doing in the fields and why were they seeing angels?"
Well they had been working, leading, until they saw the angels, then they were quaking because they knew. Perhaps some knew their gig was up, and perhaps some knew it was about to begin.
Our calendar is based on "the year of our Lord".
The shepherds were likely tending to the birth of their lambs. The angels meant that something very significant was happening.
That mind-set is a big problem and misses something fundamental - the falacy of respect for all ideas regardless of merit.
I didn't mean criticism in the negative sense, but criticism in the sense of examining the claims. Just as historians and philosophers and scientists do when a new idea in their field is offered up....And if claims don't stand up to scrutiny then that should be public knowledge....
This includes claims about supernatural events which are at the foundation of most religions and the worship fetish.
there should be no sacred cows when trying to understand the universe, and that universe includes man-made myths and human behaviour......”
I have several good friends who are christian and one muslim friend....and they consider me to be their friend even though I am clear in my atheism....in fact, I think they respect me for not being wishy-washy and talking about my non-belief and other philosophical issues in a sensible and open way....
In all reality there is no way jesus was born anytime in December ,since the way its discribed of sheep being tended to [sheep were not tended to during the winter months and were allowed to basically free roam] Not to mention the Winter nights would have been just awful.
However to keep alive and to keep taking in new cultures into Christianity things are made up. Things are changed, things are taken from literally to "metaphore".
But to keep a religion going you either have to kill social progress or adapt to it ,Christians choose a path between.
But then again if you look at Christianity at a whole most of the religion has been stolen from other religions and smooshed together into one.
As for most of the Christian religion having been "stolen" from other religions -- cite some verifiable evidence, please. The kind scholars would recognize as worth considering.
Perhaps it is that the date was specifically chosen "because" sheep would not have been tended to at that time, in that location. Perhaps it is that this is not a Jewish, Palestine, Abraham story. It is not meant to be a repeat of the Abraham God, or religion like an old dress with new patches.
You talk like a child of God's living by our rules and giving us signs in the way we want them. Children talk of magic and hope that God will magically take care of their problems. You do the same.
You have no more knowledge of Christ and His family than anyone here. If you don't believe in Him, fine. You won't make even a little dent in the faith of those who do.
Religion is arrogance that parades itself as humble.
Don't assume you know them all to be "bankrupt, lazy mythology....including the very notion of God" unless you can prove you're actually that familiar with them all. That would be arrogant.
Continued at:
http://www.blogher.com/awakening-advent
The new covenant is symbolized by the body and blood of Christ represented in the ritual of the Eucharist.
Yes, let's...
their noses if others find meaning in this. Faith and reason can exist together. It's not
strictly one thing or the other.
Mebbe you should try the Entertainment Section.
This is about the opposite of my impression, which is that the Israelites had long been impatient for the Messiah to arrive, between the problems they had with Seleucids and then with the Romans, and that there were a number of would-be Messiahs, and that the story of Jesus finally stuck and spread, although, unexpectedly, eventually, after a generation or two or three, it was accepted more with non-Jews than with Jews.
As to why it was that particular far-fetched story that caught on, so far-fetched, filled with so much obvious myth, so much myth which is so obviously borrowed from here and there, that it's perfectly legitimate to ask whether anything plausible is left when the myth is weeded out, whether the main character, Jesus, ever existed at all -- that I don't know. It's one of the biggest head-clutching enigmatic disasters in human history. Why? Because if you can be made to accept that story, and to build your life around, and -- very important! -- to reject all other myths for the sake of this one -- then you can be made to do and believe just about anything. As we have seen.
http://thewrongmonkey.blogspot.com/
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What's fascinating to note (from a purely socio-cultural perspective) is that the Muslims are apparently repeating this very same memetic hat trick. In a day when Christianity is largely on the wane, Islam waxes bright, or dark - depending on your own point of view.
Clearly, there is something in this Abrahamic mythos that resonates deeply in the hearts and minds of countless people. No doubt folks will disagree on what that something is, but the memetic pull of the mythos is an empirical fact.
If you can be made to believe an alternate belief, you can be made to throw out all reason because the teach of the provision that only our Creator is able to give us Himself is the only rational teaching there is.
Someone has to have paid for our existence.
Anybody see any connection between my comment and Daleri's reply?
http://thewrongmonkey.blogspot.com/