How do we celebrate the birth of a baby who changed the world? Is it not by trying to follow his teachings and example by loving, by being generous in our giving, by being aware of those who are lonely and trying to befriend them, by being inclusive of those who are different and by bringing hope to our troubled world? Celebration and challenge; that’s what Christmas is for me. Grace and Peace, George Stuart.

An Interview, play-reading with the Gospel writers.

Interviewer.
We are extremely privileged to have with us now, the writers/editors of the first four books in our New Testament; Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Thank you, gentlemen, for giving us your time and sharing with us some of the insights and motivations which gave rise to you and your colleagues writing, what we call now, the 4 Gospels. I suppose you had no idea that 2000 years later we would still be reading your different stories about Jesus?

Mark.
Well, No. You are quite right. We didn’t! My friends and I thought it was necessary at the time, to write our Jesus’ stories because we believed he would ‘return’ again from heaven very quickly, but as time went by and this didn’t happen, we thought it was necessary to put the story in writing so that people like you might learn from it. I know it took us about 30 years after some of us were fortunate enough to listen to Jesus himself, but we eventually got round to it.

John.
I’m sure I speak for all of us when I say; it is a joy for us to be here to share with you something of our experience of Jesus who came to be the Light of the world and the Word made flesh, for us. As you may know I and my colleagues did not write our story until about 30 or 40 years after Mark and his friends and indeed, as we say at the very end of our Gospel, ‘There is much else that Jesus did. If it were all to be recorded in detail, I suppose the whole world could not hold the books that would be written.” A bit exaggerated, I suppose, but I think you get the point. So a lot of water went under the bridge between Mark’s writing and ours.

Matthew.
I too am very pleased to be here and thank you for the invitation. One of the reasons I am pleased to be here is to ask John, why he never had anything about the birth of Jesus in his gospel; no birth story. You don’t say a thing about it!

John.
Well Matthew, that isn’t really true. It’s true that our gospel doesn’t have a story like yours but there is more than one way of witnessing to the truth. We knew there were stories of Jesus’ birth from both you and Luke and we didn’t really think there was need for yet another. In our gospel we speak of Jesus being the Word from the very beginning of everything. We also say that this Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us. Surely people would understand that we are talking about Jesus and his birth.

Matthew.
I suppose so but I still think a solid story helps more. Stories can have very deep meanings, if thought about and really understood.

Interviewer.
We might hear from Luke about this, because you have stories about the birth of Jesus.

Luke.
Thank you. Before throwing in my bit, I would also like to say how great it is to be here. I’ve always wanted to meet you guys. On this point, I would like to I agree with Matthew about stories. But you, Matthew, would surely agree that we were not really writing about the birth of Jesus; we were really giving our listeners and readers a foretaste of what we were going to emphasize in our gospels, an overture as it were, introducing our main themes.

Interviewer.
Before we go any further, I would like Mark to comment on his gospel having no birth story.

Mark.
Well, being the first gospel to be written, we thought it was important to get straight into message that Jesus left us, linking it with our Hebrew Scriptures and also linking him with John the Baptiser. John was a well-known and revered preacher so people could quickly connect. We started, as you know, with Jesus’ baptism, connecting him with John. We know he was one of John’s disciples. And John was proclaiming that Jesus would baptise people not with water but with the Holy Spirit. Then we have Jesus calling his disciples and straight after that getting into the synagogue to teach and preach. We wanted to get into Jesus’ message right at the beginning.

John.
Great stuff Mark. I’m on your side but I still think Matthew and Luke added an extra significant bit that is important.

Interviewer.
What say we give Matthew and Luke a chance to justify their ‘extra significant bit’ that you speak of John? Over to you first, Matthew.

Matthew.
Thanks. Luke is absolutely right when he said that we were not really writing about the birth of Jesus in our first few stories about him. These stories are the vehicle we use, hinting to people what our whole gospel is going to be all about. I can speak for the group of us who toiled for many years, writing our gospel, that we wanted to present Jesus as the fulfilment of prophesies that are in our given sacred scriptures, what is called now, the Old Testament.

This is obviously why we have 5 specific references to our Hebrew Scriptures in our birth stories. We make this quite clear with statements like, ‘Now all this happened in order to make what the Lord had said through the prophet come true.’ and ‘In this way what the prophet Jeremiah had said, came true.’ We keep doing this to death in the first 50 verses of our gospel – once in every 10 verses. We wanted to make our point!

Interviewer.
You certainly have. I suppose there is more you would like to add. What might that be?

Matthew.
Yes. There is actually more. We have Jesus’ father, Joseph depicted as a dreamer; – just like Joseph in the book of Genesis. We have Joseph’s father being Jacob; – just like in the book of Genesis.
We have the ancestry of Jesus going back to Abraham, a Son of David, if you please. Do I make my point? We wanted to assure our Jewish readers and listeners that we had a new history in the making, and Jesus was smack bang in the centre of it. And there’s more!

In a more subtle way we are retelling the story of Moses. We wanted to present Jesus as the new and greater Moses. Rather bold when you consider we were writing principally to our Jewish friends and Jewish communities who held Moses in the highest regard. No-one was higher! We tell of a child slaughter in Bethlehem and how Jesus escaped from death at the hands of Herod – just like when Moses was rescued from the bulrushes amidst a massive child slaughter by Egypt’s Pharaoh. We tell of Jesus coming ‘out of Egypt’, – reminding our listeners that Moses came out of Egypt with the nation of Hebrew slaves. We tell that immediately after Jesus’ baptism, and after ‘he came up out of the water’, he was tempted for 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness – just like the Hebrew slaves, after coming up out of the waters, when the Red Sea was parted, were in the wilderness for 40 years encountering many temptations. We tell of Jesus’ ‘Sermon on the Mount’ – just like God had given the 10 Commandments on Mt. Sinai. Somewhat subtle, as I have said, but our Jewish friends would have got it, I’m sure. They would have understood what we were really saying. Jesus is the new and greater Moses.

Interviewer.
I suppose that’s about it?

Matthew.
Well, Yes. Sorry I have said so much but it is important to know what our gospel is doing with our stories about the birth of Jesus. Right at the beginning of our gospel we are calling our Jewish friends to re-think our common history and instead of following Moses to follow the new Moses, Jesus. We can’t and shouldn’t ignore Moses and all of our history; but Jesus is now our Lord. We also put a wider theme in our story with the visit of the Magi, amongst the gentile elite. But our emphasis here is on the gifts. Gold for a king, Frankincense for priestly functions, and Myrrh used in the burial of the dead. All these are meant to point to aspects of Jesus later life, nothing really to do with his birth.

Interviewer.
Thank you very much Matthew. Now it’s over to you Luke for your insights.

Luke.
Thank you. Great stuff Matthew; and I really do respect you and your mates for your tremendous contribution. I take your point about Moses and maybe that needed to be said.

For us, however, our gospel of Jesus is much more than ‘Jesus is the new and greater Moses.’ Jesus and his message is to all of us, even gentiles like me. I know you would agree but we felt we had to make our point strongly, right at the beginning of our story – in the birth story of Jesus This is why we have our ancestry line going right back to Adam. I hope you noticed that; – not just a Jewish lineage but a human ancestry. We don’t even have Jesus’ grandfather having the name Jacob! We reckon his name was Heli, but we don’t wish to knit-pick.

However, we take our collective hat off to you, Matthew. You mentioned 5 women in your ancestry. We didn’t mention any. Shame on us! It might be interesting to compare notes as to where we both got our information about ancestry from. Our lists are so different. If we had had access to the internet we may have been more accurate! Not to worry.

I would like to say that it is not by accident that Joseph hardly gets a look-in in our birth narrative. We talk about Elizabeth, Mary’s relative and their close bond. Their babies had a close bond as well; John the Baptiser and Jesus. Isn’t it interesting that John’s mother insisted on his name being John and she got her way!

We also thought it important to share Mary’s song of praise and we are so pleased that it is still used in many Christian churches now. Joseph obviously needs to be there but Mary is the one we concentrate on.

Interviewer.
Yes. Why do you do this?

Luke.
Why? A good question. Mary is our hero, and her prominence is important because women were marginalised; and one might say they still are!. They were ignored and oppressed. Mary is the humble one who obeys what she believes is God’s plan. We also thought that the stories about the woman who anointed Jesus’ feet, the healing of the crippled woman on the Sabbath, the parable about the Lost Coin, (about the cleaning chores usually done by women!) were all significant to preserve. The best one I like is the story about Mary and Martha, where Mary chooses to sit at Jesus’ feet, learning as a disciple and Martha does the traditional women’s thing. When Martha complains that Mary is not doing her bit in the kitchen, Jesus tells her to back off. Great stuff!

All you guys missed these stories. Sure you had others about women, some of which we missed, and you alluded to women being part of Jesus’ disciples band, as we did because they obviously were, but we thought these particular stories were also important to include in our gospel.

Enough about women, but they do play a very important part in our gospel and we introduce this theme right at the beginning. Mary is our main player. People who are marginalised are at the centre of our gospel. That is precisely why we have Jesus born in a stable. This is a symbol of poverty and of the disadvantaged. There is ‘no room’ for Mary to give birth in suitable conditions. She and her family are not supported. They are rejected.

Interviewer.
OK. Well what about the shepherds? They are important in your story.

Luke.
Ah, Yes! The Shepherds. Shepherds in our day, back then, were shunned. They would never have been allowed to be in the company of the elite, the Magi, the Wise Men, even if they were gentiles! Shepherds were thieves, stealing fodder wherever their sheep grazed. They didn’t keep the Sabbath laws. They had to tend their sheep. No excuses permitted! So in our gospel they are prime players. We are saying, right at the beginning of our gospel that the oppressed are the ones who were special to Jesus, and they are there, even at his birth!

Interviewer.
We could go on for hours here with you great contributors to our Christian heritage but time is up, so thank you so much for your time and sharing your insights with us.

Reading John 1 : 1 – 14.

‘We saw his glory!’ What glory do we see? I see the glory of compassion, the glory of forgiveness, the glory of integrity, the glory of honesty and goodness, the glory of acceptance and gentleness, the glory of godliness in all its expressions. Yes, I see the glory of God, full of grace and truth.The birth of every baby brings forward the hope of all this happening. The birth of every baby points to the potential of all this happening. The birth of each baby gives rise to a hymn of praise.

The Birth of a Baby
Tune – The Ash Grove VU 242, 481

The birth of a baby
Can kindle just maybe
A spark of compassion for all humankind.
At Christmas we wonder,
Amazed as we ponder
A sight that stirs love in our heart and our mind.
A babe so dependent,

A human descendant,
So fragile and helpless gives strength to the weak;
When love is wide open
To outcast and broken,
The baby is present for all those who seek.

Perhaps we could venture
To join an adventure
Of singing the chorus already begun;
Its mercy is tender;
True justice its splendour;
This chorus when sung gives great strength to each one.
But better than singing
Are actions when bringing
This Good News of peace and acceptance and grace;
With love so beguiling
The baby is smiling;
The heart of the chorus is here to embrace.

The story enduring
Of love re-assuring
May raise in our hearts what we know to be good.
It urges a question
And prompts the suggestion
To make this world gentle. If only we could!
For Christmas is telling
With hope overwhelming
Of one man’s endeavour to let God be king.
He showed by his living
And by his forgiving
That love is eternal. Let Christmas bells ring!

Reading 1 John 4 : 7 – 10, 12, 16b, 19 – 20.

These readings, more than most other readings from the New Testament, teach me that if and when I love, God is dwelling in me and I am expressing the godly purpose for this world. If I love I am expressing God. If I love I am really an incarnation of God.

My brothers and sisters are, of course, not only those I like. Being a follower of Jesus is more than being nice to others. That’s not extremely difficult. Loving is often costly. Loving often demands forgiveness that I don’t want to give. Loving often means accepting the people I don’t like and don’t want anything to do with. Loving can mean sacrifice. Look at Jesus.

God’s Incarnation
Tune Lauda Anima (Praise my soul) VU 240, 312, 399

We can be God’s incarnation
When we live in love and peace;
God’s own kingdom is reflected
When all wars and conflicts cease;
With the promise
Of true justice
We may see God’s reign increase.
We can be God’s incarnation
When we care for all around;
God’s own kingdom is reflected
When in kindness we are bound;
In our living
And our giving
God’s own action can be found.

We can be God’s incarnation
When we link with Galilee;
God’s own kingdom is reflected
In our life and ministry,
When with Jesus
We find purpose
Bringing love to victory.