The budget negotiations which have taken place over the past weeks in
Washington could not have arisen at a more ironically suitable time.
Set against a background of Yuletide trees and Mangers, they allow us to
see that the ghoulish gamesmanship taking place in the nation’s capital
has pushed the country off a
moral cliff.
It is typically said that, at Christmas, those Christians, who have not
delivered themselves unto shopping, celebrate hope, renewal and family.
While those elements are not untrue, they have been turned into a kind
of sentimental kitsch and moral treacle which obscure and soften the
in-your-face challenge of the Christmas story.
At the risk of being overly homiletic, I would to take a step back and
contextualize the Nativity so as to bring out its more vivid colors and
original impact. For what Christmas really commemorates is the birth of
beauty in humility and poverty.
Each of the Gospel writers emphasize different aspects of Jesus's life
according to their audience. The story of Christmas comes to us almost
entirely from the Gospel of Saint Luke and it is his account which has
the Son of God being born of wayfarers in a manger.
Luke's biography of Jesus was written for the non-Jewish inhabitants of
the Greco-Roman world. Not surprisingly, it followed the expected,
standard-form pattern of classical biographies: noble lineage, portents
at birth, prodigies in youth, career accomplishments, acts of
generosity, interesting sayings, public works, portents of death and, if
one happens to be an Emperor, an
apotheosis, to sit among the gods on Olympus.
Luke's account is clearly structured as a parody of the expected Roman
biography. But although he follows the form, he inverts the substance.
The inversion first takes place in the emblematic
Magnificat in which Luke has Mary announce her unexpected conception by saying,
“God has hath regarded the humility of his handmaid... He shown the
strength of his arm, he has scattered the proud in the imagination of
their hearts; he has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted
those of low degree; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the
rich he has sent empty away. (Luke 1:51-53)
No self-respecting Greek or Roman would have said such a thing. The
Greeks worshipped excellence and the Romans worshipped success.
Divinity manifested itself in the youth of noble bearing and in the
magnus vir. But Luke is unrelenting.
“And while they were there, in Bethlehem, the time came for her to be
delivered. And she gave birth to her first-born son and wrapped him in
swaddling cloths, and laid him in a manger...” (Luke 2:6-7)
Although the Nativity Scene has benefited from the beautification of the
world's most skilled painters, the naked facts are not pretty. To all
appearances Mary was homeless. She is first portrayed going "with haste
into the hill country" where she enters Elizabeth's house to announce
her pregnancy. (
Luke 1:39-40) According to St. Matthew, Joseph
contemplated breaking off his engagement to Mary because she was
pregnant by no known man. He changed his mind, and the couple are next
seen wandering at night, in the middle of winter, 80 miles from
Nazareth, while Mary is close to term. (
Matt. 1:18-24)
St. Matthew adds that Mary and Joseph put up in a manger because there
was no room at the “inn” making it sound to us as if it was all a
question of missed reservations. (
Matt 2:1-6) However, this is an
inaccurate translation because, in those days, there were no inns.
There were no roadside restaurants or even rest areas either. To travel
was to camp out on foot, without the benefit of freeze dried scrambled
eggs. You managed with what you could bargain or carry. If you were
lucky, the locals might offer you hospitality -- a floor to sleep on,
some shared morsels to eat.
By all accounts, Joseph and Mary weren't very lucky. They are not said
to be travelling in a group. They are living out of the "back of the
burro" and, just as they get to Bethlehem, Mary goes into labor and has
to give birth in a cow stall. What in the world did they use for
water?
Luke makes no attempt to mask the wretchedness. Instead, he
astonishingly proclaims that, on cue, the Host of Heaven suddenly
appeared to a bunch of shepherds to announce the birth of "a Savior, who
is Christ the Lord!" The shepherds take off running toward the stables,
behold the infant Jesus and return hence “glorifying and praising God
for all they had heard and seen.” (
Luke 2:8-14)
Two thousand years later, it is hard for us to imagine the kind of
jaw-dropping astonishment with which average, everyday, Gaius would
have reacted to the story.
Luke foists his listeners on a series of contradictions. Jesus is
descended of nobility; but born in a filthy cow stall a probable bastard
of homeless wanderers. As the Host of Heaven sounds its trumpets a
Delegation of the Most Honorable Shepherds of the District comes to
proffer their good wishes and salutations. Not till
Don Quixote does literature string together such a pile of absurdities.
But it is a pile of absurdities which ultimately transformed the
fundamental values of western society. Luke very intentionally turned
the Roman Order on its head. Wealth and Power and Success do not ascend
to an Olympus of elite heroes and gods but rather the Most Powerful God
of the universe is to be found descended into the womb of failure and
hunger and weakness.
It is this descent which became the cornerstone of the Christian creed: “...and He
came down from Heaven....” That filthy, homeless person with a cardboard sign, snivelling in the cold on the curb?
There is your god.
The Romans did not want for symbols of motherhood, family and prosperity. The Augustan
Ara Pacis
or Altar of Peace depicts Mother Rome, nurturing her twin sons, flanked
by symbols of prosperity -- sheaves of wheat, an ox, a sheep and the
winds of commerce between East and West. Luke takes the symbolism and
sets it in a cow-stall in one of the most insignificant towns in the
entire Empire.
It is from this inversion, that the Catholic Church derives its doctrine of the
Preferential Option for the Poor
which states that in our thoughts and deeds God demands a preference be
given to the well-being of the poor and powerless of society. Saint
Augustine, put it this way:
"God does not demand much of you. He asks back what he gave you, and
from him you take what is enough for you. The superfluities of the rich
are the necessities of the poor. When you possess superfluities, you
possess what belongs to others." (Augustine, Exposition on Psalm 147, 12).
and
"Christ who is rich in heaven chose to be hungry in the poor. Yet in
your humanity you hesitate to give to your fellow human being. Don't you
realize that what you give, you give to Christ, from whom you received
whatever you have to give in the first place." (Commentary on Psalm
75,9)
This then is what Christmas is about. It is about recognizing Christ in poverty and giving to the poor.
And yet, at this very Christmas time, what is the spectacle that
Washington presents to the world? It is the spectacle of powerful,
well-stuffed, hypocrites arguing over preferential options for the rich.
House Speaker Boehner wants to limit tax increases to persons making
over one million dollars a year, while the President is willing to
“compromise” on incomes of $400,000. What is seldom explained is that
the “increase” is not on the full $250,000, or $400,000 or $1 million
but only on the excess over those amounts. In other words, a person who
earns one million and ten dollars would only see a 2% increase on the
ten dollars above the million.
While the Speaker and the President are haggling over how little to tax
the rich and super-rich, House Minority Leader, Nancy Pelosi, is busy
telling people that her party has no problem with cutting back on
so-called entitlements for the poor.
In particular, Pelosi has no problem with reducing social security
adjustments for inflation, so that, over a ten year period, the average
monthly social security check would be reduced by 3%-5% per year. The
“chained CPI” -- as the reduction is called -- means that as a person
gets older his social “security” life support shrinks. Last week
Pelosi, whose net worth is estimated at 90 million dollars, stated that
the chained CPI was not a “cut” in benefits. "I consider it a
strengthening of Social Security,” she said.
Social Security does not contribute to the budget deficit which is the
spawn of astronomical defense and war spending coupled with tax cuts for
the rich. But even if Social Security contributed to the deficit, the
chained CPI “savings” would only amount to $122 billion. Last year’s
defense budget was $680 billion.
This Christmas we would do well to note that the face Washington presents to the world is that of a bloated, snarling, ogre.
