"The Proclamation "
Knox, 24 December, 2010 © Scott McAndless
Luke 1:26-38, Luke 2:1-7, Luke 2:8-20, Matthew 2:1-12
Enter a Roman who looks around imperiously before taking out a scroll and reading a proclamation.
“Citizens, do not be afraid for I bring you good tidings of great joy that is for all peoples for on this day we celebrate the birth of the one who has come to be the saviour of the world. He is the king of kings and lord of lords. He is most truly the son of god. And he is come to bring peace on earth and good will to all those whom he favours. This day – the day of his birth – is the day which we might justly set on a par with the beginning of everything and the start of a new age. He, by his epiphany has exceeded the hopes of those who prophesied good tidings for the whole world. And therefore we proclaim that this day – the day of his birth – shall be a great festival and shall usher in the New Year. Rejoice, O people your saviour has come to you and his name is Augustus Caesar and this, the 23rd day of September is his birthday.”
Do you want to know what it was like when Jesus was born and when Luke came to write down the story of Jesus’ birth in his gospel? That was what it was like. That was what was being said and announced in cities all over the Roman Empire. And I mean that literally – those very words. You didn’t make that announcement up, did you? A first century inscription has been found in a place called Priene on the west coast of Modern Turkey and that is pretty much what it says. In fact, you copied some of it word for word, didn’t you?
You see a lot of the language that we use to talk about Jesus – that we maybe thought was only ever used to talk about Jesus – was first used to talk about at least one other person: Augustus Caesar, the first emperor of Rome. He was born about 63 years before Jesus and when he became the master of Rome he was hailed as the one who had brought peace on earth because he had finally brought the years of endless civil wars to an end. He was also the adopted son of Julius Caesar who, the Romans believed, became a god when he died, so Augustus’ most common title was “son of a god.” At least, that is what he was called in Latin, the language of the western empire. But in the eastern empire, where the language was Greek, his title was a bit simpler. There his title was just “son of god.”
The story of Augustus’ ascension to supreme power had an official name. It was called the Evangel – a Greek word that we might translate today as good tidings, good news or into Old English as gospel. His arrival on the world stage was called an epiphany. And his birthday (September 23rd) was seen as the dawn of a new era in time so much so that there was a movement to set the calendar so that time itself began with his birth – kind of like how we still today reckon our years from the date of birth of Jesus.
You see the language that the gospel writers and the earliest Christians used to talk about Jesus wasn’t language that they just invented or, sometimes, borrowed from the Old Testament. It was language that was regularly used at that time in the official proclamations and propaganda of the empire. It was language that they encountered daily. The very coins that they carried in their purses and used to buy the paper that they wrote on were engraved with pictures of Augustus and his successors and with the words “son of god.”
So when someone like Luke wrote in his gospel that somebody other than Augustus had brought peace on earth, when he called somebody else Son of God and Lord and the fulfilment of the hope of the ages – for that matter, when he called the book that he wrote about somebody other than Augustus “Good News” or “Gospel,” there was really no question at all about what he was doing. He was committing an act of treason – pure and simple.
That is what we often miss when we hear the Christmas story. When the story was first told, people didn’t hear it as a nice little story about a cute little baby being born in the midst of a census or just before the slaughter of infants in Bethlehem. They heard a story that really challenged just about everything they had always been told about how the world worked. They heard a story about the ultimate anti-Augustus – a baby not born to nobility and power but born in a stable and laid in a manger and yet one that they could still call Lord and Son of God.
Can we still hear the story like that? Can we still allow it to challenge our ways of seeing and experiencing the world? I wonder.
Modern person enters suddenly and noisily.
“Consumers, I just received a very important text. Do not be afraid for I bring you good tidings of great joy that is for all peoples for on this day we announce to you that the Boxing Day specials are almost upon us! In less than 40 hours the great day will break forth in a shining epiphany! Jewellery will be reduced 50%, appliances will be 30% off. Computers, tablets, smartphones and e-readers will all be found at the lowest prices of the year.
And this will be the sign for you, you will find the savings wrapped in big bright stickers and lying in the bargain bins! All glory be to you, the consumers for you have been given the freedom to buy whatever you choose. All glory be to the most blessed companies who make this quality merchandise available to you at such low, low prices.
And as the whole world comes together under the major brands like Apple, Sony, Coca-cola and Abercrombie & Fitch – as everyone wears the same clothes, eats the same food, listens to the same music and talks on the same kind of cell phone it will bring peace on earth, good will to all people!”
What is the message that the world around us today is giving us – the message that comes at us from all different angles using all different sorts of media? It is a message that sounds pretty much like that. And, whenever we get ready to celebrate the coming of Jesus into this world, that message, blazing at us from the world around us, just gets louder and more insistent. If the message of the first century was that Caesar Augustus was the son of god and saviour, the king of kings and lord of lords and the one who had brought peace on earth, then the message of the twenty-first is that being consumers of all kinds of products will bring you freedom, joy, salvation and even peace on earth, not to mention better hair, weight loss, good health and a boost to the immunity system.
And this promise demands much of us. It demands that we be eternal consumers to feed the great beast of the economy. We have to constantly be buying whatever is new and bright and shiny. It is a system that must grow and grow and grow as we consume ever more and more. And if the system doesn’t grow, the fear is that it will just collapse like it almost did a year ago and honestly still could.
When Luke wrote his gospel at the end of the first century, it seems that he went out of his way to counter the message of the empire that dominated everything around him. I mean, sure, he knew that Jesus was God incarnate, he knew that he was God’s Messiah and the bringer of salvation, but he made a point of taking the very language that the empire used for propaganda – the son of god language, the peace on earth language and the language of lordship – and using it to proclaim the message of Jesus instead.
So do you know what our task is today, my friends? Our task is to take the language of the world that surrounds us and claim it as a way to testify to the nature of our Lord and to his good news for today.
But how can we do that?
An angel enters with a final proclamation
“Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger. Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favours!
The message of the gospel is meant to challenge the message of the world around us – to call it into question. At the very least it should remind us that the world doesn’t always get it right – that what the world counts as valuable and important is often proven worthless in the long run.
Caesar Augustus’ empire has faded. So many of his great works have been reduced to dust. Yet the power that was in Jesus continues to manifest itself. The values of our present world, they too will pass away. Bubbles will burst, economies will fail, systems and institutions will collapse, but the message of hope – the simple words spoken by some angels to some shepherds – will endure.
If you want a genuine proclamation of good news, that is it.