The First Word and the Last

A biblical and theological exposition of the ancient lessons for Christmas.¹

I

Though rarely recognized as such, the account of Christ’s birth in Luke’s gospel is profoundly political. Even the shepherds summoned to his cradle are ancient biblical (and classical) images of government both divine and human. In “the decree of Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed”, however, we recognize political power as we think we know it: the power to command peoples and claim resources for the purposes of the state, power backed up by brute force. Caesar’s power seems absolute – yet what really does his decree accomplish? it brings Joseph and Mary to the city of David, just in time for David’s heir, the Messiah, to be born exactly where the prophets of God’s kingdom had said he would be born. The reality of Caesar’s boasted power is to be the unwitting instrument of God’s providence and purpose, in establishing his Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. Thus the boasts and pretentions of worldly power are confronted and dismissed; and the angel’s proclamation of “good tidings of great joy to all people” is a claim on our allegiance, by which all other earthly obligations are radically relativized, and the hold of worldly ideologies on our hearts and minds is broken.

II

Roman imperial propaganda acclaimed Caesar as ‘Savior’, ‘Lord’, and ‘Son of God’ and celebrated his birthday as the beginning of “good tidings” for all men – but the angelic proclamation assigns this language instead to the Jewish Messiah newly born in David’s city, the heir of David’s throne, the one who commands no legions but is the very image of impotence, “wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger”. Roman propaganda honored Caesar as the man who obtained glory as a god, as the reward of his conquests and his benefactions to the Roman people. It’s the religion of the man who wins glory as a god by his own works – and it motivates men by pride, and the lust for vain glory, and worldly political ambition, and fear of failure. But the gospel honors not the man who won glory as a god, but the God who forsook his glory and was made man, and embraced shame and death “that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works”, as the Christmas midnight epistle says (Titus 2:11-15). Our zeal for good works is motivated therefore not by pride in our achievement – or fear of failure – but in humble gratitude for the unmerited gift of God’s saving grace, that the glory may be of God and not men.

III

The ancient lessons for Christmas Day (Hebrews 1:1-12 and John 1:1-14) speak to us of Christ as the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, who Incarnate comes forth from the Father into the world, and returns from the world to the Father.

From God the Father he proceeds,
to God the Father back he speeds,
runs out his course to death and hell,
returns on God’s high throne to dwell.

Christ is the first Word, the beginning of all things: “In the beginning was the Word”, and it was this same eternal Word that “was made flesh”, lower than any angel, to be a new beginning for the human race from God: “As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God even to them that believe on his name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”

Christ is also the final Word, the fulfillment of his purpose: “God … hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things”. “When he had by himself purged our sins, [he] sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high” – the act of one whose work is complete: “being made so much better than the angels, as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they”. In Christ the human race has a new beginning from God; in Christ the human race has a new end in God.

The Word of God is life, and light, it is power and wisdom. The Flesh is everything that the Word is not: it is the darkened lifeless lump of humanity apart from God, humanity turned away from God, humanity curvatus in se, turned in upon itself. Yet when the Word was made Flesh, it is not the Word whose light is quenched, but the Flesh whose darkness is transfigured, so that John can say, “we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth”. And thus the Flesh can become the perfect instrument of the Word, the very means by which our redemption is accomplished.

IV

There is a wonderful symmetry to the Incarnation. The church fathers said that the Son of God was made Son of Man, that the sons of men might become the sons of God. He becomes what we are, that we may become what he is. In this perspective it is altogether significant that the child of Mary conceived of the Holy Ghost is not Joseph’s own biological child. For Jesus to be the son and heir of David, and qualify as Messiah, Joseph must recognize him as his son and heir (which he does by formally naming him, Matthew 1:25) – an act of adoption (though the word was not used). As Cranmer’s choice of propers for the first Sunday after Christmas tell us², the child of Mary who is not Joseph’s natural son must be adopted by Joseph as his own lawful son and heir, so that we who are not by nature and right the children of God might become his children by adoption by the grace of the same Holy Ghost. This is the doctrine also of the collect Cranmer composed for Christmas:

ALMYGHTYE God, whiche haste geuen us thy onlye begotten sonne to take our nature upon hym, and this daye to bee borne of a pure Vyrgyn; Graunte that we beyng regenerate, and made thy children by adoption and grace, maye dailye be renued by thy holy spirite, through the same our Lorde Jesus Christe who lyueth and reygneth [with thee in the unity of the same Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen].