In the West, the traditional telling of the birth story of Jesus is overlaid with mythology. I am not referring to Santa Claus, snow, bells and Rudolph, but rather to our understanding of the biblical text itself.

Across the centuries we have introduced into the Scripture itself a remarkable number of mythological elements. Some of these are so old and so pervasive that they are unconsciously affirmed.

For example, we assume that Jesus was born the night the Holy Family arrived. What Luke 2:3 actually says is that the Holy Family "went up" to Bethlehem. Then, v.6 reads, "While they were there her days were fulfilled...." This naturally means that the last stages of Mary's pregnancy took place in Bethlehem (two weeks? a month?).

At Christmas time in the average Western church, Luke 2:1-7 is read; but, clearly, it tells of the birth some days after the Holy Family arrives in Bethlehem. The children of the congregation then enact a play which has the Christ-child born the night of their arrival. Amazingly, this glaring discrepancy is seldom noticed.

The birth stories in Matthew and Luke are so familiar that they nearly lull us to sleep. Here, perhaps more than anywhere in Scripture, tradition and text come together to create a beautiful, gentle picture, dominated by soft attractive colors.

Of all the characters in the stories, poor Joseph seems to be the most passive. He somehow just stands there and does nothing. Yet, looking at these stories from Jerusalem, I find three startling shocks in the brief accounts of Joseph. They are as follows:

In the darkness of Christmas morn

I stand under the back porch roof,

         listening to the rain falling gently

         on the almost melted snow.

As most of us do every year, I had hoped the

         precipitation of this precious morn

         would fall in the form of snowflakes,

         the big and soft ones,

         the kind of snowflakes that appear on the covers of

         glossy, colorful Christmas cards we receive each year.

Isaiah 9:2-7; Luke 2:1-14 (15-20)

We know how the story goes: Unmarried pregnant teenager; no room at the inn; baby born in a manger; Emmanuel, God-with-us. It's so familiar -- prompting one little boy to ask his pastor with that blunt, no-holds-barred, child-like honesty: "Do we have to hear that same story again?"

Over-familiarity is challenging for preachers, too, an occupational hazard for those whose job is to listen to ancient texts and proclaim a fresh message from God. It takes commitment. But it also takes courage. Presbyterian pastor James Lowry warns: "Any preacher who can sleep soundly on Saturday nights. ... Any preacher who has no form of gastrointestinal distress on Sunday mornings" -- or on Christmas Eve! -- "has not dealt with the texts ... and is not to be heeded."  

Advent 3: Luke 3:7-18

Commanding stages across the land, and even a few pulpits, including the chapel at our Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) headquarters, the National Prayer Breakfast, and the Willow Creek Association, he laments the global wildfire of AIDS consuming 8,000 lives every day. One person every 10 seconds. Describing the horror of seeing African refugees "queuing up to die, three to a bed," he delivers a stinging rebuke: "We can get cold fizzy drinks to the farthest reaches of Africa, but we can't get lifesaving medicines to the people who need it" most? The lead singer of the rock band U2, Bono, confesses: "I don't have any letters after my name ... I don't even have a name after my name ... but I am determined to turn around this supertanker of indifference." 

It has long been the job description of prophets, including John, who came preaching a baptism of repentance. He, too, was intent upon turning around a supertanker of human indifference -- indifference to the Living God.

Advent 4: Luke 1:46-55

I didn't grow up in the church. As a teenager my faith was incubated in the Jesus movement of the early 70s, culminating in several trips down the aisle to follow Christ. It took me awhile to learn that the gospel is bigger than personal salvation. And yet if this passage is any indication, it is certainly not less. In the first stanza of the Magnificat Mary sings: "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my Spirit rejoices in God my Savior ... all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me ..." The use of the first person singular pronoun indicates a very personal experience of salvation.

Entering a world remarkably like our own, marked by political upheaval, economic uncertainty, and religious conflict, the God who acts in Jesus Christ, notes Charles Talbert, "did not go to the top (to Caesar or Pilate) to get things changed; nor ... to the left (to the Zealots)," much less to the religious right (to the Pharisees, or the Sadducees). No, God made a beeline for the bottom. God went to the poor, to the oppressed, to the outcasts, beginning with a teenage peasant slave-girl from the boondocks of Nazareth, a nobody from Nowheresville we know simply as Mary. But Mary is also evidence that God goes to the center, straight to the heart, offering forgiveness and deliverance, and seeking to reign there as Savior and Lord. Blessed are you, Mary, and blessed are you and I, for responding personally. 

Advent 2: Luke 1:68-79

Behind this text is a life-long struggle with infertility, and then the announcement comes: "Your prayers have been answered!" What? Zechariah is not quite speechless; doubt escapes his lips:  Are you sure? We're getting up there in years, you know ... I guess the angelic messenger hoped for better from the priest: "Behold, you will be silent and unable to speak until the day these things come to pass..." He's speechless now.

Nine months later Elizabeth gives birth to a bouncing baby boy, and only when a still-mute Zechariah scribbles down the instructions, "Name him John," does he go from silence to sound. But the proud father doesn't merely sing the praises of his own newborn son. In this passage Zechariah is singing in the reign.

Advent is a busy time in the life of anyone, let alone a pastor. A hospital was the last place I ever planned to be during the weeks leading up to Christmas, with the exception of visiting other people. But one year, my body decided otherwise. And so, in mid-December, I lay under the surgeon's knife for the second time in a year.

A hospital is not a haven of quiet and rest. It is anything but a peaceful place. I had a roommate who smoked in the bathroom and turned the lights and TV on in the middle of the night with no regard to my feeble attempts to sleep. Across the hall, an elderly woman with no idea where she was howled with pain and cried for help at least once every three minutes, day and night, day and night, day and night. 

Advent 1:  Luke 21:25-36

I was a tall, skinny, spindly-legged girl, gawky and uncoordinated. I recall my kindergarten teacher being alarmed when initially I could skip only on one side of my body. But all through my elementary years jump rope proved particularly challenging. Remember the schoolyard motion -- elbows bent at the waist, palms down, a slight rocking motion, hands pushing the air in time with the rope? I could do that for hours. Days. I never knew how to jump in.

I feel like that with a text like this. I'm not quite sure how to jump in here.

Scholars come along and try to give us a push: It's just apocalyptic literature, they say. So we jump in -- only to discover that apocalyptic is the double-dutch of biblical genres, and we collapse in a tangled mess of dispensational exegesis.

The fact that it's Advent, too, the beginning of the church's liturgical calendar, the Christian New Year, complicates matters as well. Because this text is more about an ending than a beginning, and it hardly evokes a sense of celebration. Yes, we're assured Jesus is coming again ... but not before we're bombarded with images of persecution and pestilence, cosmic disturbance and destruction. Don't let the prescribed lectionary boundaries try to soften the blow -- force yourself to go all the way back, at least to verse 12 and start reading there. Linger over these verses and you begin to get the sense that apparently followers of Jesus are not exempt from suffering. So much for a happy New Year.

The Eve of Christ the King

Gray, fading, year-worn light

portends an absence of anticipation.

No consideration, even, as to whether

or not it will begin again after

the evident onset of the dark....