The Christmas story

Bernard Coote offers a seasonal reflection

In one of many accounts of Jesus’ birth there is a suggestion that he and his family were refugees in Egypt. Whether or not historically accurate, they did live in a land as troubled as it is now: occupying armies, displaced people, unrest, intrigues and terror. The weapons were different from those of today but life was hazardous.

When Jesus was a child, the Roman governor of Syria ordered 2,000 crucifixions at a site four miles from Nazareth. He must have seen them. The nearby town of Sepphoris was burned down. He would have smelled it. He would have known that Herod ordered young Pharisees to be burned alive, and of other atrocities. Peace and goodwill was scarce.

Josephus, the historian, tells of rich agricultural produce, mostly grabbed by Egypt, and that lower class Galileans were only one harvest away from destitution. In this unlikely setting Christianity was born! All these influences touched Jesus, who decided to go public and chose twelve men to travel the land, challenging values and ways of life, and ended his life on a Roman cross.

The Christmas story has become a fanciful concoction on which Quakers have had different ideas. Sydney Carter, the Quaker poet and songwriter, left us some lines to reflect on:

Present Tense

Your holy hearsay is not evidence
Give me the good news in the present tense
What happened nineteen hundred years ago
May not have happened
How am I to know?

The living truth is what I long to see
I cannot lean upon what used to be
So shut the bible up and show me how
The Christ you talk about
Is living now

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