Sometimes a Light Surprises

United Methodist Bishop Will Willimon often reminds those of us who “handle the holy” for a living that virtually everything the Church does is an opportunity to remind ourselves, and to proclaim to the world, just how countercultural we really are. When we perform a wedding we are provided an occasion for proclaiming what we Christians believe about marriage, which is most assuredly at odds with what the world believes about marriage (if they believe in it at all!). Every time we conduct a funeral, we declare what we Christians believe about life and death and resurrection. And even something as seemingly mundane as “telling time” offers an occasion to remind ourselves and the world about the distinctively Christian way we mark our days.

For example, while everyone else in the popular culture is preparing to party tonight for “News Years Eve,” I find myself here in the office working on the sermon for Sunday which has nothing to do with New Years; rather, it’s about Epiphany, for that is what this first Sunday of the new year means to us Christians. It’s Epiphany Sunday, not New Year’s Sunday. (For a fuller treatment of this theme, see my blog, "Telling Time.")

Epiphany, January 6, is the day in the Church’s calendar that marks the official end of the Christmas season (Christmastide, the “Twelve Days of Christmas”) and the beginning of the Epiphany season, the season that begins by reflecting with the Magi on the Coming of the Light into the world, culminates on Transfiguration Sunday in which Christ’s “epiphany” is manifest to the disciples in power and glory, and leads into the Season of Lent when Christians make their own Journey to the Cross as followers of the Light.

In Matthew’s story, the Magi (Persian astrologers) came to Herod (Matthew wryly adds “the king” as though anybody in Palestine dared to doubt it!) and said: “Where is the born king of the Jews (Greek, ho techtheis basileus); for we have seen his star in the East and we have come to worship him.” Matthew’s Magi call Jesus the “born king” rather than the kind of king Herod was, a puppet king installed by the Roman occupational army holding his power at the whim and behest of Caesar. Matthew’s Magi were not looking for the Star; they were looking at the stars and the Star found them, surprised them, captured them, claimed them. It wasn’t what they were looking for, but it turned out to be what they were looking for.

And so it is with you and me. Sometimes a light surprises.

Snowmobilers in the Colorado back country find themselves swept away by an avalanche. A survivor describes the experience in terms of darkness and disorientation, buried in feet of snow, not knowing which way was up or which direction was out. Digging frantically toward what he thought was the surface and safety, he heard “behind and beneath” him a voice. Finally, a light appeared, a hand poked through the snow, and he was pulled to the light, to freedom and safety.

Sometimes a light surprises.

Some years ago, I was in the Holy Land with a group of seminary students. One afternoon on our way home to the Center for Biblical Studies in Jerusalem where we were ensconced for the month we were there, I decided to detour to Bet-Guvrin and visit the famous Bell Caves of Marisa. An ancient limestone quarry, the bell caves (nearly 800 in all) were used in the Byzantine and Early Muslim periods by Arabic speaking Christians who hid out there to worship in secrecy and security. The caves are now peppered with Christian graffiti and drawings, mostly in Arabic, betokening a now-silent witness to the faith of long-departed brothers and sisters maintained in dark and difficult days. It was January 6th when we were there, Epiphany in the Western Christian calendar, Christmas in the Eastern calendar, and so I suggested that since the caves provided such excellent acoustics, we should sing Christmas carols. A student started and we all joined in. Then, during the singing of Silent Night, a couple of young Arab men walked into the cave, apparently summoned by our singing. One appeared to be carrying a weapon, and I don’t mind telling you that I was nervous. We were not on our published itinerary and no one knew where we were. I thought to myself, “They could waste the lot of us right here and it would be days before they would find us!” But just then, one of the young men started singing with us, in Arabic! “Silent Night, Holy Night. All is calm, all is bright.” They were Christians! And right there in the Bell Caves of Marisa, cultural divides were crossed, prejudices were swallowed up in community, and Christian brothers and sisters joined voices and joined hands singing praises to the Light the darkness could not snuff out.

Sometimes a light surprises.

This summer past I experienced a dark and disorienting episode in my life. I awakened with some disturbing and foreboding symptoms that, at first blush, seemed life-threatening. For weeks I lived with that dark prospect until at last the diagnosis came. It was not what I had feared at all; rather, it was a rather severe reaction to immunotherapy I had been taking for allergies. As the effects of the immunotherapy diminish, so also do the symptoms. But emerging from the darkness, I was left with something I did not anticipate – clarity, perspective, purpose. When I thought I was dying, nothing that had been important only weeks before seemed important anymore. Suddenly, it all seemed so clear – life is a gift; the people with whom I share it are gifts; everyday is a fresh, new gift of God to be enjoyed, celebrated, and shared. And this “epiphany” had come to me as a consequence of my health crisis this past summer. Not what I was looking for, but it turned out to be what I was looking for.

Sometimes a light surprises.

C. S. Lewis once said, “For most of us, the door of heaven opens behind us.”

The secular spin on Epiphany is, “It’s always darkest just before the dawn.” But William Cowper taught us Christians to sing it like this:

Sometimes a light surprises
The Christian while he sings;
It is the Lord who rises
With healing in His wings;
When comforts are declining,
He grants the soul again
A season of clear shining,
To cheer it after rain.

From Our House to Yours...

Merry Christmas!
From the Stacys

In Defense of the Innkeeper

As is my custom (at least when I’m not engaging in a “news fast” as a spiritual and emotional discipline) I watched the BBC this morning to get my “fix” of international news. (It’s such a frustration to me that our American news media are so provincial and frivolous in perspective. Hundreds of people are dying every day in Zimbabwe and all we hear about is what Jessica Simpson wore to the Cowboys game on Sunday! But that’s another blog.) One of the stories they did was a Christmas piece about what Joseph and Mary would have to deal with if they were to have to make the arduous trek from Nazareth to Bethlehem in today’s Israel. Two reporters (a man and a woman), together with their donkey, set out from Nazareth reporting along the way on the new modern West Bank “obstacles” the contemporary “Joseph and Mary” would have to face today, obstacles of which the first Joseph and Mary knew nothing – check points, papers in proper order, barbed-wire fences, machine-gun protected guard towers, and of course, “The Wall.” It was an interesting piece to say the least.

But what struck me about this news piece was the tacit and uncritical acceptance of one interpretation of the biblical narrative about Joseph and Mary’s journey. That interpretation, based solely on a particular reading of Luke 2:1-7, suggests that the Holy Couple struck out in the latter days of Mary’s pregnancy and made the arduous 113 KM (approximately 70 miles) trek from Nazareth to Bethlehem through incredibly rough terrain with Mary, “great with child,” astride a donkey, only to arrive at Bethlehem and be told by a hard-hearted innkeeper that there were no vacancies!

But a close reading of Luke’s account suggests another alternative. Two things stand out in Luke’s story that cause me to question the traditional telling of the trek. First, in verse 6, Luke says, “and while they were there (the Greek employs an accusative of general reference construction that has no exact parallel in English but translates roughly as I’ve done it here) the days of her child-bearing were accomplished.” The words “while they were there” suggest that Joseph and Mary did not arrive in Bethlehem the afternoon of the first Christmas but had probably been there for some time. This makes sense in light of information Matthew provides that Joseph, when he learned that Mary was pregnant and he was not the father, determined to divorce her quietly. Following divine intervention, Joseph had a change of heart, but it is unlikely that his resolve to wed Mary silenced the gossip in Nazareth. And so, wishing to spare her further embarrassment, he used the occasion of the census to get her out of town, out of that gossipy and provincial setting, and took her to Bethlehem there to wait for the birth of the baby. Because he had a trade that could be practiced anywhere, he was able to make a living for them while they waited, probably taking up residence in a local inn.

Moreover, the tradition that Mary was in her ninth month is based solely on the King James Version’s translation of verse 5 that Mary was “great with child.” However, the Greek word Luke uses to describe Mary’s condition is egkuos which just means “pregnant” without any reference as to how far along in the pregnancy she was. And so Luke’s account does indeed allow what I’m suggesting; namely, that Joseph and Mary left Nazareth for Bethlehem early in her pregnancy (before she was “showing”) and relocated to Bethlehem there to await the baby’s arrival.

And that leads me to the second thing. The traditional interpretation suggests that the baby was born in a manger (Greek, phatne) “because there was no room for them in the inn.” That tradition has given birth (pardon the pun) to the notion that a Grinch-like innkeeper turned a hard heart and cold shoulder to the desperate couple in their hour of need, never mind that the innkeeper is never mentioned in the story and only extrapolated from the fact that there was an inn there! But again, a close reading of Luke suggests a different story altogether. The King James Version, on which most of our Christmas traditions is based, translates verse 7, “And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.” However, the Greek word rendered “room” by the KJV is topos which means “place” not “room” which in Greek is mone rather than topos. The difference between the two Greek words is easily seen in John 14:2 where both are used in the same sentence: “In my Father’s house are many rooms (monai); if it were not so, I would not have told you that I go to prepare a place (topos) for you.” Jesus’ concern in this passage is not “booking a room” but preparing for them “an appropriate place.”

I’m suggesting that Luke here is saying that the baby was born in a manger not because there were “no vacancies” in the inn, but because the inn was not an “appropriate place” for the birth of a baby. Remember, in the ancient world, an inn was a building with an open courtyard (agora) with stalls (door-less windbreaks) opening onto it where you could unloose your pack animal (cf. the Greek word for inn, kataluma, literally means “a loosing down place”) and bed down for the night. However, the one thing such a place did not accord was privacy! And so, Joseph and Mary, living in such a place awaiting the birth of their son, approached the innkeeper and inquired if there were a more “appropriate place” for such an event to occur. What he came up with was a cave where the animals were kept on chilly nights. To be sure, it was a pretty strange "guest room" what with donkey dung on the floor, a feeding trough for a crib, and straw for a mattress, but Joseph and Mary made do. And besides, it had the advantage of having the one thing the couple needed most at that moment – privacy.

And so, rather than being the first century equivalent of the “Grinch Who Stole Christmas,” it just could be that the innkeeper was the opposite – a compassionate man who did what he could to help two “out-of-towners” in their time of need.

Could that be it? I don’t know, and I don’t know who knows. But it’s worth noting that the Greek word for innkeeper (pandocheus) occurs only once in the entire New Testament – in Luke, the story of the Good Samaritan and what an innkeeper did to provide a place (topos) of safety and refuge for a desperate traveler in need!

Hummmh.

*While the development is my own, I was first put on to this possibility years ago when I came across Kenneth E. Bailey's Poet and Peasant: A Literary Cultural Approach to the Parables in Luke (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 1976), 238 pages.