Christmas is for rebels

Christmas is for rebels.

I laugh as I write that because I’m generally considered the epitome of “well behaved”. My high-school reports always included comments like “Michael is a quiet and conscientious student” and my trademark behaviour is to do what’s expected, to stay within the guidelines and fit in with the status quo. I never skipped a day of school, I’ve never tried drugs, at 18 years old I left home and began 4 years of study during which I never once stepped through the doors of the infamous university pub, I was a virgin until I was married, and I obeyed my authoritative superiors at a particularly hierarchical church for more than a decade.

Surely that story is so provocative, complex and compelling someone should make a movie!

And for most of these years of polite compliance I would have read the Christmas story as a beautiful and delightful tale of the good Lord coming from on high to bring us gifts of forgiveness and mercy for all the ways we misbehave and get into trouble.

Jesus saves... 

...us from being in trouble (with God). 

He’s kind of like Santa in that way, always interested in who’s naughty or nice. Of course he forgives anyone who asks for it, because Jesus is very well behaved and a super nice guy. He was an excellent Christian that Jesus.

Mary, she was a super nice girl too. The angel turned up and told her something weird and she was like “sure – I’m very well behaved you know, so I’ll go along with it even though it’s a bit strange.”

So little baby Jesus was wrapped in a manger. Lots of lovely animals around looking adorable. Everyone glowing and looking like they were super nice people. Little Lord Jesus no crying he makes. Super nice that Jesus kid.

So there you have it. So lovely.

But to be honest, the further along I get the more I realise I’ve been missing all of the good parts of the story. Christmas isn’t really about tranquillity and nice Mary and lovely Jesus and learning how to accept Christ so that we can sing sweet songs and be good Christians.

That version of the story is about as boring as my school reports.

Mary was a teenage girl, an ethnic minority in the midst of a powerful and violent Roman empire. She lived at a time when people were executed for not following the political rules, and ostracised for not following the religious rules. And as a teenage girl, not yet married, she falls pregnant with a child that she believes will be someone to challenge this kind of system. She responds to the coming birth with the longest set of words recorded by a woman in the New Testament; she says the powerful will be brought down, the rich will be sent away empty, the humble will be lifted up and there will be a place at the table for the hungry. 

Not exactly the words of a demure polite young lady. These are the dangerous words of a trouble maker. Mary’s speech has been banned in at least three countries in the past century – the powerful still don’t like them and they get under the skin of oppressive regimes. She’s a bit of a troublemaker that Mary. Still causing problems even now.

She gives birth to her baby boy – the boy she believes will help to cause some of that trouble she’s been talking about - in a room filled with the stench of animal shit, awash with blood and surrounded by tears. Tears of pain and tears of joy. Tears of defiance and tears of loneliness.

And while all of this is going on some angels (because, of course!) decide to turn up and announce the arrival of this news. But they don’t announce it to the powerful, they don’t announce it to the religious, it’s not proclaimed at the local place of worship or in the courts of the local ruler. The angels turn up to a bunch of wandering sheep herders out in the countryside who enter the story and then exit it just as quickly. Just a quick moment in the story to stick it up anyone who thinks God is particularly interested in catering to the famous, rich, slick or powerful.

And what is all this hidden commotion about anyway; these obscure goings on in an unseen corner of the empire? Well it turns out that this baby would grow up to undermine the very fabric of the social, political and religious order. He’d offer a vision of the divine that was radically subversive, that reordered social and religious conventions, that included all of the wrong people, that challenged the rich and that made a place at the table for those who were suffering. Sounds like the kind of behaviour that could get you killed.

Jesus wasn’t “nice”, at least not with the kind of anaemic niceness that would blend in with a beige wall. And this story tells us that you probably won’t find God in the comfortable places. If you want to bump into the divine you’ll probably have to wade through some shit to get there. If I’m honest, I think while churches all over the world sing about mother Mary and little baby Jesus at Christmas time, neither Mary nor Jesus would be welcome in most of them; they’d be way too much trouble. They wouldn’t shut up and behave. They’d be the kind of church members you’d want to quietly side-line and push out while you get on with building an efficient and effective organisation that can get on with the important business of being more Christian.

So if I have one Advent reflection this year, it’s to be less well-behaved and more trouble. More trouble for those in political power who tell us why we matter (or don’t), more trouble for those with religious power who tell us who to be, more trouble for those with economic power who tell us what we should desire, and more trouble for any system that makes the vulnerable feel like they’re on the outside and don’t belong.

Christmas is for rebels, so I’m gonna try learn how to be one.