The First Christmas

by Marcus J. Borg

  The final phrase refers to the pain and grief that Mary herself will face because of the destiny of her son. Christmas brings joy and conflict. It did so then, and it does so now.

  CHRISTMAS AND ADVENT

  The stories of the first Christmas are about the present as well as the past. Marcus remembers a scene from childhood when he first learned this. He is six or seven years old, at home with his mother in the days around Christmas. As he sings the familiar Christmas hymn “Joy to the World,” he sings the second line, “The Lord has come.” His mother gently corrects him. She says, “No—the words aren’t, ‘The Lord has come.’ The words are, ‘The Lord is come.’”

  At the time, he was puzzled. Surely, he thought, Christmas is about the coming of Jesus a long time ago, indeed, two thousand years ago: he has come. Years later, he realized that his mother and the words of the hymn are right. Christmas is about the coming in the present of the Lord who came long ago in the past. Jesus comes again each Christmas.

  This is the central purpose of the season of the church year known as Advent, the four Sundays and four weeks before Christmas. Each Advent, Christians relive ancient Israel’s yearning and hope, and each Christmas Christians celebrate the fulfillment of that yearning: “Joy to the world—the Lord is come.” The purpose of Advent and Christmas is to bring the past into the present.

  In the same way, this is the purpose of Lent and Holy Week, the other most sacred season of the church year. During Lent and Holy Week, the past becomes present as Christians participate in Jesus’s final journey to Jerusalem, his crucifixion and resurrection. It is not just about remembering, but reliving. Indeed, this is the sacramental function of both seasons: to bring the past into the present.

  The Latin root of Advent is a word that means “coming.” Advent thus means “toward the coming.” Advent is preparation for the coming of Jesus to the world—then, in the past; now, in the present; and, as we will see, later, in the future. Advent and Christmas bring the coming of Jesus, the birth of Jesus with all of its associations, into the present.

  Advent as a reliving in the present of ancient Israel’s hope and yearning is expressed in an Advent hymn more than a thousand years old. Its first verse is very familiar:

  O come, O come, Emmanuel,

  and ransom captive Israel,

  that mourns in lonely exile here,

  until the Son of God appear.

  The language is evocative and powerful. We are Israel—in exile, captive, mourning, lonely, longing. Israel’s longing is an epiphany of human longing.

  The seventh verse explicitly universalizes the yearning: it is the desire of nations:

  O come Desire of nations, bind

  in one the hearts of all mankind.

  Bid thou our sad divisions cease,

  and be thyself our King of Peace.

  At the end of each verse of this long hymn, a joyful chorus confidently proclaims its fulfillment: “Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.” Longing and rejoicing meet.

  Past, present, and future are brought together in Advent. It is a season of expectant anticipation, of anticipatory joy. It is also a season of repentant preparation for a future that is yet to come.

  Advent as Expectant Anticipation

  For each Sunday in Advent, there is a set of biblical texts known as lectionary readings. More than half of the Old Testament texts are from the prophet Isaiah. The gospel texts focus on John the Baptizer and Mary the mother of Jesus. They are filled with the theme of expectant anticipation. Moreover, the anticipation, the hope, is not vague and general, but quite specific.

  The texts from Isaiah for the Sundays of Advent speak of Israel’s yearning and God’s promise of a different kind of world:

  Isaiah 11:1–10 expresses the hope for an ideal king upon whom the Spirit of the Lord will rest. With justice, he will judge the poor and decide with equity for the meek of the earth. His reign will mean no more violence; the wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and no one shall hurt or destroy.

  Isaiah 2:1–5 expresses the hope for a world of peace: the nations “will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks” and not “learn war any more.”

  Isaiah 7:10–16 is about the sign of Immanuel: a child will be born whose name will be a sign that “God is with us.”

  Isaiah 40.1–11 and 35:1–10 expresses the yearning to return from exile. In the wilderness, God is preparing “the way of the Lord,” a path of return for those exiled in Babylon. The way shall be called “the Holy Way.” For those who embark upon it, “Everlasting joy shall be upon their heads.”

  Isaiah 61:1–4, 8–11 speaks about one whom the spirit of God has anointed. His task is “to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners.”

  Isaiah 64:1–9 expresses the yearning for God: “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down.” It is followed by a deep sense of contrition and the need for repentance.

  So also the gospel texts for Advent sound this theme of expectant anticipation. For two Sundays, they are about John the Baptizer, the mentor and forerunner of Jesus. Like the Isaiah texts, they are filled with joyful anticipation. They speak of John as the messenger who prepares “the way of the Lord” in the wilderness and who announces the coming of one more powerful than he (Matt. 3:1–12; Mark 1:1–8; Luke 3:1–6).

  In another Advent text (Matt. 11:2–11), John is in prison and soon to be executed by Herod Antipas, the ruler of his world. From prison he sends messengers to Jesus with a question: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” Is Jesus the coming one, the promised one?

  Jesus responds with words that echo Isaiah 35: “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” In Isaiah, the text is not a list of miracles, but a metaphorical description of what the time of God’s salvation will be like. The gospel text affirms that Jesus is the fulfillment of the hope of Isaiah and John.

  Mary is the focus of the gospel texts for the last Sunday in Advent. They include:

  Matthew 1:18–25: The story of Jesus’s conception by the Holy Spirit and that he will be Emmanuel, “God with us.”

  Luke 1:26–38: The annunciation to Mary by the angel Gabriel that she will bear a child conceived by the Holy Spirit, followed by Mary’s obedient response.

  Luke 1:39–55: Mary’s visit to Elizabeth and the Magnificat, with its joyful and subversive language about what God is doing: scattering the proud in the thoughts of their hearts, bringing down the mighty from their thrones, lifting up the lowly, filling the hungry with good things, and sending the rich empty away.

  In Mary, expectation has become pregnancy. A new life, a new world, is waiting to be born.

  Advent as Repentant Preparation

  Advent is also a season of repentant preparation. The theme is announced on the first Sunday in Advent. The prayer for the day (called the Collect) begins: “Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and to put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility.” The gospel texts for this Sunday all refer to the “second coming” of Jesus in the future and urge preparedness (Matt. 24:36–44; Mark 13:24–37; Luke 21:25–36).

  The theme recurs on subsequent Sundays. The prayer for the second Sunday of Advent (the Collect) begins: “Merciful God, who sent your messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation: Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer.” Texts about John the Baptizer highlight repentance: “Repent,” “Bear fruit worthy of repentance,” and “I baptize you with water for repentance” (Matt. 3:1–12; see also Mark 1:1–8; Luke 3:1–6, 7–18).


  The meaning of repentance in the Bible is quite different from that in widespread postbiblical Christian understanding. Many Christians think of repentance as primarily contrition—as being sincerely sorry for our sins, confessing them, and perhaps doing penance, but the biblical meaning emphasizes change.

  Repentance as Change. To repent is to turn to God. In the Old Testament, its meaning is shaped by the Jewish experience of exile: it means to return from exile to the place of God’s presence. The phrase “Prepare the way of the Lord,” central to Advent, is thus about repentance: “the way of the Lord” is the path of return from exile to God. To repent is to turn away from the lords of this world and to turn to God, to return to God. To repent, to return, is to follow the way that leads out of our exile, separation, alienation, and estrangement to reconnection.

  The New Testament meaning of the word continues the Old Testament meaning and adds an additional nuance. In the New Testament, the root of the Greek word translated as “repent” means “go beyond the mind that you have,” to enter into a new mind-set, a new way of seeing. To repent means to begin seeing differently.

  To repent is to change. To return to the birth stories, we may imagine that the wise men and the shepherds were changed by their experience. Of course, these are fictional characters. But we are entitled to imagine the lives of fictional characters such as, for example, the life of the prodigal son in Jesus’s famous parable. A concise phrase about the wise men in Matthew makes their change explicit. After the guiding star led them to Jesus and they paid him homage, they went home “by another road.” They no longer walked the same path, but followed another way.

  So also we may imagine that the shepherds were changed by their experience. They had seen the night sky filled with the radiant luminosity of God’s glory and heard angels announcing the birth of “a Savior, who is the Messiah.” Though we may imagine that the shepherds remained shepherds, they would not have been the same. In future years, they would not simply have reminisced about an “odd” experience they had one night, but they would have seen differently because of their experience. They had heard and seen that the Lord and Savior of the world, a Jewish Lord, had been born in a stable in a world ruled by an imperial lord and savior. How could they not be changed?

  Repentance and Our Now. We turn to our now. What does Advent as a season of repentant preparation mean for American Christians today? The meanings of this season are both personal and political, both internal and external, both inward and outward.

  On the personal level, Christmas is about light coming into the darkness of our individual lives, about our return from exile, about inner peace. Indeed, it is about the birth of Christ within us. In the thirteenth century, the Christian mystic Meister Eckhart preached about Christmas as the birth of Christ within us through the union of God’s Spirit with our flesh. So also a line from the familiar nineteenth-century hymn “O Little Town of Bethlehem” affirms the personal meaning: “O holy child of Bethlehem…be born in us today.”

  And, like the birth stories themselves, the meaning of Advent as a season of repentant preparation is also political. For centuries, this meaning has been eclipsed by the political domestication of the gospel. It began in the fourth century when Christianity became the religion of the Roman Empire and subsequently the dominant religion of Western cultures. The imperial captivity of Advent and Christmas has a long history. But once you see the political meaning of Advent and Christmas, it seems so obvious. Not to see it seems a kind of blindness, whether habituated or willful.

  In our time, American Christians need especially to see the political meanings of these stories, for we live in a time of the American empire. Not so long ago, saying that America is an imperial power was a left-wing claim. But it is no longer disputed. Many political conservatives, including those at the highest level of government, not only affirm but celebrate it—the twenty-first century is to be the century of the American empire.

  We add that empire is not intrinsically about geographical expansion and territorial acquisition. As a nation, that is not our aim. Rather, empire is about the use of superior power—military, political, and economic—to shape the world as the empire sees fit. In this sense, we are the new Rome.

  The responses of American Christians to the American empire cover the political spectrum. They range from enthusiastic support to conventional compliance to uncertainty to timid or assertive protest. In this setting, the anti-imperial meanings of the birth stories raise challenging questions for American Christians. Who are we in these stories?

  Are we like the Magi who follow the light and refuse to comply with the ruler’s plot to destroy it? Or are we like Herod, filled with fear and willing to use whatever means necessary to maintain power, even violence and slaughter? Are we among those in Herod’s court who seek to thwart the coming of the true light, the true king, and God’s kingdom?

  Are we supporters of the dragon of Revelation, the ancient serpent who seeks to devour the newborn child and to rule the world through intimidation and fear, violence and chaos and to call it peace?

  Are we among those who yearn for the coming of the kingdom of justice and peace, who seek peace through justice? Or do we, like advocates of imperial theology, seek peace through victory?

  Where do we see the light of the world? Is America, the American empire, the light shining in the darkness? Jim Wallis, in his important book God’s Politics, reports that our president on the first anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 2001 spoke of America as “the light shining in the darkness.”1 The statement is remarkably similar to Rome’s claim to be Apollo, the bringer of light. Or do we see the light of the world in Jesus, who stood against empire and indeed was executed by imperial authority?

  We are aware that the above might sound like an indictment of our present president and the policies of his administration. But our point is the perennial temptation of imperial power and hubris. The peril comes from the ways of empire, not from a particular president and administration.

  To return to who we are and who we might be in the stories of the first Christmas. Are we like Mary, willing to say, “Let it be with me according to your word,” obedient to the role she had been given in bringing about a different kind of world?

  What if we were to identify with the shepherds? They represent those of lowly status, the socially and economically marginalized. Or do we, to use words from later in the gospel, identify with “those who put on fine clothing and live in luxury in royal palaces” (Luke 7:25; Matt. 11:8)?

  Perhaps few readers of this book fall into either category. But the story of the shepherds invites those of us who have some wealth and influence to become disenchanted elites, no longer mesmerized by the claims of empire to be the light and hope of the world. If we identify with the shepherds, we will dream of and seek a different kingdom, one more and more under the lordship of God as known in Jesus, revealed to them on a starry night as Messiah, Lord, and Savior.

  Or are we among those who hear the story of Jesus, but aren’t sure what to make of what we hear? No doubt there were many in this category who heard Jesus during his lifetime. Is this who we are?

  We are meant to be changed by Advent and Christmas. This is the sacramental purpose of this season of the Christian liturgical year.

  CHRISTMAS FUTURE

  In a Christmas story that has become almost as well known as the stories of the first Christmas, A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens vividly portrays Scrooge’s encounters with the ghosts of Christmas past, Christmas present, and Christmas future. Scrooge’s experience of the three spirits changes him. And because of that change, Christmas future becomes different. Dickens got it right: Christmas has three tenses. There is a spirit of Christmas past, Christmas present, and Christmas future.

  We turn now to Christmas future. Advent and Christmas are about a new world. They are thus intrinsically about eschatology. Recall what we said about this word in Chapter 3: eschatology is about the divine transfor
mation of our earth. It is not about some mass immigration from a doomed world to a blessed heaven. Rather, it is about the end of this era of war and violence, injustice, and oppression. It is about the earth’s transformation, not about its devastation. It is about a world of justice and peace.

  How will this transformation of the world come about? To say the obvious, it has not yet happened, despite the passage of two thousand years. It is not yet accomplished. Does this mean that the Christmas stories are a pipe dream? That they (and the New Testament as a whole) are another example of failed eschatology, of hope become hopeless?

  It depends upon how we think the new world is to come about. Two very different understandings, two different eschatologies, are found in the history of Christianity as well as in modern scholarship. We call the first one “supernatural eschatology,” or “interventionist eschatology.” Within this understanding, only God can bring about the new world. It can happen only through a dramatic divine intervention. All we can do is wait for it and pray for it. Many twentieth-century scholars argued that this is what Jesus and the earliest Christians expected. It has also been found in popular Christianity throughout the centuries. In our time, it is especially virulent in the violently destructive scenarios imagined by those who expect the second coming of Jesus in the near future.

  We call the second one “participatory eschatology,” or “collaborative eschatology.” Put simply, we are to participate with God in bringing about the world promised by Christmas. Rather than waiting for God to do it, we are to collaborate with God.

  There is a third option as well—namely, letting go of eschatology. This view is also found among Christians. Some do not see a connection between the gospel and a transformed earth. For them, Christianity is only about individual salvation, whether in this life or in a life beyond death. This world may be seen as a pleasant place or a dreadful place, but Christian hope is not about the transformation of this world.