“When ages beyond number had run their course
from the creation of the world,
when God in the beginning created heaven and earth,
and formed man in his own likeness;
when century upon century had passed
since the Almighty set his bow in the clouds after the Great Flood,
as a sign of covenant and peace;
in the twenty-first century since Abraham, our father in faith,
came out of Ur of the Chaldees;
in the thirteenth century since the People of Israel were led by Moses
in the Exodus from Egypt;
around the thousandth year since David was anointed King;
in the sixty-fifth week of the prophecy of Daniel;
in the one hundred and ninety-fourth Olympiad;
in the year seven hundred and fifty-two
since the foundation of the City of Rome;
in the forty-second year of the reign of Caesar Octavian Augustus,
the whole world being at peace,
JESUS CHRIST, eternal God and Son of the eternal Father,
desiring to consecrate the world by his most loving presence,
was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
and when nine months had passed since his conception,
was born of the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem of Judah,
and was made man:
The Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ according to the flesh.”
The Martyrology places our Lord with great precision in historical time and place. Similarly when we profess our faith, we do not only say that Jesus suffered. We say ‘he suffered under Pontius Pilate’. What we profess with regard to Jesus is not timeless truth, but historical event, in this time, in this place. In spite of works of art that depict the scenes at the manger and the Cross against the background of the artist’s own country with the characters in the clothes of his time, it is not our tradition to detach the events of the life from Jesus from their historical setting, and treat the Gospel story as we might a play of Shakespeare that is transposed into our own time with the characters in modern clothes.
It is not as if his life happened to be in that time and place, but might have been in any time, any place. The whole created universe, heaven and earth, has been waiting for this birth from its beginning. History, sacred history from Abraham through Moses, David and Daniel, and what we call secular history through Greece, Rome and the Roman Empire, all move towards this event, which inaugurates the final age of the world in which we live. The birth, life, death and glorification of Jesus are not only happenings within our history. They are at the centre of history, the great turning point in the human story and creation’s story. Even more, they are at the beginning and end of creation and history as goal and fulfilment. They give meaning to everything that ever was and ever shall be, they lift everything created out of the empty void of futility into which otherwise it would collapse. Jesus is the real content of God’s first word at creation, and he is God’s last word.
Our religion is not a timeless idea, or an idea evolving in time. It is action. It is not a reflection on events. It is the event.
When we hear the word of God in Scripture it seems we are listening to history. Of course we are. Yet God is not an historian but the author, i.e. the maker of history. God’s word can never be only descriptive of what has happened, as if it followed events. He cannot be an ‘author’ as a human being is an author, through thoughts engendered by the events described. His word is always creative, giving life to what is said and written.
What is our place in all of this? When we hear his word, its creative power works in us. So we too are never only observers of the history that is told. We become active participants in the story.
Regarding our place in the story that God is telling, it is easier to say what is not the case than what is the case. So, if we are to imagine the story of the world as one long play set on a vast stage, a play that God has written in which we are the actors, we are not to imagine that God sits in the stalls watching as we come and go, commenting, occasionally directing, checking our interpretation of the script. Nor, on the other hand, are we puppets with God as the puppeteer.
Within God’s play we act with complete originality and freedom, and we also are true authors of the story being told. Here is the mystery of the free will that God has given us.
At the centre of the story is Jesus. His human existence, his acts, are the pattern that our lives follow.
We feel individually as we might imagine the world to have felt at the time when Jesus was born. That so much time has passed, there have been so many promises and hopes, so many beginnings and new beginnings, and where are we?
For the Jewish people, God’s saving deeds were a distant past memory, and in regard to the hope of salvation, they were like Abraham and Sarah waiting for the promised son. Abraham and Sarah took matters into their own hands, Sarah inviting Abraham to have a child by Hagar. Ishmael was born and there seemed no more need for God to provide. And then, Isaac the promised and beloved son was born. So the Jewish people at the time of Jesus had in large part concluded that God’s Kingdom would be established when they would take matters into their own hands and rise up violently against Rome. There was a place in this for God’s Messiah: he would be the one who would come and carry out their plan, leading them to victory.
But when Jesus came, it was not to occupy any place, even a leading place, even a throne, in a kingdom already planned. He was and he is, the Kingdom. He doesn’t come into our world and into our lives by occupying any place that we have prepared for him. He comes as the origin of the world, as the real beginning for each of our lives.