Who Kidnapped Baby Jesus?

I wonder what the birth of Jesus was like. In all likelihood, the historical baby Jesus was born at home in Nazareth, a village in Galilee that is about 60 miles north of Bethlehem and Jerusalem. I hope baby Jesus was born surrounded by a loving family. I hope he had a normal, happy childhood. I try to imagine him playing with siblings and neighbor kids in Nazareth. I assume the real Jesus scraped his knees a few times. He probably quarreled with playmates on occasion. I bet he even talked back to his parents once or twice. I wonder, too, just how normal he could have been as a child. Jesus was clearly an exceptional person. I wonder when the first signs of the religious visionary began to show themselves. Certainly, he grew up to be an extraordinarily charismatic young man.

This morning’s reading, written by a prominent New Testament scholar, tells us that we actually know nothing about Jesus’ birth and childhood. None of the earliest Christian writings says anything about his birth. Two of the four gospels, Mark and John, do not even mention the birth of Jesus. Mark was the first gospel written, so it is especially interesting that it does not mention the birth of Jesus. The author of Mark must not have thought that the circumstances of Jesus’ birth were important.

What is clear is that, figuratively speaking, the real baby Jesus got kidnapped late in the first century. The kidnappers were, fittingly enough, Jesus’ own followers. As the early movement grew, and as it became obvious that Jesus was not going to return during the lifetime of the first Christians, the early Christians began to write down stories that had been repeated orally. Like all storytellers, they embellished the stories. We tend to forget that many of the earliest followers of Jesus, especially those who followed the teachings of the apostle Paul, expected Jesus to return in their lifetimes. Paul, who never actually met Jesus, certainly expected to live to see Jesus return.

As the early Christians sought to grow their little movement, they worked to appeal to more people. At some level, the stories they created about the birth of Jesus were intended to capture their feeling of how special Jesus was. At another level, the birth stories were what we would call marketing. The story about Jesus being born in Bethlehem was to appeal to Jews, who believed the messiah would be born there. The story about the star and the wise men was a way of saying that Jesus was a kind of king. The genealogy going back to Adam was a way of including Gentiles.

This is not in any way to denigrate these stories. The gospel writers who created the story about wise men and the star or the story about the trip to Bethlehem, the manger and the shepherds, understood how powerful stories can be. They understood how a good story can convey a message, how a good story involves our emotions and our imaginations. We also need to remember that two thousand years ago people did not think about historical accuracy and objective historical facts the way we do. They had a story about Jesus that they wanted to tell. They had heard stories about the teachings and the ministry of Jesus. The earliest writings said nothing about the first part of Jesus’ life. The authors of Matthew and Luke did what any good storyteller would do when a part of the story is missing: they created a story to fill in the gap.

My purpose here is not to debunk the birth tales told by the authors of Luke and Matthew. Note, by the way, that I speak of the authors of the gospels of Luke and Matthew. Even in the scriptures there is no claim that these gospels were actually written by Matthew or Luke. If you check the Bible, you will see that the first book in the New Testament is “The Gospel According to Matthew.” Note the “according to.” It is the same for all the gospels. The actual writer of each gospel was repeating a story that had been retold countless times in the 40 or so years since Jesus died.

And yet, something terribly unfortunate happened as time passed and as the early Christians wrote down the stories that would become the gospels. The religion of Jesus became the religion about Jesus. This was probably inevitable. We poor humans have an enormous capacity for missing the point. The religion of Jesus was pretty simple. It was about loving God and loving our neighbors. This is what Jesus himself said his entire message boiled down to: love God and love your neighbor. Not easy, but simple.

As time passed, poor Jesus got kidnapped again and again. As we move down the centuries, the people who called themselves followers of Jesus got into arguing with each other about who was right and who was wrong about what it meant to be a Christian. They got amazingly worked up about this.

Alas, part of our human problem with missing the point is that, once we have missed the point, we become sure that we have it right and that those who disagree with us are wrong. And when we really get ourselves worked up, we convince ourselves that those who disagree with us are evil and deserve to die. And so we get centuries of Christians killing heretics. Catholics kill Protestants and vice versa. We used to see one kind of Marxist killing another kind of Marxist. Today we are witnessing Sunni and Shiite Muslims killing each other. It’s the same old pattern.

In the very early church there was a wide variety of belief. Lots of followers of Jesus, people who called themselves Gnostics, believed that the stories about miracles and the resurrection were not literal, but symbolic. The Gnostics were branded heretics and most of their writings were destroyed. A few examples were discovered in the last century. Lots of early Christians did not believe that Jesus was a God. About half of them did not accept the new doctrine about the Trinity.

Almost 300 years after the death of Jesus, the Roman emperor Constantine converted to Christianity and decided to make Christianity the official religion of his empire. This little movement of radical Jews had spread to the Gentiles and was now really making the big time. Three hundred years after the death of Jesus the religion his followers created was becoming the official religion of the world’s greatest empire. In retrospect, of course, this smacks more of politics than of spirituality. Constantine decided that if Christianity was to be the official religion it needed to speak with one voice. Constantine was, after all, an emperor. He was not much of a theologian, but he sure understood power and authority. An emperor does not tolerate dissent. The empire speaks with one voice. If Christianity was going to be the official religion, it too had darned well speak with one voice. He called Christian bishops together to hammer out the party line. The result was a statement of faith that became known as the Nicene Creed, after the city of Nicea where the council of bishops was held under Constantine’s watchful eye. Suddenly all the Christians who had beliefs at odds with the creed were heretics. They had to agree with the creed or face the consequences. The vast majority accepted the dogma, at least in public.

Poor Jesus. Kidnapped again. Kidnapped by his own followers, by people who prayed to him.

Under the power of the Roman Church, the religion of Jesus continued to be twisted into the religion about Jesus. Catechisms were created and memorized. Doctrines were debated and elaborated and promulgated. All kinds of rituals were developed. Cathedrals were built. Crusades were sent out to recapture the Holy Land. Mary, Jesus’ mother, gradually got elevated to a kind of deity. Ancient art is filled with hundreds of images of a pious Madonna holding her son, complete with a halo behind her head. All kinds of saints got canonized, too. People began praying to Mary and the saints.

The church, in its zeal to be the ultimate authority on everything, did some remarkably silly things. The church fathers decided that Galileo had to be tried and imprisoned for teaching that the earth revolved around the sun. Now, I am no great biblical scholar, but I can’t recall Jesus saying anything about astronomy.

Sadly, we are still at it. Now we have thousands of people who call themselves Christians getting all worked up about the idea of biological evolution. They want to use the power of the government to ensure that their version of the creation myth is taught as science in public schools. Amazing. As I read the scriptures, it seems to me that the part of biology Jesus most cared about was feeding the poor.

The simple message about loving God and loving our neighbor was still there, but it got harder and harder to find. Jesus remained kidnapped and held captive by the very people who believed in him.

Of course, it is easy for me, and for us, to look back at all this with a kind of knowing condescension. We, of course, haven’t kidnapped Jesus. Not us. For example, we look down on those poor misguided souls who oppose Christianity to science. We would never think of burning a heretic at the stake. 

But you and I don’t get off the hook. I think you and I have helped to kidnap Jesus in our own way.

Just look at what has happened to Christmas. Christmas used to be a pretty minor holiday. It is hard to imagine now, but it was. Easter, after all, was the cornerstone of the Christian faith.

In the last few centuries, Christmas has grown from a special holy day into something quite different. It gradually became more and more about gifts and therefore more and more about money. The “Christmas season” now begins some time in late October or early November. It really is a season. Pretty soon Christmas may grow to be as long as winter or summer.

Talk about kidnapping baby Jesus! Our consumer culture, the culture you and I are very much a part of, has distorted the spirit of this season in a way Jesus’ followers could never imagine.

Poor Jesus has been kidnapped once again. Today he is being held hostage at the mall. And at Amazon.com. And at Wal-Mart and Target and the Apple Store (my own personal weakness). It is so easy to get all caught up in this insanity of acquisition. We are surrounded by insipid nonsense and clever marketing tricks to get us to buy all sorts of stuff.

How in the world did a celebration of Jesus’ birth, which had become mixed together with pagan rituals about darkness and light and the solstice,  get transformed into the banality of an orgy of shopping while dreadful music plays in the background?

The story of what happened to Jesus in the centuries after his death is a long and sad tale. First Jesus’ followers mostly missed the point and created a religion about him instead of a religion that tried to follow him. Over time it got worse, as all kinds of silly superstition got piled up. Jesus’ followers got lured by the prospect of power. They got power. Alas, power corrupts.

Somehow, miraculously, his wonderful message of love of God and love of neighbor never was completely lost in the church’s teachings.

If misguided followers weren’t enough, in the modern world Jesus got malled—as in Cherry Creek Mall, Flatirons Mall, Westminster Mall, the Mall of America.

But you and I can help change all of this! You and I can free Jesus!

Want to do something really radical? I propose that you and I together create a conspiracy to free Jesus. Poor Jesus has spent most of the last two millennia as a captive. But we can free him.

We just need to do two things.

First, we need to love God. Now, I know that many of us have a hard time with theistic language. I have a hard time with it, too. The word “God” has been kidnapped, too (but that is a different sermon). But we can use other words, too. Love life. Love the source of life, the spirit of life. Love the amazing mystery of a universe that gave rise to sentient life. Connect to the whole; connect to the source. Let wonder and awe fill your spirit. Whether we call it the source of all life, the ultimate reality, or God does not really matter. To argue about what we call it is to miss the point entirely. Just love it. Love it with all your heart.

To love the ultimate source of life is a radical act. This is what Jesus was talking about.

When we love the source of life we go halfway to setting Jesus free.

The second part is really hard. We have to love our neighbors. We even have to love people who drive us crazy. We have to love cranky, disagreeable, and mean spirited people. We have to love violent people. We have to love our enemies. I find this part really, really hard. I can work up to trying to ignore people I don’t like. I can even mostly tolerate them when I am in a generous mood. But Jesus said we are supposed to love them. We are supposed to realize that they are ultimately like us. Jesus asks us to realize that we are all in this together.

And loving our neighbor does not mean just a warm feeling of general good will. Loving our neighbor means helping our neighbor. It means letting our selves feel what our neighbor feels. It means compassion, which is literally to suffer with. Loving our neighbor means reaching out to help the poor, the immigrants, the helpless and the despised. Over the long haul it means working for justice and for peace.

When we love God and love our neighbor, we are transformed. It is like—dare I say it in a Unitarian Universalist church—it is like being born again. The rigidity of religion and the banality of consumerism did not just kidnap Jesus. They kidnapped us, too! When we love God and love our neighbor we free poor Jesus from two thousand years of captivity.

More important, when we love God and love our neighbor, we free our selves.

Who kidnapped baby Jesus? I did. You did. We all did.

Let us now free Jesus and free ourselves. Love life with all your heart. Love each other. That’s it.

Amen.