The Christ Mass

It’s Christmas—the Christ Mass—one of the high feasts of the Christian faith. It evokes from the faithful —from those who know much about their faith—a joyous celebration of the type to be expected from anyone who was under a sentence of death and now sees deliverance.
That is the whole point of Christmas from a Christian perspective: deliverance. It is fittingly named after the ancient church’s celebration of Christ’s death (the Mass), which is the point, from a Christian point of view, at which the deliverance was effected.
Christianity—and its celebrations—is to many a truly offensive faith. When Christ himself turns to a group of followers and tells them that, to be delivered (saved), they must eat his body and drink his blood, he suddenly finds himself alone with just his twelve committed friends.
It is also unique among world faiths. Salvation in other faiths rises out of the performance of rituals, out of leading a good life well, out of man’s pursuit of God. Christianity (and Judaism before it) is a story of God’s pursuit of man.
Ancient Jewish prophets like Hosea liken mankind to a prostitute who his pursued and constantly brought back by a husband (God) who truly loves her. That image is repeated throughout the Jewish canon. It is not one that flatters human beings. It is almost never happily accepted.
It makes foolishness of the modern claim that God is too loving to create a Hell or to punish people for their misdeeds. The Prophets—and Christ, who was well versed in Hebrew scripture—make it clear that if whoring mankind insist on going their own way, they will finally get their own way.
Hell is depicted as more of a choice than a sentence. When the Christian Bible writes that Judas Iscariot goes “to his own place”, it strongly suggests he chose it. Christ also says mankind is like “sheep without a shepherd”—that they cannot help but choose badly.
Then, in Luke 2, comes a great flash of light, spiritual and temporal. Angelic beings (they are certainly “good”, but the suggestion is more of terribly powerful; whenever humans face them, the human is stricken with terror) suddenly appear.
They proclaim peace to “men of good will” (not to everyone, please notice). They tell of a savior born in the town prophesied in the Jewish canon, Bethlehem. This, later Christian writers tell us, is the story these powerful beings have waited time untold to see and to tell.
Note something: This announcement is not made in the town itself. It is made far out in the country to some of the lowest class people of the time—shepherds who lived with and smelled like their sheep. They were generally despised by decent folk who lived in houses and had regular jobs.
The suggestion here is very strongly that God felt the townsfolk and the masses of visitors registering to pay Roman taxes would not have cared very much about the birth of some new savior. They might have been momentarily frightened by the bright lights, but it would not have impacted them greatly.
Look how Christ reacts later in his ministry: “…many [Jerusalemites] when they saw the signs which he did [the fireworks, as it were] believed on him. But Jesus did not trust himself to them, … for he himself knew what was in man.” John 2:23-5 In other words, Christ didn’t trust them as far as he could throw them.
I suspect he might feel the same way about many of the Holiday shopping partiers today. He had that uncomfortable gift of knowing what people were really thinking. So, back then, a quick announcement was made to a few sheep herders—whom no one paid any mind to. A couple of years later, no one in Bethlehem seemed to have any idea of what the Magi were talking about when they showed up.
We do well to celebrate the Christ Mass. We would do better to take a moment to at least understand what it means (even if we choose like the townsfolk of Bethlehem) to ignore or reject it.
It’s deliverance—deliverance from a fate most people would prefer to deny exists. Deliverance at an eventual cost to God Himself that most people would prefer to deny was ever necessary—or ever happened.
So we substitute Santa Claus—whose only punishment is a lump of coal (which, after all, will serve to warm us)—and ignore the implications of the Christian Christ Mass.
Today we find his message and sacrifice as offensive as his contemporaries did. So we say, Happy Holidays.