Infancy

 

Reflections for the First Sunday after Christmas, the 29^th of December 2024, in the pew notes at St Peter’s Church, Eastern Hill, Melbourne.  Written by Philip Harvey. 

My Christmas holiday reading includes Diarmaid MacCulloch’s newest big picture history, this one focusing on the best-selling subjects, sex and religion. His concluding chapter contains many wonderful and challenging thoughts going into the new year. 

Here’s one of them: ‘The Infancy Narratives of Matthew’s and Luke’s Gospels, for instance, are not history in the conventional modern sense, but they are admirably prophetic descriptions of what has happened in Christian history. A child in south-west Asia whose birth fell outside the conventional family pattern of his day took on a cosmic significance that has brought him allegiance worldwide. Those who worshipped at the manger ranged from illiterate teenagers in marginal occupations to scholars of ancient wisdom; between them they have confounded the efforts of the rulers of this world to destroy him or co-opt him – just as the Infancy Narratives say. That is a two-millennium long tale beyond attendant sheep, camels or courtiers in the palace of King Herod.’

 MacCulloch is encouraging us to learn from and be open to Scripture, precisely for how it illuminates our current understanding of world and existence now, providing depth of perspective. Retelling the Christmas stories speaks into our present concerns. As he says, ‘Fitting the Bible in a properly historical fashion into a renewed and more adequate understanding of natural law is not to jettison the Bible’s meaning or authority, but to enrich it.’ Here we are then, with the shepherds and Magi, at the crib. 

This particular paragraph then ends, almost typically for this author, with further surprise: ‘Birth is women’s business, not men’s, and in the next two millennia we may be liberated to listen to women’s accounts of the Incarnation more than we have been able to amid the din of male theological voices.’      

Highly recommended: ‘Lower than the Angels: a history of Sex and Christianity’ by Diarmaid MacCulloch, published this year. $80 hardback at the St Peter’s Bookroom.