NOTES for Luk 2:1-20

In the story of the birth of Jesus Christ in the manger, with the cave, the shepherds, and the angels, there is nothing sentimental or sweetly touching. But there is much that is majestic and solemn. We should not be embarrassed by the modest setting of a village stable and the poverty of the guests: this is a true messianic feast.

Everything here points to Jesus’ distant ancestor and the most famous anointed king, that is, in Greek, Christ, David: his native city Bethlehem, the occupation of the shepherds, for David himself was a shepherd for his father, and the striking parallels with the One who will also be Shepherd for His Father. He too is born to be King, Anointed One, Christ; He too, as the “least of the brothers,” will by a miracle, by God’s power, defeat the Enemy and “remove disgrace from Israel” (compare 1 Sam. 17 or Ps. 151). The evangelist, knowing the whole subsequent story, was able to discern glory in the ordinary and poor life of a family overtaken by childbirth at night in a stable. We too know this story, but do we know how to truly see?

La Vielle de Noël

Nothing has begun yet. Already everything is past.
From edge to edge a soft haze has veiled the light.
Moisture streams from the fog - now rain, now snow.
No valleys, no mountains, no lakes, no rivers can be made out.
Silently creeping up, from edge to edge
one single haze covers every distance,
Without shape, without colors, and without bounds, a whitish veil.
Two steps away nothing can be seen, and in the thawing snow the footprint sinks
Of this unknown couple, for whom
there is no room in the inn.
On the face of the deep, darkness again, as it was
before the beginning of time.
Everything droops into the languor of nonbeing, into fog and sleep.
Like a fir beneath the snow, like a beast in its den, the will drowses, and reason is silent.
Maybe the heart of love keeps watch, yet love itself
sleeps and sleeps.
Quiet and muffled, hour after hour, the eye is fogged,
and the mind is blind -
Until sensitive midnight makes out an infant's cry.

(S. S. Averintsev, Geneva, 24.12.1994)
La Vielle de Noël - Christmas Eve (French)

For whom is the Savior born? Are you sure He is born for you? The whole world renounced Christ in advance, giving Him, the newborn Child, only a feeding trough for livestock. The first subjects of the new King turn out to be simple shepherds.

But Christ is born not only for those who are ready to receive Him. The Angel proclaims unambiguously: joy will be for all people. By human reasoning, the world is always divided into good and bad, into those worthy and unworthy of salvation. But the moment heaven opens even briefly, the choir of the heavenly host is heard: Christ is for all.

Each evangelist describes the Nativity of Christ in his own way, drawing attention to the events that seem most important to him. Among the events of the Nativity, Luke gives special attention to the signs God gave that pointed to Jesus as the Messiah. The first of these signs was the revelation received by shepherds who were nearby Bethlehem (v. 8). The meaning of the revelation was quite clear. The angel who appeared before the shepherds tells them directly that the Messiah awaited by the people has been born, and the rejoicing joy of heaven confirms the significance of what is happening (vv. 9-14).

It would seem that shepherds were not the most suitable people to be the first to hear the news about the Messiah who had been born. They had neither power and authority nor knowledge. If they had wanted to tell others what they had seen, they would have been believed last, if they were believed at all. At first glance it may seem that such people have little to do with the events of spiritual life, since they are not at all like the religious activists, such as the Pharisees, who were completely sure that they, of course, would meet the Messiah before anyone else.

But Christ, as can be seen, comes to everyone, not only to those who lead an intense religious life. He comes to those who are waiting for him and are ready to receive him. And this by no means always depends on a person's religious activity. Paradoxically, such activity can sometimes even get in the way. The shepherds are simple people, and their reaction to the revelation they receive is simple too: let us go and see (v. 15)! And when they came to Bethlehem and saw the infant Christ there, they simply told, as best they could, what they had seen (vv. 16-18). Then they went back, glorifying God for the birth of the promised Messiah (v. 20).

It is enough to compare this simple account, this witness, with the theological disputes that almost every word and deed of Jesus will provoke among the same Pharisees and teachers of the Torah, to understand why the revelation about the birth of the Messiah is given precisely to shepherds. Had learned rabbis been in their place, the Virgin Mary would most likely have had to wait a long time for the witness to Christ's birth that was so important to her (v. 19), for before recognizing anyone as the Messiah, the matter had to be thoroughly investigated. But God more often needs witnesses than theologians. He does not need us to analyze and evaluate his works. It is quite enough for him that others hear about them from us.

Today we celebrate a special service, the so-called Royal Hours or Hours of the Eve of the Nativity of Christ. At the Royal Hours we read several passages from the Old Testament, from the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the accounts by the evangelists Matthew and Luke of the Nativity. The most important thing in this unusual service is its emphatically Paschal character. In essence, it is almost an exact copy of those Hours that are celebrated on the day of Christ's death on the Cross, on Great Friday.

The Royal Hours both of Great Friday and of the Nativity of Christ were composed by Patriarch Sophronius of Jerusalem (d. 644) in the first half of the seventh century; their deep similarity is meant to mark the beginning and completion of God's saving action — the Nativity of Christ and His sacrifice on the Cross. These events reveal to us God's design as God's saving passage through our world, which is completed in the triumph of the Cross and the Resurrection.

And about why the Nativity takes place, St. Sophronius writes this: "As one descended from the line of David, Mariam was once being registered in Bethlehem with the elder Joseph while carrying in her womb the seedless Fruit; but when the time of the Nativity came, there was no place to stay, and the cave appeared to the Queen as a beautiful palace. Thus Christ is born in order to raise up His image that had fallen before." This means that the Nativity is the beginning of the way of the Cross, and this is exactly how the Church approaches it.

It is impossible for a human being to realize and understand what happened. Not only because the very fact of the Nativity, the way all this happens, is from a human point of view complete absurdity. It is also because through it a person receives the possibility of understanding how God loves. His love for each person is at the same time a father's love for a child and a small child's love for its parents. Strictness, responsibility, care, and self-sacrifice are fused with tenderness, complete trust, and the need to be always near. This is what His Love looks like. He wants us to hold Him in our arms, not let Him go, and in this way He will give us everything, protect us, and give us peace. He gives Himself to us, and as a child smiles at any mother, so He loves us as we are. And by entrusting His life to our keeping, He is simply trusting us as no one ever has and no one ever will.

Translated from Greek, the word "gospel" means "good news." And the meaning of this good news lay precisely in the fact that the Messiah whom the people of God had awaited for centuries had finally come into the world. This is what the angels announce to the shepherds. They call the newborn Messiah Lord and Savior.

The corresponding Greek word, however, is often interpreted as "Lord," meaning Yahweh, whose name in Greek texts was usually replaced by a word translated as "master" or "lord"; in Greek there is no difference between "master" and "lord." That is why it is sometimes not simple to determine what is being spoken of in a concrete Greek text. With Hebrew texts it is simpler: there the name Yahweh appears in its proper place without changes, whereas "pious" translations usually replace it with that same "master" or "lord." But if the text was written in Greek from the beginning, it is rather difficult to understand whether the sacred name or simply a title is meant.

In this case, however, what stands before us is quite plausibly precisely a title, because the Messiah was always regarded first of all as King. Of course, popular messianism supposed that the Kingdom would be entirely earthly, and that the Messiah too would become an entirely earthly King. But popular notions did not cancel the fact that the Messiah truly is King, though not of the kind of Kingdom most people expected in those days.

Jesus never renounced His Kingdom, while He never made any claims to earthly kingdoms. And the title Savior was also traditionally messianic in the Gospel era. True, here too popular messianism supposed something quite earthly: the King-Messiah would create a strong Jewish state, founded on laws corresponding to the Torah, in which not only every Jew, but in general everyone who worshiped the God of Israel and sought a devout life, would find refuge.

If people spoke of salvation as complete liberation from the power of sin and death, they did so only secondarily and in a more distant, eschatological perspective. But Jesus truly became Savior for everyone seeking the Kingdom, for there a person finds not only the fullness of life, but also deliverance from the power of evil and sin in which the fallen world lies. Deliverance forever: for the Kingdom, entering the world, sooner or later will transform it completely, making it part of itself and freeing it from the consequences of the fall. Finally, for all eternity.

The news of the Messiah's birth is joyful, for everyone and for each person; not only for those who would later be called Christians, but also for all who take spiritual life seriously. Of course, the Jews, the people of God, awaited Him more than anyone else; they alone then could understand what had happened and what the good news meant. The others could only guess.

But the issue is not only who understands what, although awareness plays a key role in spiritual life. The issue is also what exactly happened: in the Kingdom that, in the Savior's words, has "drawn near." And this can be felt not only by Christians: a person may know nothing about the Messiah, about the people of God, or in general about the history of the Covenant and salvation, but every seeker can sense the breath of the Kingdom.

In this sense, the transformation undergone in the Christian era by some Eastern teachings, such as Hinduism or Buddhism, is quite remarkable. Could anyone have imagined in pre-Christian times that a Hindu, even a consistent monotheist who had chosen the path of yoga, would call God Heavenly Father? Yet in modern Hinduism this is found, and this is by no means due to the influence of Christian missionaries: it is the breath of that very Kingdom, which does not fit within any religious framework, the Kingdom open to everyone who strives for genuine spiritual life, whatever tradition he belongs to.

Of course, there is no Kingdom without a King. But the seeker does not always know about the King right away; at times he learns about the Kingdom before learning about the One who rules in it. But the King is glad for everyone who comes. And one can come to know the King even after learning about the Kingdom, touching it, and understanding that this is exactly where one had been going, and that one has arrived where one had long wanted to be. There is still time before the full triumph of the Kingdom, before Christ's return in glory, and that means seekers still have time to meet the King, to come to know Him, to realize with whom they have met, and to entrust themselves to Him.

Of course, the direct representation of the Kingdom on earth should first of all be the Church. But she is not always equal to this task, and Christ Himself never said that He would limit His activity in the world to the boundaries of the earthly Church. He promised not to leave her, but He did not promise us, as Christians, exclusive rights to the Kingdom. After all, it is His Kingdom and His Church, and only He can decide how far it will spread and who will be able to partake of it.

The life of Jesus is fulfilled in us when we know not only the events of His life, but also when we experience these events as facts of our biography. That is why the words of the Angel concerning the birth of the Rescuer are not only address to the shepherds, but to us also today, presently. Ok let's go now, will our faith be strong? Do we accept that it is indeed today that comes into the world the helpless Baby, Whom the Father confided in the hands of men? If the answer is yes, then love and gratefulness move in us, and this day will be filled with "great joy ".

The shepherds' reaction to what they saw is the reaction of normal people who trust God. They were told that the Messiah had been born, they were told where to look for Him, and they go where they were told. The normal reaction of "simple" people. Simple not necessarily in the sense of roughness or lack of education, but in the sense of that inner wholeness which stands opposed not to roughness or ignorance, but to inner brokenness or dividedness. To what most often keeps a person from seeing and hearing God. Although the fact remains: broken, divided people inclined to endless and fruitless reflection are more readily found among the educated than among the uneducated.

If the angels had announced the Messiah's birth to leaders of the Pharisaic movement well educated in the Torah, or to teachers of the Torah, Joseph and Mary would most likely not have had guests very soon. Indeed, before going, these people would have needed to analyze everything carefully, weigh it, decide whether the vision was "correct" or "incorrect," whether it corresponded to the criteria of truth and the ideas about the Messiah accepted by learned theologians, or not... In short, learned people would not have gathered quickly to look at the Messiah. And the issue here, of course, is not education as such.

The issue is what almost always accompanies this very education in a fallen person. And the issue is not only arrogance and the peculiar snobbery characteristic of some learned people, but an inclination toward modeling and schematizing even where no schemes are suitable by definition and no models work. And not even because God and the Messiah cannot be fit into any schemes and cannot be modeled in any way, but because a person inclined to such intellectualism often begins, without noticing it himself, to model himself as well. His own life. A life out of which he tries to make a scheme instead of simply living.

And then, if a person models his own life instead of simply living it, it becomes practically impossible to get through to him. For God and for another person. In such a case the person disappears, identifying himself with his own scheme, with the model of his own existence. And one cannot communicate with a model or a scheme; here one can either fit in or leave. But God has no intention of fitting into human schemes, and neither does the Messiah. That is why God reveals important things to those who live simply, without schemes and models. That way is truer and more reliable.