That's why, ultimately, Christians tell stories. Stories accomplish things that principles cannot accomplish. Christmas is supremely the story of a God who is not interested in telling us about principles. Christmas doesn't offer an alternative set of economic theories or even a social program. It's a story -- the record of an event that began to change the entire framework in which we think about human life, so that the unique value of every life came to be affirmed and assumed. That's one reason why we tell this story repeatedly, the story of the "unprincipled" God who values what others don't notice, who relates to people we'd all rather forget, whose appeal is to everyone because he has made everyone capable of loving response.
Christmas, you see, is a unique event. It's not something to be proven with arguments. It's a one-time event, a story to be told. Christmas is a unique event because Christmas is an act of God.
The truth of Christmas isn't something for historians or politicians or reporters to decide. It's something that happened, that moment when the bridge between heaven and earth is crossed, that moment when the story of the earth cannot now be told without also telling the story of God. That story of God now involves real life people in a real place at a real time -- a pregnant teenager, out-of-wedlock, in the backwater country of a far-flung corner of the empire. It's a flesh-and-blood story.
And I think that's what makes my liberal, enlightened friends quite nervous with the story of Christmas. No matter what they want, Christmas is the story of Mary and Joseph, the story of shepherds and kings, the story of political power and its violent tendencies. And all of that, according to the story, is a revelation of God.
The Virgin Birth, of course, really is (as Barth called it) "the Miracle of Christmas". Now-a-days, my liberal friends will balk at that story because it smacks of the illogical and immature.
But here's the question I'm left with by the story of Christmas: Who do I take myself for?
Am I really any smarter than St Matthew or St Luke? Am I all that qualified to correct the story? To function as its editor, just because I've read a book or two on the subject? Would that personalized, ready-made faith in scientism be all that much better? If I can arrange the world the way I like it -- thanks, Nietzsche -- where I remove everything I don't like and replace it with those things I do like -- is that really an improvement of the story?
I know folks that hold their breath when they come to a line (or two or fifteen) of the creed. I've been guilty of the same in my life. But here's the thing: All that does is make me the proud young carpenter who, on his first day on the job, scorns the silly traditions of other carpenters and gets to work building his own three-legged table -- only to discover that the rest of the world knew what they were doing when they made them with four legs?
All I'm saying is that the more I live with Advent and Christmas, the less cynical and sophisticated I get. As one saint I know once said, "I was so much older then, but I'm younger now". Now-a-days, I'm grateful to be a Christian at all.
That's right: I'm grateful to be a Christian.
Three-legged tables are fine, as far as they go. But you can rely implicitly on the ones with four legs; that's the kind you want when you're sitting down in the comfort of your own home, day after day, a table just like the one your grandfather used, and just like the one your great-grandchildren will use too, long after you've left the world and gone to that big dinner table in the sky.
It's a good thing to be a Christian.
I know that's banal -- and quite unsophisticated for my liberal friends. But it's what strikes me on the Fourth Sunday of this Advent.
It's a good thing to believe and tell a story I didn't create, and one I'm not responsible for editing. I didn't invent Christianity myself. It didn't start with me, though I am a part of it.
Here's the thing: It's a good thing to have a certain framework, a story that tells you what kind of place the world really is, so that there are some basic questions that are already settled, that you don't have to go on wringing your hands and wondering about. It's a privilege, a real privilege, to be able to join your voice to the church's confession: " ... and in Jesus Christ his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate" -- and all the rest.
You see, this story, this thing we call "Christian faith", is the Christmas gift: As reliable as the calendar, but full of all sorts of surprises, too.
That's something I can wait for, expect, anticipate.