The Course and Christmas
by Tom Baker
Lesson: Chapter 15, X. The Time of Rebirth & XI. Christmas as the End of Sacrifice
Date: December 13, 2009
The traditional approach to Christmas both theologically and devotionally has been to emphasize the birth of divinity into the world in human form as Jesus. The theological term for this is the incarnation. The Biblical expression of the incarnation is from the Gospel of John which proclaims, "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us....." (John 1:14). We also celebrate Christmas historically as the commemoration of the birth of Jesus over 2000 years ago in Bethlehem of Judea. When I was a priest, my Christmas sermon always focused on the details of Jesus' humble birth and the wonderful irony, first noted by St. Paul, that unlimited, all powerful divinity would come to us as one of us in Jesus of Nazareth. Yet when Jesus speaks of celebrating Christmas he has not a thing to say about Bethlehem or incarnation or God humbling Himself to share our human estate.
The first thing Jesus says about Christmas is that it is about our birth through the Holy Spirit. Christmas is about us, not Jesus. And that this birth is a kind of birth into the present moment of the holy instant in which we would completely renounce sacrifice. The renunciation of sacrifice will lead to our acceptance of ourselves as one with the Christ and with all people:
"The holy instant is truly the time of Christ. For in this liberating instant no guilt is laid upon the Son of God, and his unlimited power is thus restored to him. What other gift can you offer me, when only this I choose to offer you? And to see me is to see me in everyone, and offer everyone the gift you offer me. I am as incapable of receiving sacrifice as God is, and every sacrifice you ask of yourself you ask of me. Learn now that sacrifice of any kind is nothing but a limitation imposed on giving. And by this limitation you have limited acceptance of the gift I offer you." Jesus goes on to explain that the ego has taught us that salvation, love, and the over coming of guilt all entail sacrifice. That, in fact, our 'confusion of sacrifice and love is so profound that you cannot conceive of love without sacrifice.' " (Chap. 15, X. The Time of Rebirth, p. 325).
While at first we might ask what sacrifice has to do with Christmas, when we think of the tension surrounding the exchange of gifts and cards, an emphasis on sacrifice and its entanglement with love starts to make sense. We can't seem to give enough and what we receive often is a disappointment. Psychiatrists dread Christmas for it is an occasion for heightened depression and anxiety. Theologically we are used to seeing God sacrificing His omnipotence to become human in Jesus and then Jesus sacrificing his life to save us from our sins. I am reminded of a painting, probably from about the 15th century, which depicts Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus in the tumble down stable. Hanging from the roof of the stable, just visible in the upper right hand corner of the painting, is a crucifix. The message is clear. Sacrifice is what it all means.
Our involvement with the ego is centered in sacrifice. In the group our discussion of sacrifice kept getting bogged down in the confusion of what was sacrifice and what was just giving from the heart. No formula could be agreed upon. The circularity and frustration of the discussion bore out the truth of what Jesus says about sacrifice in the Course: "Sacrifice is so essential to your thought system that salvation apart from sacrifice means nothing to you. Your confusion of sacrifice and love is so profound that you cannot conceive of love without sacrifice." (T. Chap. 15, X. The Time of Rebirth, p. 325). Although we never came to an answer, in the next section of the text, we are given a vision of how to see beyond what we have come to accept as the foundation of love, human and divine:
"The sign of Christmas is a star, a light in darkness. See it not outside yourself, but shining in the Heaven within, and accept it as the sign that the time of Christ has come. He comes demanding nothing. No sacrifice of any kind, of anyone, is asked by Him. In His Presence the whole idea of sacrifice loses its meaning......No fear can touch the Host Who cradles God in the time of Christ, for the Host is as holy as the perfect Innocence which He protects, and Whose power protects Him." (T. XI., p. 327).
I have tried to convey this very feminine sense of God in the following talk which I delivered to the Fellowship of the Inner Light last Sunday.
For new age people Christmas is a little hard to celebrate. In the new age we tend to be more interested in death than in birth. In fact getting born or reincarnated again is not what we want. We want this to be our last life: "I've been through that tight little birth canal tube for the last time". We love to hear people who have had near death experiences: they've flown through the spacious tunnel, exploded into the warm light, relaxed with the angels, met Edgar Cayce, had a very light lunch with Mohatma Ghandi. And then they had to go back, "not your time yet." They usually return to their heavy, dense bodies grudgingly, often with more than a little longing in their voices for the time when they can leave this painful world behind and bask in the bright world of spirit, sort of death as an eternal beach. I don't think we've ever had a speaker here who has had a transcendent birth experience, who remembers being born with eager excitement, shaking with expectation, like a child stepping into a roller coaster for the first time, saying "I can't wait! It's going be scary, but it's also going to be fun and fast and fantastic. I'm going to be so terrified! What a ride I'll have!" Instead we imagine the hours spent inching our way through the birth canal, born cold and wet and wailing, overwhelmed with karma. Why did I pick this family? Who are these people? And this school system and this religion, and this body: I spend my days peeing, and pooping and bleeding. Get me out of here! You call this life? So how do we make the season merry? How do we celebrate, really celebrate the birth of this child, Jesus, or any child for that matter? For as Jesus might have said: "My birth is your birth and your birth is mine as well." So where's the joy?
First of all, it's not Christmas yet. It's Advent. It's been Advent since the end of November, Sunday, November 29th was the first Sunday of Advent. Our society doesn't celebrate Advent. There are no Advent sales: Only a week left in Advent, get your advent Dodge Caravan, pregnant with possibilities", no one has wished me a happy or a blessed Advent, and, as a psychotherapist I've had no one in Advent crisis: "Oh no, it's Advent again. I hate Advent. It's Advent and I'm alone again." Everyone's waiting for Christmas to be alone again.
Call me old fashion, if you have a fancy vocabulary, call me atavistic (it means "outdated" according to Wikipedia), but I still celebrate Advent. I like Advent because it is a feminine season. The usually male oriented church during the four weeks before Christmas, focuses its attention on the drama of pregnancy. The two main figures in Advent are Mary the mother to be of Jesus and Elizabeth, the mother to be of John the Baptist. Mary is about 13 or 14, about the age of an eighth grader and Elizabeth is about the age of my wife, 54. They both have a problem, an age-old problem limited to women: they are both pregnant at the wrong time. Elizabeth is too old and Mary is not married yet. Mary's out of time pregnancy problem is compounded by the other age old problem of women in that she is pregnant by the wrong person, yet in her case it is unique, for she is pregnant, according to her, by no person at all: as one charming teenage girl in my youth group put it, rather colorfully, she's been knocked up by the Holy Spirit. Who would ever believe that? You can believe it as an article of faith, part of the creed, the Pope said so, Edgar Cayce said so. But I promise you, if one of our dear young girls stood before us and told us that her sudden pregnancy was of a spiritual origin, no matter how credible or sweet or sensible that girl was, to a person we would all avert out eyes and feel very sorry for the poor deluded young lady. If someone claims to have come back from the dead, we're all ears, almost every month we hear about that, but pregnant by the Holy Spirit? We will arrange an appointment with a mental health professional my dear, and quickly. Amen.
There is a moment in Advent which is one of the most tender in all of scripture. Mary goes to visit Elizabeth. She wants to talk to another woman who will understand. Who will show her love rather than make her an appointment. Elizabeth, with a touch of arthritis, the beginnings of osteoporosis and certified by public opinion as barren, a horrible thing to be called, is suddenly pregnant too. When Mary greets her, Elizabeth smiles, not the smile of sympathy or pity or condescension, but a smile that welcomes the miracle of an extraordinary birth and an extraordinary woman. She says, I quote from the Gospel according to Luke:
"Miriam, blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb. But who am I that the mother of my Lord should come to me? The moment your greeting sounded in my ears, the baby stirred in my womb for joy. Blessed is she, that's you Miriam, who trusted that the Lord's words to her would be fulfilled."
You can almost see Mary begin to breathe again, to have joy rather than shame for her motherhood, to smile the smile of a woman who can't wait for her baby, her holy, beautiful baby, to be born.
The baby born in Bethlehem grew up smiling at people like his mother and his cousin Elizabeth. Jesus always seemed to be hanging around with the wrong people at the wrong time: the woman caught in the act of adultery, the tax collector, Zachius, who he invited to dinner, all those lepers he touched and hugged and healed. Jesus was always encouraging the birth of the holy child in every unlikely person he met. The establishment stood at a distance and waited for Christianity to become respectable, a place for decent people to raise their children and be congratulated by God, a place from which to go to heaven. But Jesus, like Elizabeth, saw and still sees the holy, beautiful child about to born in everyone. Advent is his season and he says to each of us: "Get ready, be born again, not into a religion, but into life, life lived full out, roller coaster wild, with fire in your eyes and bugs on your teeth; ride the wind of the spirit with trust and vigor and a sweet belief in the holy and the impossible. My mother did it, so can you." May you have a blessed Advent.
© Copyright Tom Baker 2009