FEATURE — For the “From Figures of Faith” series, St. George News reached out to the Interfaith Council of St. George and asked if they had a message about the holiday season they would like to share with our readers.
The following was submitted by Pastor Joe Doherty, New Promise Lutheran Church.
In Luke’s gospel, Jesus birth is politically subversive. As far as Rome was concerned, Augustus Caesar was the world’s savior, in contrast to the announcement of Luke’s gospel. In the context of the day, Luke’s claim is ridiculous. Augustus had all the appearances and attributes of a king while Jesus, a child born in a stable and laid in a manger, had none. Whereas Augustus was hailed as a great king and celebrated as the single most powerful individual in the world—at least where power is measured by money, and divisions of soldiers, and territory—Jesus, to the frustration of many of his followers, was never inclined toward political leadership.
In all four accounts of Jesus life, his authority was revealed in healing the sick, and to casting out evil, and forgiving sins. Augustus and Jesus could not be further apart as saviors of the world. There was however one thing they had in common. For both Jesus and Augustus, people had great expectations.
Hope is a primary theme in this season of Christmas, and it is no less important for us today than it was in the first century. Even if Augustus had been all that people had hoped for, even if he had accomplished all their expectations and more, the hope he had to offer would still have been limited. The problem, however, is not just that Augustus was an inadequate savior, though he was, but the hopes and expectations that people placed in him were also inadequate and limited.
The hope Christ offers is different in many respects, but one important difference is that Jesus was not trying to meet the limited expectations of his followers. Christ didn’t come, in other words, to offer hope based on political ideologies; he didn’t come to save us from a foreign enemy; he didn’t come to provide economic security and balanced budget or to stop inflation.
Jesus came to save us from ourselves.
He came to free us from our hope-limiting sin; he came to free us from a merely temporal hope; he came to free us from a hope that interprets and understands the world only as it pertains to us or benefits us; he came to free us from a hope that can’t see beyond our own desires and needs; he came to free us from a hope that is willing to overlook and ignore brutality and torture so long as we get what we think we need; he came to free us from a limited hope that can only leave others hopeless.
The hope that Christ came for is an eternal hope and a universal hope. And it is for you. And it is for the world. And we, as followers of Christ, are to be bearers and embodiments of that hope in a world that desperately needs it.
With that in mind, this Christmas I invite you to wish for more than a blessed Christmas, I invite you to be a Christmas blessing to others.
St. George News will continue to add new messages to the “From Figures of Faith” series over the weekend leading up to Christmas Day. For all faith messages, click here.
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