“A great portent appeared in heaven…” (Revelation 12:1)
I once visited an art installation at the Cleveland Museum of Art that was an “auditory experience.” Something like 120 speakers were set up in a circle and they were playing a Gregorian chant. Participants in this art (and you had to participate for it to mean anything) were encouraged to walk around outside the speakers, to walk between them, to snake around them, or do just about anything else. As you did so, the sound changed. Particular voices were lifted up; the group diminished. At the dead center of the circle, it was nearly overwhelming and yet somehow still enthralling. I mean, it really got your blood pumping.
We all know that if 10 people witness the same car accident, they will report seeing 10 different things. (Or, as the old joke goes, if you get 10 Presbyterians in the room, you’ll have 12 opinions). We know that perspective matters, that our own unique personalities matter, that are past histories matter in how we experience anything. Maybe what was so enthralling about that art installation was some latent understanding that what I was experience I – and I alone – could experience.
Such realities, of course, mean that “objectivity” is often nothing more than mob rule and that we are all much more likely to be rationalizing creatures rather than rational ones. However, that’s a fairly jaded view. A better way to think about things is that each of us has something unique to contribute to our life together. If 100 people saw the same thing and saw it the same way, then 99 of them would be irrelevant. But if 100 people all see the same thing, but from different angles, then a more comprehensive, three-dimensional picture can be made and story told because of all that diversity.
This is all necessary preamble to explaining the passage from Revelation 12. While it may not look like it on the surface, what you have just read – one week shy of the birth of Christ – is the Nativity story. I know, some casting director needs fired because we tend to think that the Nativity story has sheep, not dragons, but this is a Nativity story nonetheless. Unlike the one we’re most familiar with – a manger, sheep, shepherds, wise men, and so on – this is the view of Jesus’ birth as seen from the perspective of heaven. And while the story may not seem familiar, the meaning should be.
The woman in the pangs of birth is Mary, the mother of Jesus. The dragon is none other than the serpent who tempted Eve – apparently having grown larger and stronger, likely fed by the sins of wayward humanity. The child born is Jesus, who is protected by the Father’s will. The flight away into the desert is a retelling of Mary and Joseph’s flight to Egypt to avoid Herod’s infanticidal schemes. Of course, at this point in the story, we might also remember another woman – Hagar, the handmaid to Sarah – who fled with child into the wilderness. Maybe the two stories are meant to blend together from the perspective of heaven, because Hagar’s children become the Gentiles of the Old Testament, so if we are to see Hagar in this story from Revelation, then what we are seeing is God’s figurative inclusion of the Gentile world through the incarnation of Jesus as Christ.
No, this is not the Christmas story as you’ll hear it told by Linus, but it is another and important viewing of the same story. It is a reminder that the coming of the Christ has both earthly and cosmic consequences. It is a reminder that the veil between heaven and earth is often quite thin and has been made all the thinner by a God who would deign to become part of His very creation. This story, from the perspective of heaven, is our story too. Amen.
