In The Year Of The Rat, A Thrill Of Hope

In Chinese culture, the Year of the Rat is associated with
a time of fertility and abundance, quite unlike how most of
us have experienced 2020.

A thrill of hope,

The weary world rejoices

for yonder breaks 

a new and glorious morn.

        - from O Holy Night

January 25 of 2020 marked the beginning of the Year of Rat in the Chinese lunar calendar, a year their zodiac associates with wealth and productivity. Ironically, it began just days after the first case of coronavirus surfaced in the US, brought here by a US citizen who had just visited Wuhan, China.

The year 2020 has gone pretty much downhill ever since. Think volatile political and racial divisions and conflicts, apocalyptic wildfires and hurricanes exacerbated by global warming, and untold economic hardships the likes of which we have not seen here since the Great Depression. This has resulted in suicides and deaths by drug overdoses that have accompanied the dreadful death toll brought on by COVID-19. 

We hear the word unprecedented used a lot these days, even though there have been human tragedies and traumas throughout history that have been far, far worse than anything most of us have ever experienced. In the US we have been spared the kinds of hardships that many of our world neighbors have had to endure endlessly, while other parts of the world have enjoyed exceptional prosperity and privilege.

Such disparity was evident in the first century and in other dark times in history. The poor and dispossessed, often near starvation and without the most primitive means of healthcare, were typically in desperate straits, with blind, crippled and destitute beggars lining the streets for help. 

The Christmas story in Luke’s gospel begins with the familiar words, “In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that all the world should be taxed,” and notes that this census was first taken when Quirinius was the tyrant governor of Syria. In Matthew’s account King Herod, head of Roman-occupied Judea, is a prominent part of the story as well. 

These were all ruthless, powerful men under whose occupation any rebellion was met with brutal force. Untold numbers of people were crucified, tortured, beheaded or raped as a way of intimidating their subjects into submission. And not unlike other monarchs of his time, Emperor Caesar Augustus, sovereign over all of the so-called civilized world of his day, claimed to be a divine son of God, and a god himself, with titles like "god from god," "Lord," "Liberator," and "Savior of the world." 

So the early gospel writers were taking their lives into their own hands by claiming divine birth for a child born of a peasant girl in an occupied country, and by announcing a new kingdom ruled by another God, Yahweh, whose anointed son was Jesus. This kind of treasonous statement could have resulted in Roman legions being dispatched to deal harshly with such political heresy. According to the Matthew account, Herod, in fact, commanded that all the male children in the area around Bethlehem be killed to eliminate any possible rival. 

All of which makes Christmas more than just about festivity and merry making. It is a bold announcement about who--and in the end, what power--is really sovereign, a declaration that still divides the world in two but that still offers the world a glimmer of hope. Hope that help will come, not so much from the top down, through political power players, but from unlikely places like dimly lit hovels where God chooses to give birth to "good news of great joy for all people."

The people who walked in darkness

    have seen a great light;

those who lived in a land of deep darkness—

    on them light has shined.

Isaiah 9:2 (NRSV)