Back when I was in pastoral ministry I developed the habit of preaching through the Passion story using one Gospel at a time, and going all the way through Lent up to Easter. I found that concentrating on hearing one voice telling the story was a wonderful way of focusing attention, mine and the congregation's. It worked very well.
I don't think any minister would dare to do it, but I wonder what Christmas would be like if we adopted the same principle? How about a four-year cycle in which Matthew, Mark, Luke and John told the story their own way?
There is, after all, a logic to it – the very earliest congregations might only have had one Gospel account, if that. Christmas, if it was celebrated at all, would have lacked a good deal of what we take for granted today.
Think of it! In a Matthew year there would be no shepherds or angels. Mark would be an embarrassment; he starts with John the Baptist. No wise men in Luke, and no stories at all in John – in the beginning was the Word, who became flesh.
As I say, it's not going to happen – we have too much invested in Christmas to be able to part with so much of its richly textured, storied tradition.
But that texture and those stories can be a problem. They can become just that, stories. Christmas becomes a literary or a dramatic event. A survey in the US has found that fewer people – even fewer Christians – believe it anyway, so it becomes another battlefield in the culture wars. Somewhere Jesus gets lost in the tinsel.
I can just about make a case for a Christmas with Mark's Gospel. What does its absence say to us? Perhaps it's a warning against the sentimentality that inevitably goes along with stories of a baby in a manger. The miraculous birth, after all, was followed by 30 nearly silent years. Christmas means nothing unless it's grounded in costly discipleship, a daily decision to follow in the footsteps of the crucified Christ. In Mark, Jesus is assumed; he begins his Gospel with a call to repentance. Mark's characteristic way of moving narrative on is 'immediately'; it looks as though at the beginning of his story he has rushed on without even bothering with that. And perhaps there are things to say about the silent, unnoticed growth of a child who is human and divine, nurtured in a loving home, living an ordinary village life, that made him part of who he was.
There's a stronger case for a John's Gospel Christmas. John isn't interested in the stories, either, and presumably didn't know them. But think how exciting, and how challenging it would be to preach and plan services around his first chapter! 'The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world' (verse 9). What did that mean, and what does it mean? This chapter is packed with profundity, but those cute stories from Matthew and Luke mean we seldom get to plumb its depths.
I never had any murmuring from my congregations about my single-Gospel Lents and Easters. Christmas is different, though, and it would be a pastor brave to the point of foolhardiness who tried it. But I do wonder whether we'd be better for going on a scriptural diet, and cutting out some of that rich spiritual food. We might find ourselves leaner and fitter by the end of it.
Follow Mark Woods on Twitter: @RevMarkWoods
