Abstract
The Christmas story has been retold so often, through sermons, church plays, popular literature, and movies, that a false memory has been constructed. This memory romanticizes the birth of Jesus, thus masking the radical political implications of the event. All too often, we read the Gospels with privileged eyes, thus transforming the Christmas story into a hopeful salvific tale, if not legend. But the Jesús narratives can be read as anti-colonial literature about a native resident living under an invading colonial foreign power. This article reads the familiar story through the eyes of marginalized Latinxs (Latinos/as), who live under the consequences of colonization.
Jesús Defies Patriarchy
María was an unwed teenage mother; but then what can you expect from the barrios, irrelevant locations where nothing important occurs, and ignorant lowlifes occupy? Those people have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems to our lily-white neighborhoods with manicured lawns. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. Some, we can assume, are good people. But face it, can anything good ever come from Nazareth? (John 1:46). For María and her betrothed José, to come from the disenfranchised social location of Nazareth meant they understood and experienced alienation because they were border people constantly separated from privilege, power, and purity, the benefits society has to offer its inhabitants.
One day, the messenger Gabriel was dispatched by God to this insignificant Nazarene barrio of Galilee to visit María, the young teenaged virgin, a nobody, who was betrothed to a man named José, a distant descendant of Israel’s famed King David. 1 “Rejoice, O blessed one,” said Gabriel, “The Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women” (Luke 1:42). Although María was frightened, the messenger reassured her, “María, do not be afraid, for you have won God’s favor. Listen! You are to conceive and bear a boy whom you shall name Jesús. He will do great things and be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord your God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will forever rule over Jacob’s descendants; his reign will know no end” (author’s trans.). María was dubious. After all, she was a virgin, untouched by a man. The messenger then told her: “The Spirit of God will come on top of you, and the potency of the Most High will overshadow you. Thus, the holy one who is begotten will be called the Son of God” (1:30–35; author’s trans.).
The messenger tells us that Jesús would be born physically male. But if Jesús reflects the divine, does this imply God, too, is male? Such an assumption has contributed to centuries of patriarchy. Central to the Christmas story is the conception of Jesús, born of a virgin. This assertion has led biologist Edward Kessel to draw very interesting conclusions concerning Christ’s androgynous identity due to his parthenogenetic birth. Biology teaches us that males have XY chromosomes, while women have XX chromosomes. Upon conception, each parent contributes one of their chromosomes to the fetus. Women have only X chromosomes to contribute, while men can contribute either an X or a Y chromosome. If the man contributes his X chromosome, the fetus will develop into a girl, because she has the combined XX chromosomes. If the man contributes his Y chromosome, however, the fetus will develop into a boy, because he has the XY chromosomes. If it is true María was not touched by a man, then no XY chromosome was involved in María’s pregnancy, meaning Jesús cannot contain the Y chromosome required to determine male physical identity. 2 To accept Jesús’s virgin birth means he could not biologically be male, although he obviously was physically a male, as attested by his circumcision (Luke 2:21). 3 When we consider that the New Testament and centuries of Christian theology have taught that Jesús is God made flesh (John 1:3), we can better appreciate the inclusiveness of Gen 1:27, which states “God created humanity in God’s image, in God’s image God created them, male and female God created them.” Both male and female and everything in between and beyond find their worth and dignity in the image of God fully revealed in the intersexuality of Jesús. Jesucristo exists in the in-between spaces of male/female, human/divine, Jew/Gentile.
Jesús as a Mestizo
María’s pregnancy raised questions as to who was the father. While it may be true that nothing is impossible for God (Luke 1:37), nevertheless the idea of a virgin birth was too much for simple neighbors to accept. María may protest all she wants that she had not been touched by a man, but the rumors that circulated among the barrios were, to say the least, skeptical of her claims. In that time and place, no one accepted the claim a woman could be pregnant while still being a virgin. 4 Many probably assumed the expected child was the product of a premarital relationship between María and José. While a premarital tryst was not unheard of, sex before marriage would have brought shame upon María’s father for failing to control her sexuality. But while neighbors assumed José was the father, he knew he wasn’t. Suspecting María of unfaithfulness, he planned to quietly break off the betrothal (Matt 1:19).
During Jesús’s lifetime, some questioned if he was a bastard child. Rumors and innuendos concerning who got María pregnant no doubt flourished and may indeed have dogged Jesús throughout his adult life. A hint of such gossip might be found in an exchange that, according to John’s Gospel, took place between the Pharisees and Jesús during his ministry. While discussing the sexual impropriety of a woman brought to him caught in the very act of adultery (leaving us to wonder if she was caught in the very act, why the man wasn’t also brought to Jesús), an argument erupted over his authority to forgive the woman. 5 The Pharisees who were present pointedly asked, “Where is your father?” To which Jesús responds, “You do not know me or my Father. For if you knew me, then you would have also known my Father” (John 8:19). Let’s not forget, this is a conversation started as a response to adultery. Jesús may have been speaking about God the Father, but the Pharisees might have been questioning his parentage, with the knowledge Joseph was his adoptive father. Moreover, they might have been referring to Father Abraham, with the implication that they, unlike Jesús, were true descendants from the patriarch. They followed this proclamation with an interesting innuendo: “We are not illegitimate children. The only Father we have is God.” Their insinuation that Jesús was a half-mixed bastard is more clearly evident when they charge, “Are we not correct in saying you are a Samaritan?” (John 8:48). Samaritans were considered to be half-breeds, mestizos, by many Jews.
Who did the Pharisees suspect was Jesús’s father? According to the early-third-century Christian apologist Origen of Alexandria, the deniers of Jesús’s virginal conception believed him to be the bastard child of María and a gentile Roman soldier named Panthera (although no historically reliable evidence for this claim exists). In Origen’s Contra Celsus, written in the middle of the third century, Origen writes about a Jewish tradition regarding Mary, that “when she was pregnant she was turned out of doors by the carpenter to whom she had been betrothed, as having been guilty of adultery, and that she bore a child to a certain soldier named Panthera.” 6 The term “Yeshu’a ben Panthera” (Jesus son of Panthera) also appears in several places in the Jerusalem Talmud and other early writings. 7 While we do not know if such rumors existed when Jesús encountered the Pharisees concerning the issue of adultery, it might explain the verbal jab: “We are not illegitimate children. The only Father we have is God” (John 8:41). Whether Jesús was the product of a mixed marriage is of little importance; what is important for those reading the Christmas story from the margins is that Jesús was perceived by those around him as being a product of a mixed marriage. Seen as a half-breed, he was, no doubt, treated and discriminated against as such. He occupied the space of mestizo. It is likely he also knew what it meant to be raised by a single mother, because José, with the exception of an appearance during a childhood story (Luke 2:41–51), drops out of the Jesús narrative shortly thereafter, leaving us to wonder if he died or abandoned the family. Certainly by the time of Origen, non-Christians tended to believe Jesús was a product of María’s unfaithfulness; hence the importance of the virgin birth becoming doctrinal truth for Christians.
Haitian “Black Madonna and Child.” Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
Photo credit: Nicolaus Sapieha/Art Resource, NY.
Jesús was a sato/a. In Spanish, a sato/a, is a mongrel dog, a mutt. When applied idiomatically to humans, as in qué sato, the term denotes a person of dubious moral character. Theologian Loida Martell-Otero explains that “satos/as are mixed breeds who are not perceived to be beautiful or of pleasing aspect. They are unwanted. They seem to lurk from the peripheral edges of polite society. People shoo them away. Stones are thrown at them. Shelters teem with them. Satos/as are the rejected ones. . . . To use sato/a as a Christological term is to raise the specter of the theological scandal of the incarnation.” 8 To be a sata/o, to be part of a mestizaje or mulatez, is to occupy the radical periphery. We do not know what Jesús looked like, and the Bible is silent about this, except for one possible exception in the book of Revelation where the resurrected Christ is physically described. The apostle Juan, exiled on the island of Patmos, sees the Alpha and Omega as having “wooly white hair” and feet whose skin is like “burnished bronze” (Rev 1:14–15). Bronze skin and wooly hair are not terms usually used to physically describe Euroamericans. In fact, if Jesús did have European physical characteristics, then it would give credence to the rumors concerning his father being the Roman soldier Panthera. Although it may be satisfying to imagine Jesús as a brown person, for our purposes, what is important is not Jesús’s skin pigmentation, but rather how compatriots at the time saw Jesús, like so many others from blended families, as a mestizo or as a mulatto.
Jesús as sato would have experienced the discrimination of occupying a hybrid body, falling short of ethnic purity. To be a “half-breed,” a sato, is the result of clashing cultures and the children colonialism produces, who are never pure white (regardless how light the skin pigmentation might actually be). Not being racially/ethnically pure is to be relegated to the margins of power and privilege, along with the societal institutional violence which historically accompanies mestizo/as and mulatto/as.
To exist in the hybridity of an “in-between” space is to exist in a nepantla location. The term nepantla originates among the indigenous peoples who have contributed to the overall Latinx identity. 9 This Aztec word connotes being in the middle, “that situation,” as anthropologist Jorge Klor de Alva reminds us, “in which a person remains suspended in the middle between a lost or disfigured past and a present that has not been assimilated or understood.” 10 To be in the middle means neither denying the indigenous customs and traditions of Latinxs, nor the new religions and concepts brought about by the vicissitudes of conflicting cultures. The Latinx terms mestizaje and mulatez contribute to the nepantla notion that within most Latinxs’ veins flows the blood of both the conquerors and the conquered. From the nepantla social location, any analysis called “Latinx” originates with the goal of seeking justice-based alternatives to the everyday struggles of the Latinx hybrid community. Jesús understood these struggles. He knew what it means to be discriminated against because those of the dominant culture consider the hybrid mixture of races and/or ethnicity an abomination whose consequence is inferiority and marginalization.
While pregnant, María chose to leave town (or maybe was sent) to visit her older kinswoman, Isabel. Maybe she left to be of help to her family member who became pregnant late in life, or maybe she left to avoid the wagging tongues of her neighbors. Upon entering the home of Isabel, Isabel’s child—the future Juan el Bautista—leaped in her womb. María responded with what has come to be known as the Magnificat: “God pulled down the powerful from their thrones, and exalted the humble ones,” she exclaimed. “God filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he sent away empty” (Luke 1:53). Those who are already humble, like her neighbors in the barrio, need not hear sermons advocating humility. Crushed by the sins of the dominant culture, they need not be exhorted to become more subservient. For those who are invisible, salvation becomes their transformation from nonpersons to personhood. The liberating good news they need to hear is that they are precious and worthy of dignity because they are created in the very image of God. The purpose of María’s child is a salvific message that humbles the proud and uplifts the lowly. The privileged need to come to terms with their spiritual wretchedness as the wretched come to terms with their infinite worth. Because those who are disposable suffer crucifixion on the crosses of racism, sexism, classism, ethnic discrimination, and heterosexism, they become co-heirs to the throne. With confidence, the wretched of the earth can walk into the presence of God. But woe to so-called believers who amassed fortunes upon the backs of the dispossessed; they are the ones who will be pulled down from their thrones and sent away empty handed.
Some time after the birth of Juan el Bautista, but before María gave birth, an imperial decree was ordered from the colonial center of Rome by Caesar Augustus. To increase the revenue flow to the colonizer, everyone within the empire would be taxed. This revenue theft occurred when the Roman aristocrat Publius Sulpicius Quirinius served as governor of Syria. To facilitate the taxing, with no regard to what hardship it might cause to the colonized, everyone had to return to his or her city of origin. So José left the city of Nazareth located in Galilee, toward Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, for he was of the house and lineage of a once heroic and mighty king.
While King David was part of José’s genealogy, so were four women (Matt 1:2–6): Tamar (who played the prostitute), Rahab (an actual prostitute), Ruth (a foreigner), and the wife of Uriah (Bathsheba, who either participated or—more likely—was forced into adultery). The only women mentioned in Jesús’s genealogy present us with a Jesús who supposedly has a “checkered” pass. Ignoring for the moment the larger question that the active sexuality of women somehow taints their moral character, reception of this lineage reveals that for the androcentric reader, these women have historically been perceived to be less than holy or pure, thus problematizing Jesús’s ancestral list with the inclusion of prostitutes, adulterers, and migrants, women of so-called “questionable morals.” What does it mean that Jesús, as Lord, has among his ancestors “indecent” characters? Can a God who is holy become flesh as a man who has prostitutes in his lineage? It forces us to reexamine more carefully the stories of these women and to consider seriously a politics of survival that those in positions of power and privilege may deem indecent. Their actions were necessary for these women, so they might survive. Jesús’s genealogy forces our pietistic gaze to be taken off these women as individuals and instead focus on cultural misogynist structures that forced these women, and many like them, to participate in what men have defined to be “indecent” behavior. These four women are usually ignored when considering José’s genealogy, as readers focus on his royal ancestry. Jesus may be a descendent of David, but he made his living as a laborer, a carpenter.
Las Posadas
To Bethlehem José traveled in order to be taxed, with his espoused wife María, who by this time was great with child. But as the hour of birth drew near and they tried to secure lodging, they found no room in the inn (Luke 2:7). Las Posadas, literally “the inns,” developed as a Latinx celebratory tradition based on the unavailability of shelter. For four hundred years, a yuletide ritual physically has been reenacted, usually occurring nine days before Christmas. 11 For nine days, los peregrines (the pilgrims) walk through darkened streets carrying candles to accompany the Holy Family. They travel from house to house requesting lodging and singing Christmas carols. The procession is invited inside to enjoy food and drink before they are turned away by someone posing as los mesoneros (the innkeepers). La comunidad is invited to partake in the pilgrimage and also await the birth of Jesús; but for many walking in solidarity with the Holy Family, they are doing more than simply reenacting the familiar biblical story. As increased homelessness and immigration restrictions disproportionately impact our barrios, the story reenactment reminds participants of the challenge of providing a home for all. 12 We remember a God who calls us to hospitality, lest we, too, leave Jesús out in the cold.
To remember is more than abstract thought; it involves praxis. Reenacting Las Posadas signifies the risk-taking and life-seeking migrations Latinx families are often called to undertake due to the consequences of colonialism. Participating in Las Posadas reveals the most basic understanding of who God is and what political acts we are called to enact. Dr. Ana María Pineda reminds us that when Latinxs partake in this annual Advent practice, they “ritually participate in being rejected and being welcomed, in slamming the door on the needy and opening it wide. They are in this way renewed in the Christian practice of hospitality, the practice of providing a space where the stranger is taken in and known as one who bears gifts.” 13 Typically, the crowd accompanying the Holy Family includes actual descendants of migrants and strangers. Some in the throng may themselves presently be unwelcomed migrants who are undocumented, labeled as “illegals.” Standing in solidarity with the Holy Family who themselves are unwelcomed migrants reveals a Jesús who himself is a migrant, understanding the pain and humiliation of having to go door-to-door begging to be let in.
Because of the Lukan theme of good news for the disenfranchised, it should not be surprising that when the time came for María’s child to be born, the first to hear are among the humble ones, the poor marginalized shepherds who abided in the field, watching over someone else’s flocks. Because Jesús has referred to himself as the good shepherd (John 10:11), we tend to romanticize the occupation of herding sheep. Many of us have come to envision shepherds as brave, wise, humble pastors who lovingly care for the flock. In reality, there is nothing romantic about being a shepherd, neither during Jesús’s time nor in our times. Social status for shepherds was limited and tenuous, marginalized from the rest of society. For most of the year, the shepherds lived apart from society. Because the flock belonged to another, the sheep being watched were more valuable than the shepherd’s own life. Shepherds had to be willing to lay down their lives for these animals. Hence, when Jesús referred to himself as the good shepherd, he was doing more than simply using a clever metaphor; he was stressing his solidarity with the disenfranchised. To these disenfranchised shepherds, the messenger of the Lord suddenly appeared, and the glory of God shone forth. The humble shepherds were filled with great fear. But the messenger reassured them, “Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you, and all peoples of the world, good tidings of great joy. For unto you is born this day, in the city of David, a Liberator, who is Christ the Lord! And this will be a sign to you: you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling-clothes lying in a trough located in a filthy, manure-filled barn” (author’s paraphrase of Luke 2:10–12). Suddenly there appeared with the messenger a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and singing, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will towards humanity” (2:14, author’s trans.).
In pondering the setting for the birth of Jesús, we can imagine that he was born in extremely unsanitary conditions, in a dirty, grimy stable filled with the malodorous manure of animals that caused an overpowering stench and attracted flies. In this soiled space, a young woman, like any other barn animal, went through the bloody and messy process of childbirth, forced to give birth amidst the unhygienic surroundings of an outbuilding. Upon Jesús’s birth, a place was needed for him to rest, so he was placed in a manger, a wooden box or a hole on the cave wall where feed was placed for animals to eat. Jesús’s first resting place was a feeding trough. He physically entered this world homeless.
The radicalness of the incarnation is not so much that the Creator of the universe became human, but rather that God chose to become poor, to take the form of a slave (Phil 2:7). Jesús willingly assumed the role of the ultra-disenfranchised. To understand Jesús from the social location of the poor is to create a sacred space where the marginalized can grapple with their spiritual need to reconcile their God with their daily struggle for justice and dignity. Those who are poor usually reflect upon their economic condition with shame. Yet Jesús was born in utter poverty. He could have been born to the house of Caesar, or to the house of the high priest; instead, Jesús was born into, lived, and died in poverty.
God’s Preferential Option for the Poor
When the days of María’s cleansing were fulfilled according to the law of Moses, she and José traveled to Jerusalem and brought Jesús so as to present him unto the Lord and offer the necessary sacrifice (Luke 2:22). She did not offer up a lamb (Lev 12:2–8); rather, María made use of the offering of the poor and sacrificed a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons for her purification. Throughout his life as an itinerant preacher, Jesús lived in privation, having nowhere to lay his head (Matt 8:20). He wandered without money in his purse, relying on the charity of others (Luke 8:3).
Because Jesús chose solidarity with the poor, he shows that God understands the privation of the marginalized. The radicalness of Jesús’s poverty is that he chose to side with the poor, giving a political edge to his teachings. Poverty ceases to be a thing of shame, the result of something defective within us or our family. We can begin to understand our poverty not as something we or our parents failed to do, but as a product of a society designed to privilege the few over the many. While not attempting to romanticize poverty (there is nothing romantic about not having enough food to feed your family), those who have known poverty can better deal with disturbing memories and present reality when they know that God has a preferential option for the poor.
Jesús calls on the rich to crucify their power and privilege and live in solidarity with the marginalized. The solidarity piece is crucial. Jesús is not merely with the marginalized; Jesús is the marginalized who was incarnated among “the least of these” (Matt 25:45). To paraphrase Matt 25:31–46, “I was thirsty and you gave me a glass of water to drink. I was naked, and rather than debate the morality of my appearance, you clothed me. I was an alien, without proper documentation, and you welcomed me. I was infirm, wasting away, and you visited me. I was incarcerated, and you took the time to come and encourage me, regardless if I was or was not guilty.” Jesús does more than simply show empathy for the poor and oppressed; Jesús is the poor and oppressed. “Inasmuch as you did it to one of these, the least of my people, you did it to me” (Matt 25:40, AKJV).
A preferential option is made for the least among us, over and against those who lord it over them. Forfeiting all the treasures of heaven, Jesús took the form of the dispossessed. Jesús may have had access to all the treasures and powers of heaven; but he instead chose to be in solidarity with the least among humans, even assuming the role of a servant (John 13:12–16; Phil 2:6–7). This is the same pattern adopted by Moses centuries earlier. While in Pharaoh’s court, Moses cast his lot with the Hebrew slaves (Exod 2:11–15). Those marginalized in Jesús’s time were given the privileged position of being the first to hear the good news; not because they were holier, but because God favors those who exist under the weight of oppression. God has historically chosen those from the margins of society to be agents of God’s new creation. The house of Caesar did not receive the incarnation, nor was the house of the high priest Caiaphas 14 the means by which the good news was proclaimed. Rather, it was among the impoverished barrios of Galilee. This theme of solidarity between Jesús and the victims of oppression made the people on the margins salvific agents for the recipients of society’s power and privilege. The stone rejected by the builders becomes the keystone of God’s creation (Mark 12:10). For Jesús to occupy the space of the rejected is full of political possibilities.
Jesus the Border Crosser
According to the Gospel of Matthew, Jesús’s family arrived in Egypt as immigrants (what today we might call illegal immigrants), as they fled the tyrannical regime of Herod, who served as Rome’s vassal. Rather than fleeing to el norte as so many Latinx do today, this family crossed borders and headed south. 15 According to the birth narrative in Matthew, some time after Jesús’s birth, Herod, the local custodian of the empire, decided this baby was a threat requiring liquidation. José hurried to save his wife and child from the terror about to befall them.
Jesús as “border-crosser” occupies the marginal space of those who are rejected by society. Manuel Lozano Rodriguez, “La Piedad en el Desierto,” (Compassion in the Desert), 1942. Mural located at the Palicio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, D.F., Mexico. Schalkwijk/Art Resource, NY. Reproduccion autorizada por el Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura, 2017.
We can imagine this story as it plays out in homes today. José runs through the sleeping town, silently making his way toward his makeshift home. He has to save his family from certain death. He bursts into his shack and goes straight to the sleeping mats on the dirt floor. “Despierta mi amor! Wake up, my love,” José tells his wife as he gently shakes her awake. “A messenger just warned me that la guardia nacional will be coming for us. I fear we will disappear! Apúrate. Hurry up. We must leave this moment for a safer land, far from the reaches of this brutal dictatorship backed by the hegemonic military empire.” There is no time to pack any belongings or personal mementos, nor is there time to say goodbye to friends and family. In the middle of the night, literally a few steps before the National Guard, José takes his small family into el exilio, into exile. That night they travel toward the border. They will go into a foreign country, not understanding the language or the customs of the dominant culture; nevertheless, migration provides physical safety.
Biblical scholar Leticia Guardiola-Sáenz reminds us that Jesús “live[s] between borders, in a hybrid space which is an experience similar to that of Hispanics/Latin Americans in the postcolonial and neocolonial era. [Jesús], the border-crosser, the traveler between cities and villages, between heaven and earth, between suffering and bliss, comes to redeem the border-crosser who refuses to conform to the limits and borders of a society that has ignored her voice, her body and the borders of her identity as Other.” 16 Today, most border-crossers act out of desperation; Jesús, theologically speaking, chose to be a border-crosser as an act of solidarity. Jesús understands what it means to be seen as inferior, because he was from a culture different than the dominant one. Depending on how long his family stayed in Egypt, other children might have mocked his family for speaking with a “funny” accent, or looked down on them for dressing differently than the local Egyptians. Maybe Jesús cried himself to sleep, like so many children of immigrants today, feeling the same shame of inferiority imposed by the dominant culture. While such questions help us better understand how Jesús understands the pain of today’s migrants, the real question concerning this colonized Christmas story is why Jesús was in Egypt in the first place.
His presence in Egypt was due to the consequences of colonialism, of living under Roman rule. His family arrived in Egypt as political refugees, migrants fleeing the tyrannical regime of Herod, imposed upon the local population by distant colonial powers in Rome. Herod’s ultimate job was to ensure that profits flowed to the Roman center with as little resistance as possible. Of course, he financially benefited from this relationship, as do many elites within Latin American countries today who sign trade agreements with the global economic empire, even when these agreements are detrimental to the inhabitants of their own countries. To grasp the complexity of the Christmas story is to recognize the careful dance that takes place between Rome, the colonizer, and Jesús, the colonized. Not far from the surface are the real world dynamics and consequences of colonization. These colonial interactions were evident in Jesús’s everyday experience. For example, he was constantly held in suspicion for preaching about another reign more powerful than the one to which Jews were subjugated; he was executed by the state on the charge of being “king of the Jews,” a rival sovereign (Mark 15:26); and he was asked if tribute should be paid to Caesar (Luke 20:24).
Jesús tells us to render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s (Luke 20:26). Although Jesús is specifically referring to the colonizer’s tax, a deeper meaning exists. The imperial tax underwrote the very structures that made Judea’s colonization possible. Without the tax, colonialism would be useless. Yes, we are to give Caesar his tax, not because it is a civic duty, but because failure to do so provides the colonizer with the excuse to send the full force of the empire’s military to domesticate the people with the threat of obviation for the sake of compliance. To render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s means to pay the imperial tax as an act of survival, but also, returning all of the misery, pain, and despair that colonial rule engenders. The issue raised by Jesús’s call is how to render unto Caesar while still planting liberative subversive seeds that may, in some distant future, blossom into salvation from evil powers, including colonial powers. The question raised for us by Jesús, the colonized man, is how to display compliance for survival’s sake while disrupting the very social structures that create, force, and demand compliance.
Conclusion
To tell the colonized Christmas story is subversive, if not dangerous. We should never forget that the persecution suffered by the first followers of Jesús was not due to their beliefs. Empires, then and now, seldom care what the masses believe or which gods they follow as long as their allegiance to the ruling elites is not compromised. The early churches were persecuted for what they did. To live the good news of liberation is threatening. The hostility provoked by the early church, or any other church that radically lives into liberation, should not be surprising. Those who receive the most benefits from a social system employ whatever means necessary to protect, maintain, and expand their power and privilege. The threat to the empire was not this group of Christians who believed Jesús was the son of God or that he rose from the dead. The threat was the proclamation that this Jesús, and not Caesar, was Lord. If true, then the question facing the churches of today is why Christians rarely experience hostility or persecution. Could it be today’s church has become irrelevant because it has traded the good news of liberation for conformity and complicity with empire? Perhaps today’s churches comfortably avoid persecution by placing more emphasis on orthodoxy (correct doctrine) than on orthopraxis (correct action to decolonize our bodies and minds), and thus align with the empire rather than with the colonized Jesús.
Footnotes
1.
In what follows, I incorporate with some adaptation materials first published in chs. 1 and 2 of Miguel A. De La Torre, The Politics of Jesús: A Hispanic Political Theology (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015). I acknowledge with gratitude the publisher’s permission to include these materials.
2.
Edward L. Kessel, The Androgynous Christ: A Christian Feminist View (Portland, OR: E.L. Kessel, 1988), 129–36.
3.
Jesús’s male gender would have been evident also at his crucifixion, due to the Roman custom of stripping the condemned and crucifying them naked to increase their humiliation, shame, and vulnerability. See Gary M. Burge, Lynn H. Cohick, and Gene L. Green, The New Testament in Antiquity: A Survey of the New Testament within its Cultural Context (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009), 143–44.
4.
It was not until the second century that the virgin birth was considered true. The fact that the tenet needed to be included in the Apostle’s Creed (which of course was not written by the apostles) hints the miracle may not have been universally accepted. But even if María conceived while still a virgin, she did not remain so. Jesús, son of María, had several brothers (not cousins), James, Joses, Judas, and Simon, along with several sisters who remain unnamed in the Gospels (Mark 6:3). Even if we accept the miracle of a virgin birth, María could not have remained a virgin. Insisting on María’s perpetual virginity only contributes to shaming women’s sexuality as being less than the so-called purity of virginity, thus raising the questions: Is the veneration of María contingent on her sexuality? On abstaining from the pleasures of the body? Are these anti-body views more the influences of the flesh–spirit divide present in Neo-Platonic thought and proto-Gnostic proclivity of devaluing the body, trends that were prevalent during the creation of Christian theology that remain foreign to the Hebrew Bible?
5.
This episode, included in the canonical form of the Gospel of John (7:53–8:11), is probably a later addition to John; it appears in other locations in the manuscript tradition (e.g., after John 21:25 or after Luke 21:38).
6.
Origen, Contra Celsus, 1:32.
7.
For example: Clement of Alexandria, Ecl. 3.10; Epiphanius, Pan. 78.7.5; t. Hullin 2:22; Qohelet Rabbah 1:8.
8.
Loida I. Martell-Otero, “Encuentro con el Jesús Sato,” in Jesus in the Hispanic Community: Images of Christ from Theology to Popular Religion, ed. Harold J. Recinos and Hugo Magallanes (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2009), 74–91 (77).
9.
“Latinx” is a more inclusive term for “Latino/Latina.”
10.
Jorge Klor de Alva, “Spiritual Conflict and Accommodation in New Spain: Toward a Typology of Aztec Response to Christianity,” in The Inca and Aztec States, 1400-1800: Anthropology and History, ed. George A. Collier, I. Rosaldo Renato, and D. Wirth John (New York: Academic Press, 1982), 353.
11.
This century-old custom, prevalent in the southwestern United States, is credited to an Augustinian missionary called Fray Diego de Soria who expanded a traditional novena, a prayer said over nine successive days. See Ellen Hughes, Christmas in the American Southwest (Chicago: World Books, 1996), 12.
12.
Eduardo C. Fernández, “Liturgy and Worship,” in Hispanic American Religious Cultures, ed. Miguel A. De La Torre, 2 vols. (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2009), 2:681–88 (687).
13.
Ana María Pineda, “Hospitality,” in Practicing Our Faith: A Way of Life for a Searching People, ed. Dorothy C. Bass (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997), 29–42 (31).
14.
Caiaphas, according to the Gospels, was the high priest who organized the plot to crucify Jesús (Matt 26:3–4).
15.
Although I recognize that “papers” were not required during this time to cross borders, Jesús still had to deal with the stigma of being a foreigner, a sojourner, an “undocumented alien.”
16.
Leticia Guardiola-Sáenz, “Border-crossing and Its Redemptive Power in John 7:53–8:11: A Cultural Reading of Jesus and the Accused,” in John and Postcolonialism: Travel, Space, and Power, ed. Musa W. Dube and Jeffrey L. Staley (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 2002), 129–52 (151).