"He has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble." Luke 1:51-52(NIV)

These words are found in the song of Mary during her meeting with Elizabeth. Our Christian tradition typically interprets these words in terms of sin and salvation. However, we forget how these words are comically absurd, for we romanticize and dehumanize Biblical persons in our imagination.

Think carefully about this. These are not the words spoken by a princess! They are by an absolutely unknown young woman from a small and completely unimportant village in a remote province of Imperial Rome. Even though the genealogies trace Jesus' Davidic lineage, they do so through Joseph, and not Mary. Not only that, they do not follow the branch that formed the reigning dynasty. And the words are not as absurd as the person to whom they are being said! At the beginning of the first chapter we are introduced to Elizabeth, who is an old woman, wife of a priest, and childless. This priest has a vision from an angel who advises him that he will have a son with his now elderly wife. He evidently doesn't believe and becomes mute, unable to talk about his vision. Remember that being mute was associated with insanity and was a sign of unsuitability for service in the temple. His wife becomes pregnant and the text in Luke 1:24 says it was hidden for 5 months - possibly out of shame for being seen as impregnated by a mute, or for the possibility of suspicion that it was not the mute who had made her pregnant... This story also reminds us to another similar one, equally absurd, contained in Genesis 18:9-16 and picked up again later in Genesis 21:1-7. Sarah is more honest than most of us, and even so lied about her laughter out of shame. Nevertheless, the honest reaction to hearing such an absurdity is this: to laugh. The name chosen for the newborn child was Isaac, "Laughter" (these days it could have been "Get real..."). In the end, he's a child of absurdity - of the disparity between the word spoken and the transmitter of the word. Absurdity is absolutely a recurring theme in the Bible. David, the youngster, becomes king. Saul, upon being anointed, flees! Israel is chosen to be God's people. All of this extremely comical. In this the Bible contrasts profoundly with the sacred stories of other religions.

Later, Elizabeth's son would be seen as a hero of the Gospels, the greatest of all the prophets. Or perhaps the greatest clown, depending on your point of view. Without a doubt he is a funny character. He eats grasshoppers, wears camel hair clothing, and nourishes himself with wild honey. He is peculiar even to the sinners/disciples of Jesus!

These words of Mary would make total sense as a prophecy about the mythical figure of a hero. But Jesus is not and never was an aristocratic hero, and perhaps it is interesting for us to observe the differences between the stories of the Birth in the Christian and the Buddhist traditions.

For a Buddhist, the Birth is the highest myth, full of drama and heroism. The Buddhacarita declares that Buddha was born into the Shakya clan, which is described as "invincible". He was the son of a "beautiful queen who resembled the goddess Sachi" and was born in a golden cradle to a life of luxury and comfort. After having passed through 500 previous incarnations and having performed many wonders, he enters the womb of the princess Maya in the form of a white elephant. When the time of birth arrived, the princess retired to a comfortable garden of retreat and was attended to by a court of thousands of ladies-in-waiting and midwives. The garden was provided with flowers, fruits and nuts. And, while standing beneath the largest tree in the garden, she gave birth, without pain or discomfort, to a radiant son whose skin shone like gold. The child was placed in a cloth woven of golden threads and carried by angels, and his birth was made grander by many signs and marvels. And immediately the baby Buddha rises in his cloth, looks to the four directions, and declares, "I was born to be the Light to benefit the entire world. This is my last birth."

The Christian story of the Birth is very different! In contrast with a noble and aristocratic birth, we have the wife of a carpenter from a poor city whose reputation, even among its own countrymen, is demonstrated by the sentence, "Can anything good come from Nazareth?" (John 1:46) There are no handmaidens nor midwives nor personal servants at the birth of Christ, which occurs in a stable behind a full inn. In place of the cloth woven of golden threads, we have a manger, which literally means the place where animals eat. The Medieval tradition alludes to this in the liturgical song which says, "Oh, great mystery and amazing sacrament, the animals witnessed the birth of the Lord laid in a manger." And even in the story of Matthew, when the wise men from the East come seeking the recently born king, they go to the place where it would be most natural to find a king - the king's palace. They don't find him there, but instead in a more improbable place. And the effects of this visit are not exactly beneficial to Jesus' family - Mary and Joseph are forced to flee to Egypt with Jesus to escape Herod's massacre.

In Matthew and Luke we see an effort to establish the legitimacy of Jesus the Messiah, placing him as a descendant of David (through Joseph and not through Mary - something already pretty absurd). On top of that, the story of Joseph is a comical narrative. Imagine this: your wife to be is pregnant and you know you are not the father. Because you love her, you don't want a big public uproar and decide you will secretly put her aside, thereby making yourself the guilty party. Then you receive a revelation in the subjective form of a dream. If someone had told us such a tale, how many of us wouldn't have laughed in his face, thinking he's in denial about his fiancé's infidelity?

In our Western civilization we are very preoccupied with power, grandeur, wisdom and prestige. Our heroes are those who make it to the top and our only value is "onward and upward." But this is radically different than the Biblical tradition and in fact we try to corrupt the Biblical tradition, trying to find in it our symbols of heroism. And Christians don't even perceive that contradiction.

If we evaluate the Biblical tradition using our criteria of success and importance, then the Bible is a collection of stories and laws of a completely undistinguished and unimportant nation, made up of undistinguished and unimportant people. Many fundamentalists try to encourage themselves with archeological discoveries that would prove that "the Bible was right". But the latest archeology is beginning to show us that even the "Glory of Solomon" was not really so glorious (and it should be remembered that, in the Biblical tradition, even that small glory was what brought about his disgrace). The more we look at the past, the more we have the sense that all this is a great contradiction, unless we look with the vision which Paul demonstrates in I Corinthians 1:26-30:

"Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption." (NIV)

The theme of this text can be summarized thus: the chosen of God are not those who have more to offer, but always those who have nothing to offer except themselves.

Here we have the basic theme of the comedy of our salvation! After all, who are the people who appear in the Biblical story? Certainly they are not those who were the center of attention of the world of that time. At best those appear as peripheral figures. It's not Pharaoh (who the Bible doesn't even dignify by giving his name) who is the central figure, but rather a murderer, son of a slave, Moses. Cyrus is not the central figure, but rather the priest Ezra and the cupbearer Nehemiah. Nebuchadnezzar is not the central figure, but rather the eunuch Daniel. Collectively, Assyria, Babylon and Egypt are seen as peripheral parts which God uses to punish the tiny, absolutely miserable little people which is Israel. And it continues into the New Testament. It's not Caesar who is the central figure, nor even his representatives, Herod and Pilate. Instead, it's Jesus. And even within the early church, it's not the principle apostles who become the central figure in the development of Christianity. Instead, it's one who never walked with Jesus in the flesh, and who even persecuted the Christians! The Biblical narrative is always a story of profound reverses. As a matter of fact, our Bible heroes were a troupe of common, indistinguishable Carnaval dancers, Joe-Nobodies and their prophets, who neither rode the grand theme-floats of the procession nor sat in the seats reserved for prominent people.

In the Biblical tradition we have an upside down world. All our human values and measures of grandeur and importance are put into perspective or destroyed. In the Bible we have a prophecy which says, "Every valley shall be filled in and every mountain flattened." The Biblical world is the world of God's Kingdom which Jesus told us about in his parables. It is a world where vagabonds are taken to a royal banquet, a world in which servants take the place of their masters, a world in which Mary, quiet and introverted, is exalted, and the ever active and extroverted Martha receives a word of rebuke. It's also a world in which the previously excluded are included, a world in which the common people are kings, and the meek will inherit the earth! This is a world in which a widow who gives 2 small coins is happier than the Pharisee who gives of his surplus. It's a world in which children feel more at ease than adults and it's also a world in which publicans and sinners can more easily be found than priests and doctors of the law.

This is not simply a change to "backwards and down", but instead a destruction of every kind of value so that the grand theme of salvation can happen, which is the inclusion of EVERYONE! All systems of human values are challenged in this Biblical world, because, after all, no system is complete and final in and of itself. So every valley will be filled up and every mountain flattened in order that Everyone can be included in this dispensation of grace (Isaiah 40:4-5), and the promise is of faith and inclusion, no matter what the circumstances, as we see in Isaiah 40:28-31:

"Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint." (NIV)

This is the message of the Divine Biblical Comedy. Independent of any circumstance or condition, however you are, if you are willing to throw out the fear that imprisons you and place your trust in God and in the good that God has waiting for you, then God is ready to cause the fruit of the Holy Spirit to be born in you. The only condition is faith, the total and absolute trust in this God who wants the best for you and me.

My prayer is that we can be like Mary this Christmas, throwing out fear and, despite the absurd circumstances surrounding us, we can soulfully sing and glorify the Lord, for God has truly done great marvels in our lives. And, however incredible it may seem, done great things through us. And I pray we can find EMMANUEL, GOD WITH US, in the most incredible and absurd places.

About the author: Ciro d'Araújo is a professional opera singer in Rio de Janeiro, as well as a theology student at the Bennett University and the Facilitator of Church Implantation in Brazil. Ciro is initiating the process of becoming a student clergy of MCC.