Hello the all general listeners, Preston here just wanting to wish you a Merry Christmas

and a happy new year and to let you know that we are actually going to be taking a week off of podcasting so we're not going to have any podcasts between Christmas and New Year we will pick it up again with a special bonus podcast on January 1st where we look back on 2022 look forward to 2023 but we will be taking a couple days off next week from podcasting and then we'll resume our regular schedule on January 2nd before I let you go though I wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas by reading to you a recent blog that I posted on the theology in the raw

website if you want to read the blog you can go there but I wanted to read it to you it's sort of a maybe a different spin on how to think of Christmas I call it putting politics back into Christmas you've probably heard the phrase the gospel is not partisan but it is political typically when we say keep politics out of church what we mean is we should keep secular partisan allegiances out of the pulpit though it is funny how often they slowly even suddenly sometimes creeped her way back in what we don't mean or shouldn't mean is that confess

that we've seen Jesus as Lord has no implications for how we view things like immigration warfare the death penalty marriage sexuality wealth poverty and so on and so forth the good news that Jesus is Lord is riddled with political implications or one might say explications

Christians didn't invent the terms gospel or peace savior hope or even son of God these terms are familiar in the Greco-Roman world long before Christianity existed

and was invested with political meaning in one famous calendar inscription discovered in various places throughout Asia Minor the birth of Augustus is praised with language it sounds rather religious

it reads like this since Providence which has ordered all things and is deeply interested in our life has set in most perfect order by giving us Augustus

whom she filled with virtue that he might benefit humankind sending him as a savior both for us and for our descendants that he might end war and arrange all things

and since he sees her by his appearance excelled even our anticipation surpassing all previous benefactors and not even leaving to posterity any hope of surpassing what he has done

since the birthday of the god Augustus was the beginning of good tidings or you and galeon for the world that came by reason of him

the early Christians use the same language to declare their allegiance to Jesus as the Greco-Roman world used to declare their allegiance to Caesar

it's no wonder that when Paul preached the gospel in Thessalonica that a mob inside a riot against Paul and his companions saying these men who have turned the world upside down

are all acting contrary to Caesar's decrees saying that there is another king namely Jesus acts 176 through 7

the Thessalonians interpreted Paul's gospel through a political lens if Jesus is king then Caesar must not be

and it's not because they misunderstood Paul they very much understood that when a herald announces a new king of Bessaleus

while the present one is still alive a revolution could be brewing

preaching spiritual sermons about praying to God or reading the Bible don't cause cities to riot

but preaching the gospel of the empire of Jesus threatens the legitimacy and power of all other empires on earth

telling others that Jesus as king is a politically dangerous thing to do or at least it used to be

the biblical writers interpret the birth of Christ in a particularly politically subversive way

Luke goes out of his way to preface his birth narrative with a reminder of the Roman lords who thought they were ruling the world

Luke 2 verses 1 to 2

...