ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL:

God's choice was to ground His Son in the life of the Jewish nation, a people whose history and literature reflected by that time centuries of struggle with the demands of monotheistic, Abrahamic religion. This was not, Christians believe, out of any idea that the Jews were better than other people or the only people in whom God took an interest. Indeed, the biblical record of the Jewish Scriptures is largely a record of God's disappointment with the all-too-human failings of the people He chose.

But neither the designation of Israel as the "chosen people" nor the birth of Christ into a Jewish family was intended to limit God's concerns to one people. Although Christians and Jews disagree about many things, they agree that God's special relationship with Israel was always intended to be bigger than Israel.

The relationship was with Israel, but it wasn't ultimately about or at least only about Israel--God was working to build a people through whom He could reach out to the rest of the world. From a Christian perspective, part of this larger role for the Jewish people is fulfilled through the life and work of Jesus. It was from Judaism and the Jews that Jesus learned who He was and what He had come to do. The long struggle of the Jewish people to understand who this God was who had called them, a struggle that continues long after Jesus and has its own dynamic quite independent of Christian thought, helped create a culture that shaped not only Jesus Himself, but the band of close associates who took His message to the world. And when Jesus then through His ministry of teaching and healing, and above all through His death and resurrection, set out to change the world, the work that He did for people everywhere was a fulfillment of the purposes, Christians believe, behind God's establishment of a special relationship with the Jews.

If God intended to rescue everyone, to bring the fullness of both His love and His justice to bear on the human condition, God would have to become someone; this someone would have to be somebody from somewhere. The person would have a family and friends, would speak some particular language, and would work with a particular set of ideas. Saving all meant choosing some. God's choice of one people was a necessary part of His love for all.

Without those deep roots in Jewish life that sustained Jesus and the first Christian believers, there could be no Christian faith; yet the first thing the young church had to do was to spread beyond its Jewish origins. As it grew, it encountered not only the Greco-Roman world of the Mediterranean basin, but also the ancient cultures of Iran, the Arab world, Ethiopia, Armenia, and beyond. At a very early stage, the written records of the Mediterranean church migrated from Aramaic (the language spoken by Jesus and the Jews of His time) to Greek, the most common language of the eastern Mediterranean world. The words of the Bible have been translated into literally thousands of languages, and people from all of the world's major (and most of its minor) language and culture groups pray to the God of Israel, acknowledge a Jewish Savior, and turn their thoughts to Bethlehem at this holy time of year.

But even as the church looks to Bethlehem, it looks beyond. The liturgical calendar (the church calendar used, with some variations and differences, by Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans, Lutherans, and Methodists, among others) makes sure we don't forget the universal mission of the church as we celebrate Christmas. December 26 in the Western churches commemorates the death of St. Stephen, one of the first Greek-speaking Christians who was also the first person to be killed because he believed in Jesus.

In the English-speaking world, the "Feast of Stephen" is known mostly because of its connection with the "Good King Wenceslaus" carol; it was "on the Feast of Stephen" that Good King Wenceslaus looked out and saw that the snow lay "deep and crisp and even." The multiculturalism goes on; St. Wenceslaus is the patron saint of the Czech Republic. For thousands of years, the Catholic and Orthodox churches have worked to find and celebrate "national" saints and festivals that will help the people of each country and region find something of their own in the Christian faith.

The imagery of the Christian faith similarly changes around the world to reflect local traditions and tastes. In Cuzco, Peru, there is a painting showing Jesus and His disciples at the Last Supper; the main dish is the local favorite of roast guinea pig. Christianity has generally tried to "incarnate" itself in the world's different cultures and traditions, using familiar language and ideas wherever possible. This can be controversial. In the famous "Chinese rites" case, St. Francis Xavier's attempt to allow Chinese Christians to continue observing certain traditional Chinese rites commemorating their ancestors was condemned by Pope Clement IX in 1715. At other times, it's non-Christians who object to Christian appropriation of words or concepts they consider their own. In Malaysia not so long ago, a Catholic newspaper fought a court case in an effort to use the word "Allah" to describe the Christian God in its pages against the objections of some Islamic clerics who feared this use of a familiar Islamic term could aid Christian efforts at proselytization. (In Malaysia, it is against the law to attempt to persuade Muslims to change their religion).

The twentieth century saw an explosion of Christian missionary activity and Christian conversions outside the old Christian heartlands of Europe and the Americas, and explosion that continues today. The century also witnessed the extraordinary rise of locally based and locally led churches in "mission territory" around the world. In China, sub-Saharan Africa, and South and Southeastern Asia, the twentieth century (and especially its last half) saw not only the greatest numbers of conversions to Christianity in world history; it also witnessed an unprecedented flowering of locally based leadership developing forms of worship and organization that adapted the old faith to new cultural milieus as never before.

Where all this is leading one does not know; in Europe, Christianity sometimes appears to be on its last legs, even as it flourishes in parts of the world where it was almost unknown just a century ago. Just as Europe's political domination of the world ended in the twentieth century, its cultural dominance in world Christianity has faded away. A little more than two thousand years after the first Christmas, Christianity is both more universal and "cosmopolitan" than ever, and yet it is also more deeply rooted in more cultures than ever before in its past.

To Christians, the changes and renewals sweeping over the Christian world mean that the Christmas event isn't over yet. The mysteries of Christmas and the Incarnation continue to unfold before our eyes. The world's cultures are being transformed by their encounters with that mysterious Jewish rabbi and the universal message He carried. But while people all over the world turn to one Lord, they turn to Him in hundreds and thousands of tongues and traditions.

The Christmas story doesn't tell us how to reconcile the virtues and the vices of universal cosmopolitanism and local loyalty. But it suggests that we can somehow try to be true to both ideals: to be loyal members of our nations, our families, our tribes--and at the same time to reach out to the broader human community of which we are also a part. One baby in one manger, from one family and culture, but bearing a message that in the fullness of time would reach the whole world. That is, Christians think, how God arranged things.

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