For hundreds of years the people of Israel had been waiting for the Messiah. They longed for the true king of Israel, a descendent of King David, to rescue them and bring peace and justice. It was simply a question of ‘when.’
Joseph was a descendant of King David and St Matthew tells us how Joseph became the father of the Messiah. But not the true father.
When Joseph discovered that his wife-to-be was pregnant, the questions of ‘how’ and ‘why’ must have clamoured within him. There is clearly a great striving within him to work out the best course of action. Then in a place of sleep, when all striving ceases, Joseph encounters God in a powerful dream. It is revealed to him that the conception of the child in Mary’s womb is by the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus is the true Son of God.
Like Joseph our minds are full of ‘how’ and ‘why’. We are given no explanation. All our striving and reasoning will never explain how a young woman can give birth to the Son of God. This is mystery. We are not God. Yet it is because of this endless desire to be in control that our hearts are set on self-destruct. That is why Jesus came to ‘save his people from their sins’. This is the story of God’s rescue. And here we encounter ‘Immanuel - God is with us’. This is not about us being equal to God but it is about God coming to earth as one of us - fully human and yet fully God. The greatest love story of all time is unfolding.
Amidst the questions in our lives of ‘when’ and ‘why’ and ‘how’, can we dare to stop our striving and take the risk of encountering Christ, ‘God with us’?
St Luke tells us about a particular point in time in a particular place in the Middle East. Augustus is Emperor and the pressure is on. It’s time for a census but for Joseph the timing is all wrong. No time for a long journey because Mary is about to give birth.
This is no school nativity scene with picturesque stable, pristine costumes, fluffy sheep and golden halos. This is the experience of real people in a crowded town, desperate for accommodation with no time to spare. This is the human experience of pumping adrenalin, anxiety, stress, sweat, tears and pain.
And on a cold hillside away from the crowds and noise, there are some people on the edge - the shepherds - working a night shift. Suddenly they experience a terrifying encounter, utterly unexpected.
This story is full of interrupted time, but it’s the timing of God, and it’s Good News. The God of all time has broken into the world’s time as a vulnerable baby. God has entered fully into the human experience of our existence.
This Advent, in the now of the present time, God is there amidst the business of our lives. Will we look and listen for God breaking through the activity of the pressured time or the predictable routine?
This is a story of response and discovery. The terrifying night time appearance of the angels didn’t cause the shepherds to run away or hide. Instead they encourage one another to go and look. There’s a sense of courage gained from the companionship of others. They find the holy family and somehow they recognise the significance of the moment and these very ordinary people go out and gossip the good news.
We aren’t told of the individual responses of those who heard about the shepherds’ discovery. We only know that people were amazed. For all who heard, there was an opportunity for discovery, to be taken or ignored.
Amidst the ever-growing crowd being drawn into the story, we are given an important glimpse of Mary in a place of solitary reflection. Mary ponders the shepherds’ words about her son. They affirm her own encounter with the Angel Gabriel and we sense Mary deliberately absorbing the good news that will become a treasure store to draw from in years to come.
One day Mary will see her son ridiculed, rejected and strung up to die. Yet there is already the hint that her inner treasure will give her the strength to remember these early days and hold fast to God’s promises when everything around will suggest that God’s plan has gone horribly wrong. Nothing could be further from the truth.
As we hear the good news of Christmas this year, God invites us to places of new discovery. What will be our response? How can we create the space to ponder and store up the good news as inner treasure to draw on when life gets tough?
This is the story of the wisemen, or magi, often referred to as ‘the three kings’. The truth is that we know very little about these strange travellers from the east. They were astrologers of some sort and they had seen a new star - possibly a comet – and somehow they understood it to mean the birth of a new king.
The Christ Child is described as ‘King of the Jews’ – a title identifying him as the Messiah, the one for whom the Jews had been waiting. Yet the very presence of these travellers from the east points to the truth that Christ’s coming was for all people of every race.
The magi dared to follow without knowing their final destination or exactly what they’d find. They weren’t blinded by pre-conceived ideas and their hearts were expectant. When the magi found the baby king, it wasn’t in a place of obvious significance marked by grandeur or wealth. Yet amidst the ordinary they recognised the divine.
In some mysterious way their gifts of the present moment pointed both to the prophecies of the past and the future yet to come. The Christ Child is given gold as for a king, incense as for a priest and myrrh as for burial, already pointing to the climax of Christ’s coming - His crucifixion and resurrection.
But there’s another king in this story. Although not centre stage as he would have liked, King Herod is a king who was blinded by preconceived ideas. He could only see the earthly picture from his small self-centred perspective. However, the visitors from the east didn’t engage with his cunning plan and they left by a different route. This was all about a new path. The world had changed …for good.
Often when we seek God in our lives we want it to be in the way we expect and consequently we fail to recognise God. This year, how might we approach Christmas with heart and minds that are open to encountering Christ in unexpected ways and places?
Words are symbols of communication. Yet here we are presented not only with words but The Word. Here we are told of the truth of God revealed and communicated not in signs or symbols but in flesh – the person of Jesus Christ.
God the Son has existed from the beginning with God the Father, but there came a point in history when he came to live among us.
In this Christmas reading, St John is already pointing us to Easter – the day when Christians celebrate Christ’s resurrection from the dead. Christ’s life is stronger than death and the darkness of our world can never put out the light of Christ. He is the Light of the World.
This is the gift of Christmas and St John reveals that, like others before us, we can receive or reject the gift. The gift we are offered is no mere written law or a code of religious practice. The gift is an eternal relationship with the living God who is life and came to earth in the person of Jesus Christ.
It is often said that Christmas is a time for children. This is affirmed in the reading – Christmas is a time for celebrating the birth of a child, born so that each of us can be a child of God.
As we approach Christmas where are we aware of the darkness in our world and our own lives? The invitation is for each of us to bring that darkness into the presence of Christ’s light.
These readings are presented in partnership with London Internet Church and Premier Christian Media.