Posts Tagged ‘Christmas’

« Older Entries

Christmas – Shepherds for a change

December 24, 2025

Christmas Eve – 2025

Luke 2:1-14

Marian Free

In the name of God who reveals Godself to the most unlikely, the most uneducated and most despised and who entrusts them with the message of salvation. Amen.

There are so many sub-plots to the Christmas narrative that it is impossible to do justice to all the different elements. 

So where does one start to explore the Christmas narrative –the announcement of Jesus’ birth to Mary or to Joseph, the journey to Bethlehem, the inn keeper who found room, the shepherds, the angels, the magi, the star? We could as some do, let our imaginations go wild and wonder about the reactions of the donkey who carried Mary or animals in the barn where he was born, or we could invent characters like the little drummer boy (What makes anyone think that a sleep deprived mother would be grateful when a young, uninvited guest strikes up a drumbeat in her crowded accommodation?)

This year, I found myself thinking about the shepherds, their place in the story and what they have to tell us.

It is easy to be sentimental about the shepherds, who in our nativity scenes are respectable, if poor men out in the fields protecting their sheep when suddenly they are surprised by not one but a whole host of angels; shepherds who leave everything to race to Bethlehem with white fluffy lambs in the crook of their arms and whose role is to bear witness to Jesus’ birth.

But when we ignore the picture-perfect Christmas cards and pay close attention, we discover that there is much more to the story of the shepherds. The shepherds, whom we are led to believe are and humble, decent men were, in reality, among the most despised people in Jesus’ day. In the ancient Middle East shepherds were usually itinerant workers, moving from place to place in search of work, and taking whatever work they could find. 

Shepherding was not a job of choice. A shepherd was always on the move looking for pasture and a shepherd had to be on guard day and night to protect the sheep from bears, lions, foxes and other threats which might just as well kill a shepherd as a sheep. Shepherds were living and sleeping in the outdoors without proper protection from the elements and were reputed to be thieves, suspected of stealing the sheep they were supposed to protect.  A few, if not all, would take comfort in the bottle to keep them warm at night. 

In short, if you were to draw up a list of people who were worthy to be the first to receive notice of Jesus’ birth, the shepherds would not even make the long list. And yet here they are so they must have something to teach us. When we look at the story with the shepherds in mind we notice a number of things.

First of all, after they overcome their terror, the shepherds believe and respond immediately. There is no hint that they think the angel’s story is too ridiculous to be true. The angel has said that the Saviour, the Christ has been born and so it must be. And, even though the only clue to the baby’s whereabouts is that, like every other baby in Bethlehem, the child will be wrapped in swaddling cloths in a manger, the shepherds leave everything, including their sheep and hurry to Bethlehem to see the child for themselves.

Second, even though the shepherds were usually shunned and ignored, they could not stop themselves from sharing the good news with everyone. This means that, the shepherds, the marginalised and despised, become the first evangelists – the first to share the good news.

Third, the shepherds were so overwhelmed with what they heard and saw that they couldn’t stop praising and glorifying God.

Fourth, the shepherds did not give a moment’s thought as to what might happen to the sheep when they abandoned them to go to Bethlehem – that is they did not look behind them but trusted the sheep to God.

Last, and this is probably Luke’s point, by sending angels to the shepherds, we are shown that God often chooses the least respected, the least equipped, and the least expected to be the first to hear the good news, and that God’s faith in the shepherds was proved right when the excitement and passion of the shepherds gave them credibility which ensured that their message was heard.

It is always tempting for us to believe that the task of evangelism belongs to those who are more articulate, more authoritative, and more attractive than we are. But if God can choose and use those disreputable scoundrels – the shepherds – God can and will choose and use us. And when God does reveal godself to us, the response of the shepherds can be a model for our own reaction. 

Luke tells us that the shepherds are open and receptive to the unexpected presence of the angels, they are not suspicious, butt respond immediately to the angel’s news with joy and enthusiasm, they trust God that what they leave behind will come to no harm, they find the experience of coming face-to-face with God’s messengers so overwhelming that they simply cannot keep the news to themselves and they respond to all that has happened by praising God. 

For us tonight, the story of Christ’s birth lacks the novelty of that first Christmas, but that does not mean that we should not be open and receptive to the possibility of God’s revealing godself to us. When that happens and however that happens, will we be sufficiently open to the possibility that God that we will take heed and respond immediately? Is the good news that brings us here tonight so extraordinary that we. cannot keep it to ourselves? Can we trust God enough to leave the past behind and step into an uncertain future? Do we really believe that God can and will use us to share the story of God’s presence in the world – shepherds and kings, poor and rich, homeless and housed, ignorant and educated?

If we do surely that is certainly cause for praising and glorifying God.

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Christmas, Luke's gospel | Comments Off on Christmas – Shepherds for a change

Christmas – the powerlessness of God

December 24, 2024

Christmas Eve – 2024

Marian Free

In the name of God, who comes to us as a vulnerable baby insisting on our cooperation in the building of a just, compassionate and caring world. Amen.

I am conscious that many of us come to this Christmas burdened with the state of the world – the encroaching collapse of democracy,  the internal strife in more nations than I can name, the horrific wars in and between so many nations and the toll they are taking on human lives and on infrastructure, the increasing ferocity of natural disasters – bushfires, hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes and floods –  and of our feelings of helplessness as we  watch tragedies unfold all around us. 

How does the birth of a child speak into this situation? Collectively we seem to be worse off, not better off as a consequence. It is clear that 2025 years ago, God did not sweep in and end injustice, oppression and corruption for all time; just as God did not forever disarm the natural forces of this planet.

In Christ God did not burst on to the scene and make everything right – just the opposite. What God did in Christ was to expose God’s powerless. In Christ, God gives us a glimpse into who and what God is and into what God can and cannot do.

That said, the birth of Jesus is God’s masterstroke, because it is the baby that catches our attention. Few people are unmoved by the vulnerability and the innocence of a newborn.  Most of us are filled with the desire to protect, nurture and love an infant into maturity. More than that, at Christmas time, we are captivated by the humble domestic scene of an ordinary family, and we find ourselves in awe of the miraculous – the star, the angels and the magi. It is no wonder that at this moment that our love of God is at its strongest as we kneel in homage with the shepherds and the magi, and our hearts are warmed by the thought of God’s love for us.

This is as it should be, but the danger is, that this warm glow blinds us the real meaning of Jesus’ birth and that our faith and that our concept of God does not extend much beyond the comfort and hope expressed in many a nativity scene and that we do not grasp what this scene really tells us about God. 

The birth of this child is so much more than the fulfillment of a promise, and so much more than the assurance of God’s presence with us. This birth brings us face-to-face with a confronting truth. This infant is God. God the creator of the universe is here, lying on the straw, totally dependent on Mary and Joseph for his every need and completely defenceless against the wrath of Herod. The one to whom we look for intervention in the world, the one to whom we attribute all the power and might is at this moment in time utterly powerless.

Here perhaps is the nub of Christmas – that the very being to whom we entrust our lives, entrusts us with their life. This baby, the Christ-child tells us that the presence and power of God in the world is in our hands. God is in our hands – not in the sense that we can control, manipulate or coerce God, but in the sense that God is powerless because we have it within ourselves to thwart, obstruct and to sabotage God’s plans for the world and for humanity.

Christmas, the coming of God into the world in such an unexpected, humble and vulnerable manner, is a reminder that we are in partnership with God, that we are co-creators with God and that from the beginning God entrusted us with the world and with each other. That means that if the world is not as we would wish it to be – it is on us, not God. When we wring our hands and bemoan the state of the world and when we wonder why God is not doing more to intervene, we overlook our complicity in the problems of the world and our failure to cooperate with the one who created us. We forget the helplessness revealed in the infant Jesus.

You see, God did not create humankind so that God could spend eternity cleaning up the mess that we make as a consequence of our selfishness, greed, and grasping for power. God created humanity in the hope that we would work together with God to build a just, compassionate and equitable world. God gave us the power to change the world for good or ill and more often than we have let down our side of the equation.

At Christmas, God once more brings us face-to-face with reality, with the gap between the hope offered by the Christ-child and the despair that still afflicts the lives of many, the gap between the innocence of the babe and the corruption that continues to exist in many parts of the world, and the gap between the potential of the Prince of Peace and the conflicts that rage in more places than we can name. 

The infant in the manger has no power to throw down world leaders, to destroy the arms of war, or to end the need for security and comfort that builds barriers between ourselves and others. Yet, what power this child has – the power to enter our hearts, the power to draw from us love and awe, the power to inspire us to work for peace and justice, and the power to remind us of the power that we have been given to work with and for God for the good of all.  

The life of this child is in our hands. The future of the world is in our power. How will we respond?

What will we do with the precious gift that God has given us?

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Christmas | Comments Off on Christmas – the powerlessness of God

Jesus’ coming – joyful anticipation or fearful expectation?

December 2, 2023

Advent 1 – 2023

Mark 13:24-37

(Is 64:1-9, Ps 80:1-7, 17-19, 1 Cor 1:1-9)

In the name of God, whose coming we celebrate with joy and whose return we anticipate with trepidation. Amen.

Though it is hard to avoid the fact that the rest of the world is already celebrating Christmas, I continue to love the season of Advent. For me it represents a time of quiet anticipation – a time to focus on the real meaning of Christmas – the gentle in-breaking into our world of God’s chosen one, the vulnerability of God in the infant Jesus, and the courage of Mary and Joseph. It is, for me, a time of wonder and joy, as I ponder the gradual unfolding of the story.

So it is that I am often taken aback by the violence and threat that lie in the gospel set for today, the first Sunday of Advent. We find no quiet waiting in Mark 13. There is no sense of hopeful expectancy. Instead, we are presented with a picture of God’s sudden and terrible explosion into the world.  An eruption that is accompanied by the destruction not only of the earth, but of the cosmos. The sun will be darkened, and the stars will fall from heaven. Without any warning all of the powers of heaven will be shaken. Keep awake, we are warned – for you do not know when the time will come: “in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow or at dawn.” There is no room here for peaceful contemplation on the birth of Christ. Instead, we are placed on edge, forced in a state of constant alertness in which we worry about what it means to keep awake. We are left wondering if we have to live in a state of constant vigilance (never truly living in the present) – always looking over our shoulder for God to surprise us, always straining ahead, always worrying about our every action just in case God should burst in and find us wanting?  

Of course, it would be utterly exhausting live in a state of constant anxiety, to be always on the lookout for something negative to happen, always terrified that we would be caught out. So – what to do? What are we to make of the warnings in Mark’s gospel and how do they inform our observation of the season of Advent?

The answer lies, I believe exactly in the tension – the tension between the unobtrusiveness of Jesus’ first coming and the unmistakable disruption of his coming again; the tension between Christ’s coming as an infant and Christ’s coming again as judge of all; the tension between the powerlessness of the baby and the ultimate power of the Creator of the Universe. Advent –  with its focus on beginnings and endings – highlights the tension between the God who loved us enough to become one of us and the God who will one day ask us to give an account for our lives, the tension between trusting in God’s mercy and not taking it for granted, the tension between knowing God’s love and not taking advantage of that love and the tension between knowing that though our salvation has been won, we still have a responsibility for our salvation..

Advent provides us with a time to look back and to look forward, a time to remember all that God has done for us and a time to ask ourselves what our response to God’s love has been and whether or not we would be pleased to see God now. 

The warning to ‘keep awake’ is not so much to keep us in a state of hypervigilance, but rather a timely reminder that we should not get too comfortable, not to fall into complacency. It is a warning against the assumption that a happy ending awaits us all, just because God has entered into history. 

. 

Learning to live in this in between time, coping with the tension between God’s breaking into the world, and God’s breaking the world apart, teaches us to live with uncertainty, with the “not-knowing” – not knowing the mind of God, not knowing when Christ will return, not knowing exactly how we measure up. Living with the tension between the times keeps us open to what God has to say to us in the present and what God might be doing in our lives right now. In this in-between time, expecting God to appear at any moment, keeps us alert and expectant, enabling us to see the ways in which God is always breaking into the present. Keeping awake ensures that we do not miss any opportunity and ensures that we are prepared for anything that God might reveal or that God might do.

In two thousand years, the sky hasn’t fallen in, the cosmos hasn’t been dramatically. It is difficult to believe in the second coming, to maintain the sense of urgency that pervades this morning’s gospel and yet, we need the message of Mark 13 even more than the church for whom it was written. 

At this time of year, it is easy to get caught up in the sentimentality of Christmas – the stars and angels, the shepherds and wise ones, the hope, joy, comfort and promise of the visible signs of God’s love. The evangelist knew only too well how easy it is to get comfortable, to see the return of Christ as a distant, even unlikely possibility. He knew too, that his own generation had been caught by surprise, had failed to see in the infant in a manger and in itinerant preacher, the one sent by God to save the world. So, with words of dire warning, Mark urges his readers not to get too comfortable, not to assume that because Jesus had not returned that they could start to relax, but to so order their lives that Christ could come at any time and we would be ready.

In this season as we prepare for both our Christian and our secular Christmas, let us be filled with joyful anticipation as we await the birth of Christ and some trepidation, as we expect his coming again.

Tags:, , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Advent, Apocalypse, Mark's gospel | Comments Off on Jesus’ coming – joyful anticipation or fearful expectation?

God Incarnate

December 23, 2022

Christmas – 2022
Marian Free

In the name of God who comes among us silently, unobtrusively and unremarkably. Amen.

A73B3131-3B24-4954-8E33-6588DF7BB8A0

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . . All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be. —John 1:1, 3

During the week our Bishop posted the above photo in Facebook. It is a light-hearted attempt to compare the accounts of Jesus’ birth in the four gospels. At the same time, it reminds us that when it comes to Christmas, we conflate two versions of the story – our nativity scenes. have the shepherds and the magi even though the shepherds are found only in Luke and the magi only in Matthew. (Mark is missing, because in Mark’s gospel, Jesus bursts on to the scene fully grown.) When the post appeared, discerning viewers noticed at once that Mary was not included in the diagramme. You might like to compare the first few chapters of Luke and Matthew and see if anything else needs to be added. The four gospels begin quite differently and as might be expected, the beginnings reflect the interests of the authors. Matthew is concerned to stress the Jewishness of Jesus and the way in which his early years demonstrate the fulfillment of Old Testament promises. (“This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophets” occurs 5 times in the birth narrative.) What is more Matthew’s genealogy goes back to Abraham – the founder of the Jewish faith. Luke, on the other hand is more concerned with the universal implications of Jesus’ birth and with the historical context in which the story takes place. Luke includes the census and mentions Herod. His genealogy goes all the way back to Adam – indicating that Jesus is for everyone, not just for a few. Mark, as I said is not concerned with Jesus’ origins and John’s poetic start gives us – not a birth, but a cosmic beginning. From John’s point of view Jesus always was.

Does it matter that we do not have a consistent account to explain Jesus’ presence among us? Do we need to explain the differences? Of course not. Each story tells us something different, helps to satisfy our curiosity about Jesus’ beginnings and enriches our understanding of something that is essentially beyond our understanding. Indeed, Richard Rohr would argue that Jesus’ birth is only one expression of God’s incarnation among us – the account/s of Jesus’ birth are only one expression of God’s presence among us. That is to say, prior to Jesus’ birth, God was not absent in creation, invisible to God’s people or inactive in relation to the world. From the moment God said: “Let there be light” God has been dynamically engaged with creation and constantly in relationship with God’s people.

As Rohr says, we will never know the how, why or when of creation, but most traditions suggest that everything that it is the creation of some “Primal Source, which originally existed only as Spirit.” He goes on to say that “This Infinite Primal Source somehow poured itself into finite, visible forms, creating everything from rocks to water, plants, organisms, animals, and human beings. This self-disclosure of whomever you call God into physical creation was the first Incarnation (the general term for any enfleshment of spirit), long before the personal, second Incarnation that Christians believe happened with Jesus.”

What this means is that from the beginning of creation God has existed/been incarnate within all creation – animate and inanimate. When God ‘became flesh’ in the person of Jesus, God became incarnate in a very particular way – uniting Godself to us. At that point in time, God the creator, with the Logos/Word, fully identified with humankind, proving once and for all, that humanity is created in the image of God and that God is incarnate in and with us – not simply in creation or in some indistinct, immaterial form out of sight and out of reach. God, through God’s incarnation in Jesus that God chooses not only to be incarnate in the beauty of a sunset, the perfection of a flower, the majesty of a mountain, but in the frailty of human flesh, the imperfection of human behaviour, and the weakness of human will. Thanks to God’s coming in flesh – in Jesus – we can see God in one another and in ourselves and, in Jesus, we can see too what it is that we can be.

So, this year, let us not look back with longing to the infant in the stable or forward with anticipation to the coming of the Son of Man, but let us simply look – around and within – so that we might perceive God’s incarnation in its many and myriad forms – in the world and in ourselves. Let us celebrate God, with us throughout all time.

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Christmas, Incarnation | Comments Off on God Incarnate

Just how much does God love us?

December 24, 2021

Christmas – 2021
Marian Free

In the name of God who became human so that we might become divine. Amen.

Sometimes a person will say or do something that changes the way you think or act.

Such was the case for me when I was at Theological College. The scenario was a community meeting at which we were discussing our differences and how we could manage to make the student community a place in which everyone could feel comfortable no matter what their background or church tradition. On this occasion a primary issue was the matter of the daily Eucharist and whether attendance was absolutely necessary for those among us whose tradition made this more of a burden than a joy. Sadly, I no longer remember the name of the student who raised the issue. He explained that for him the Incarnation, not the crucifixion/resurrection was central to his faith and that the Eucharist’s emphasis on the latter did not hold as much meaning for him as did the daily office. God’s becoming one of us was, he felt, more significant than God dying for us.

The event is so long ago that I would not be able to say why an emphasis on the Incarnation was such a revelation. I imagine that until that time I simply had not paid much attention to the significance of Jesus’ birth. If I were to hazard a guess I think that I might have thought that Jesus’ birth was simply a means for Jesus to enter the world – so that he could die and rise again.

Since then I have pondered long and hard on the Incarnation and am filled with wonder and awe that God should enter our human existence. Yes, Jesus was crucified and yes he was raised, but the Incarnation – God with us – is a powerful statement of God’s love for us and of God’s identification with our hopes and joys, our disappointments and our sorrows. If we stress the crucifixion to the detriment of the Incarnation, we lose sight of the fact that in the Incarnation, God is demonstrating the depth of God’s love for us. In becoming one of us, God becomes one with us. In entering our existence God shows that so far from being unworthy, we – with our physical and other limitations -were considered a suitable vessel for God to inhabit.

If, as we believe, Jesus is God then we can be certain that God knows what it is to be human. God, in Jesus, has experienced the full gamut of human emotions. God in Jesus has been idolized and abandoned, has been surrounded by friends and deserted by the same, has known joy and sorrow.

God’s entering the world completely changes the dynamic of our relationship with God (and, with ourselves). For if God did not despise the human form or reject the constraints of being human, then we can be kinder to and gentler with ourselves. If God knows what it is to face the difficulties that we face, then we need never feel alone knowing that God has felt the same.

The conversation at our community meeting came back to me this week when I learned that for the first thirteen centuries of church history the focus was on Easter. It was only when Francis of Assisi entered the scene that Christmas began to hold the significance for the church that it does today. Francis felt that God’s love for us was not limited to the crucifixion but was made clear when God entered the world in the form of the infant Jesus. It was love that propelled God to come to us. It was God’s love that insinuated itself among us. It was love that wanted us to know just how precious we are in God’s sight.

Enjoy Christmas and all the traditions that you observe as a family, but when you look at the tiny vulnerable child in the manger, be sure that you see God and be filled with wonder that God could love you – love me so much – that God would risk everything to share our lives.

Tags:, , ,
Posted in Christmas | Comments Off on Just how much does God love us?

Jesus – truly one with us

December 29, 2018

Christmas 1 – 2018

Luke 2: 41-51

Marian Free

In the name of God whose human existence was real and gritty, not superficial and sanitized. Amen.

Prior to the 1960’s there were no such things as shopping malls in Queensland. All the department stores were in the central city so, when it came to Christmas shopping, it was to the city that my mother took us so that we could spend our pocket money on gifts for each other. On one such occasion – I think I was about five years old – I became separated from my mother. I have no recollection of being anxious or frightened. What I do remember, is that when my mother found me, I was safely ensconced on a trestle table that was being used by a group of women to sell Christmas craft. Then, as now, society in general took it upon itself to take responsibility for children in such situations. The primary goal being to care for the child and to reunite the child with his or her parents as expeditiously as possible..

There are societies, those of the New Guinea highlands and our own indigenous culture for example, in which children are the responsibility of all the members of the community. Mothers can let their children roam free confident that everyone will see it as their responsibility to keep the children safe. The sort of ownership and personal responsibility that we feel for our children would be unknown. I’ve been told of an Australian family who, having come to Townsville from Darwin for a funeral, arrived home without one of their children. Instead of being mortified that a child had been left behind, or angry that the child had stayed behind, this family was utterly confident that the child was safe, would be well-looked after and would rejoin them at the next opportunity. (Thankfully, The Department of Children’s Services understood that this was a cultural practice and took no action against the family whose child was reunited with them as soon as it was feasible.)

It is against this sort of background that we have to read the account of Jesus in the Temple. Mary and Joseph were not careless parents who had failed to check on their child’s whereabouts when they left Jerusalem. No doubt they had travelled from Nazareth with a group of friends and relations to attend the feast. When it was time to return home, they would have simply trusted Jesus to have joined the group when everyone was ready to leave – after all he was nearly a man. They would have assumed that he was with cousins or friends whose parents would have treated him as one of their own. In this context there was no need for them to look for their son until the evening when, presumably, he would have joined his immediate family for dinner. Only then did they begin to worry.

Luke, at least in the beginning of the Jesus’ story, does not allow us to forget that this is an account of a real human situation. Jesus belongs to a real family that has the same hopes and dreams, the same flaws, the same irritations and the same anxieties. It is intriguing that across the four gospels we have only one story of Jesus’ childhood and it is the story of a rebellious teenager, or at the very least, of a young man testing his limits – letting his parents know that he is now an adult who can make his own decisions and that he has a vocation to fulfill in which they have no part. His stinging response to Mary’s anxious reproach is to wonder why his parents did not expect him to be in h

‘his Father’s house’. It is the sort of exchange that might occur in any modern household with teenage children.

Later accounts of Jesus’ birth like the Infancy Gospel of Thomas could not cope with such a messy, earthy, ordinary human start to Jesus’ life. For example, in some accounts, just prior to Jesus’ birth, time stands still, midwives appear apparently out of nowhere, the cave is unnaturally lit – by both the child and by Mary’s face. Mary experiences no birth pangs and the child is born completely clean. The birth does not affect Mary’s virginity and the hand of the skeptical midwife withers. In the History of Joseph the Carpenter, the family are taken into the home of a brigand. There, Jesus is bathed and his bath water bubbles up into a foam. The brigand’s wife keeps the foam and uses it to heal the sick and the dying. As a result the family become rich. In these later accounts not only is Jesus’ birth attended with miracles, the escape to Egypt is facilitated by the miracle of a spider’s web and the young Jesus performs miracles and even strikes dead a child who offends him! These later writers could not bear to think that the child Jesus was any less powerful, capable or wise than the adult Jesus.

The absence of somewhere to stay, the insalubrious surroundings of a stable, the visit of the shepherds and the teenager stretching his wings in the Temple are all reminders that we should not isolate Jesus from his very human beginnings or elevate him to the position of a superhuman being. Luke’s Gospel could not spell it out more clearly – Jesus is fully human, fully immersed in the messiness of human existence, susceptible to the same desires as any other human being and subject to some of the same fears. Luke brings Jesus down to earth, reminds us that in Jesus God fully immersed godself in the mundaneness of human existence and that despite being God, Jesus was not insulated from the reality of being one of us.

Jesus/God knows what it is to be one of us and shows us that it is possible for us, mere human beings, to become as he is. We just have to believe that this frail human body with all it’s complexities and this weak, indecisive mind is capable of great and extraordinary things. One of the messages of Christmas is that Jesus became one of us so that we could become one with him. Let us celebrate our human existence and try to live it to it’s full, divine potential.

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Christmas, Identity of Jesus, Luke's gospel | Comments Off on Jesus – truly one with us

Sleeping through Christmas

December 24, 2018

Christmas-2018

Luke 2:1-20

Marian Free

May the child in the manger open our eyes to see God’s presence in unexpected places and in unlikely people. Amen

Our Christmas cards and our imaginations give us a romanticized view of shepherds in first century Palestine. This view is enhanced by images of God as shepherd, and of David as the shepherd king. The reality was in fact quite different. In the time of Jesus shepherds were social outcasts, classed together with ass drivers, tanners, sailors, butchers and camel drivers. Theirs was an occupation for which there was no respect. They had no land of their own and their work kept them away from home at night which meant that they were unable to protect the honour of their wives and daughters (if indeed they could afford to have a family). What is more, because they grazed their flocks on land that did not belong to them they were considered to be thieves. In fact many of them were thieves. They were at the very bottom of the social hierarchy – dishonored and despised – certainly not the sort of people you would welcome into your home or seek to associate with. Yet it was to the shepherds that God revealed the birth of Jesus, it was the shepherds who were the first to respond and to see Jesus and it was the shepherds who were the first to spread the good news of Jesus’ birth.

Extraordinary as all that is, it is consistent with Luke’s view of the world that God would chose a woman of no social status or wealth to bear God’s son, that the son of God would be born in a stable and that God would reveal Godself to a disreputable group of shepherds with no social standing whatsoever. What is even more extraordinary and inexplicable is that, despite the cacophony of a multitude, an army of the heavenly host and the glory of the Lord that attended them, no one else saw or heard anything.

The townsfolk of Bethlehem might be excused for not noticing Jesus’ slipping into their midst, but how could they have been blind and deaf to a sky illuminated by the heavenly host singing praises to God? It almost defies belief. In this instance, God’s presence is not subtle or discrete, but bland at and obvious. Even so the presence of God goes unnoticed by all except a bunch of disreputable shepherds, who not only notice but who act on what they have seen and heard. What is more, having seen for themselves that the what the angel had told them was true, they spread the word and caused amazement to all who heard them.

Christmas is layered with sentimentality – the hay in the stable is clean, the shepherds are respectable, Jesus is worshipped. Beneath the sentiment however, we find rejection, apathy, blindness and even outright hostility (if we add Matthew’s version of events).

Only the angels greet Jesus with the appropriate fanfare and even then no one notices. The great irony of the gospel is that God is fully present among humankind and only a few people (and then not the ‘religious people’) even recognize that God is there.

It is easy for us to fall asleep, to allow ourselves to be complacent– satisfied with our relationship with God, confident that we know right from wrong and certain that we would know Jesus when he returns. The problem is this – if we fail to pay attention, if we stop noticing what is going on around us, if we begin to take God and God’s presence for granted we will find that we, like our first century brothers and sisters are blind and deaf to what is really happening around us. We will miss God’s presence in the unusual, the underestimated and even in the disreputable. We will fail to see God in the manger and God in the cross,

Let us not be like those who, not only through Jesus’ birth, but who failed to be stirred to wakefulness by a whole choir of angels.

Tags:, , ,
Posted in Christmas, Luke's gospel | Comments Off on Sleeping through Christmas

Longing to love

December 24, 2016

Midnight Mass – 2016

Marian Free

 In the name of God who longs to be in relationship with us and who willingly forsake power, glory and dominion to try to make that clear. Amen.

During the week I happened upon a movie titled: “Anywhere but here.” It tells the story of how two grown sons cope with the fact that their father is dying. The sons have been brought up in the Jewish faith, but have not been able to embrace its practices and beliefs. One son, Aidan, still has a connection with the synagogue because his father will pay his grandchildren’s school fees if they attend a Jewish school. As with many families there are unresolved issues and tensions that make the grieving process more complicated. At one point Aidan is compelled to go the synagogue and speak to a Rabbi. Aidan is confused because events in his life are leading him to the conclusion that God is trying to tell him something, but he doesn’t believe in God. Thankfully, the young Rabbi is wise. He asks Aidan if he ever feels “a spiritual presence”. Aidan replies that when he is showing his children the stars and trying to explain that the universe goes on forever and ever, that yes, he does get a sense of the spiritual.

The Rabbi responds: “Then think of that spirit leading and guiding you.” The Rabbi knows that Aidan has rejected the traditional ways of thinking about God and he is wise enough not to impose those ideas on him. Instead he asks Aidan to name how he knows and experiences God and runs with that.

Rejecting the God of one’s youth and yet having a yearning to connect with something deeper than the material is not unique to a person who has grown up in the Jewish faith. One of the problems that the church faces today is that there are many people who have walked away from the faith and yet have a sense of something other. There are many long to make contact with their spirituality but their search is blocked by language, dogma or ideas that offend or that no longer work or make sense to them.

If truth be told most of the ideas of God that people reject are ideas that we too reject, but it is possible for some to hear only one thing and a selective reading of the bible (by a preacher or by the reader) can give the impression of an angry, demanding, interventionist God, a selective God who expects conformity at least and obedience at best. It is relatively easy for to abandon this false idea of God, especially if that idea of God has been used to manipulate and control or to appear be remote from human affairs and indifferent to suffering and pain.

Christmas exposes that God for who and what it is – a false God based on a misunderstanding of both the Old Testament and the New.

At Christmas we are confronted, year after year with the God who is not strong or powerful, but who enters the world as a baby – vulnerable, helpless and utterly dependent. When God could not get through to us, when we had turned away from God or turned God into something that God is not, when we lost sight that God’s primary desire is to be in relationship with us, God in Christ came to us. God came among us not with lighting and thunder, waving a sword to condemn and destroy, but as a new-born child a child whom God hoped would demonstrate once and for all God’s love for all humankind – the good, the bad, the engaged and the indifferent, the kind and the unkind. That first Christmas God became powerless and impotent so that we would at last understand the depth and passion of God’s love and that we would see for ourselves God’s complete and total engagement with humanity and God’s participation in both our sorrows and our joys.

This is why we are here this and every Christmas. Our presence is not simply a result of habit or sentimentality. We are here, because we know that the child in the manger is God, that God chooses not to be remote, but to be an integral part of all that this life has to offer. The child in the manger and the man on the cross expose God for who and what God really is – an expression of the deepest love, the utmost compassion and the greatest longing to be in relationship, to be one with all creation.

 

 

 

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Christmas | Comments Off on Longing to love

Looking backwards and forwards on Advent 1

November 26, 2016

Advent 1 – 2016

Matthew 24:36-44

Marian Free

 In the name of God who was and is and is to come, who has loved, does love and will love. Amen.

If you have ever had a medical procedure you will know that you will usually receive a list of instructions telling you what you must do to prepare. Some blood tests require you to fast before hand and others do not. A visit to an obstetrician will often require you to produce a urine sample. An appointment for a breast screen will come with instructions as to what to wear and the insistence that on that day you do not use talcum powder. A booking for surgery will come with pages of instructions – don’t drink alcohol, do not eat or drink for a specified period, do not bring valuables to the hospital with you but do bring your method of payment. And as for having a colonoscopy – let’s not even go there! (Those of us who have had the experience know what is involved and those of you yet to have the pleasure, will find out soon enough.)

The point is that there are many things in our life that require careful and thoughtful preparation – travel, meals, study, buying a house, getting married and so on. While some of these need more attention than others, they are all relatively easy in the sense that the guidelines are clear, others have done it before us and by and large we know what is expected or where to go for information or advice.

Preparing for eternity is a very different proposition from preparing for surgery, travel or a job interview. For a start, no one has ever come back from the dead to tell us what it is like or to give us specific instructions as to exactly how to get in. No one, that is, except Jesus and he did not give a straight forward, easy to follow list of directions or instructions. Instead he left his followers to make sense of his teachings and to put them together in ways that made sense to them.

Preparing for eternity or for the return of Jesus, is the most important thing that we will ever do with our lives, but it is easy to put it off because it seems so remote, so far into the future that we imagine that we have plenty of time to put our lives in order. Alternatively, it is possible to become complacent, to believe that we have already done all that is necessary to enter into eternal life.

I wonder how many of us put the same amount of effort into our preparation for eternity as we do for other aspects of our lives. Do we have a check list that we refer back to see how ready we are? Are we really clear as to what is required? Have we put some effort and research into the subject or do we think we already know all that there is to know?

Many of us were brought up with a Christian faith that taught us to be good, that entrance into heaven required sticking within some prescribed guidelines – most notably the Ten Commandments. Along the way, we have learned that Jesus does not want simple obedience to a set of rules. In life, he consistently chose those who did not conform to the societal view of what does or does not constitute “goodness”, he criticized those who placed weight on outward appearances, and he constantly revised the commandments in such a way as to make it clear that it was a person’s attitude to and relationship with God that was the key to eternal life. In other words, Jesus shifted the goal posts and cast us adrift from the safety of clear rules and codes of behavior and left us to find our own direction.

Jesus knew that it was possible to do the “right thing” but to do it for the wrong reasons. He exposed the hypocrisy and shallowness of those whose outward show of goodness hid a lack of love and compassion, a self-centredness and self-congratulatory attitude that blinded them to their own weakness and frailty. Jesus sought out those who knew their own sinfulness and who relied on God’s love rather than their own efforts.

If Jesus were to offer advice for living or guidelines for attaining eternity, he would probably encourage us to seek self-awareness rather than self-righteousness, to recognise our imperfection rather than aim for perfection and to understand that we are no better than the next person rather than striving to outdo them with our “goodness”.

In the final analysis, Jesus’ incarnation demonstrated that our salvation does not depend on anything that we do for ourselves, but on what God does for us. Salvation is entirely related to God’s love for us – love that entered into our existence, challenged our concepts of right and wrong, of power and weakness, of judgment and acceptance, love that endured the worst that we can throw at it, and which loves us still. Love, that on the cross overcame evil and death so that nothing might stand between ourselves and life eternal.

On this, the first Sunday of Advent, we are urged to both look backward to Jesus’ coming in love and forward to Jesus’ coming in judgement, to place our lives in the balance and to see how we measure up.

Are we living in such a way that demonstrates our awareness of God’s love and our inability to deserve that love? Have we thrown ourselves completely on God’s mercy or are we still holding something back – in other words do we completely and utterly trust in God’s unconditional love or does some part of us still believe that we have to do something to deserve it?

Christmas is a celebration of God’s incomprehensible yet unmistakable love for us. Advent is an opportunity to ask ourselves whether or not we trust that love and whether that love has translated into love for ourselves and love for others.

Perhaps, after all, we are better not to prepare, but instead to ensure that we fully accept all that God in Jesus has done for us, such that Jesus’ return will be time of rejoicing and not a time of fearfulness and that we will be truly ready to rest in God’s love for eternity.

 

 

Tags:, , , , , ,
Posted in Matthew | Comments Off on Looking backwards and forwards on Advent 1

Bridging the gap

December 24, 2013

Christmas Eve 2013

John 1:1-14 – a reflection

Marian Free

In the name of God who will stop at nothing to ensure that we reach our full potential. Amen.

“In the beginning was the Word and the word was with God and the Word was God.” Have you ever noticed that John’s gospel denies us the Nativity. Not for John the angels, the shepherds or the Magi. John does not mention Mary or Joseph or Bethlehem. Those looking for familiar images or for the Christmas card stories will find none of that sentimentality here. The author of John takes us back to the very beginning – to creation. Whereas Matthew and Luke use genealogies to trace Jesus’ lineage – Matthew to Abraham, Luke all the way back to God. John makes it very clear that Jesus existed before anything else. According to John, Jesus is much more than Luke’s “Son of God”. Before time began – the Word, Jesus, co-existed with God, in fact was God.

Luke and Matthew try to engage us with stories of Jesus’ human beginnings, John is much more interested in connecting us with the mystery of Jesus’ being both God and human. John tells us that in Jesus, God takes on human flesh and becomes fully engaged in human existence. John not only takes us back to the very beginning, but he also grounds us in the present. In the fourth Gospel we come face-to-face with the confronting reality(?) of a God who is fully human and a human who is fully God. Instead of contemplating a baby, we are forced to consider the deeper realities of our faith, to ask ourselves what does it mean? How can Jesus be both fully human and fully divine? Why would God abandon the heavenly realms for the messy, dirty, risky experience of earthly existence?

God enters our existence to bridge the gap, to heal the divide between human and divine, to show once and for all that all creation – including the human species – is infused with the presence of God, and to demonstrate that God is intimately engaged with God’s creation. The Word made flesh is not a dispassionate, detached deity who is uninterested in human affairs, but in the person of Jesus, has fully identified with the human condition – assuring us that nothing is outside of God’s concern, that our daily lives are not so dull that God is not interested in them. The Word made flesh is proof positive that unlike us, God does not make a distinction between the holy and the mundane, the extraordinary and the ordinary. When God in Jesus took on human form, God in effect declared that all creation bears the image of God.

When we revisit the baby, we discover that the child in the cradle is just as confronting and challenging as the Word made flesh. There, vulnerable and dependent lies God himself – totally (and at great risk) entering into the human condition. This is what we discover once more at Christmas time. God’s love for the world was so great that God could not stand aloof, but had to become one with God’s creation, so that creation could achieve its true purpose – to become one with God.

Tags:, , , , , , ,
Posted in John's Gospel, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Bridging the gap

« Older Entries