Finding a place for the baby

Readings for the last Sunday in Advent. Sunday 18th December 2Sam 7:1-11, 16, Magnificat, Romans 16:25-27, Luke 1:26-38

As we experience a lot of Christmas input at this time
One good question I heard asked about various school and church presentations was:
Why all these stories and plays with a Christmas theme
What's wrong with the story of the stable at Bethlehem.........?
There are of course many representations of that story
and it is rich in symbolism, myth (in the finest sense of that word) and cultural nuance
When in doubt we should allow God's Word of Scripture to do its wonderful work in our hearts
So take time this week to read the readings and just to allow them to speak to you.
As you sit through the endless Carol Services take time too to be a little more open
remember, as we see in this weeks readings, that Christmas is God showing himself to us in human form.
It is about understanding who God is,
and what God is about.
So we find that Mary, when confronted by the angel
has to begin on a journey of discovery
because she does not understand what all this might mean
^"29But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be"
And Paul tells us at the end of Romans as we read today
"the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages ²⁶but is now disclosed, and through the prophetic writings is made known to all the Gentiles, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith"
The sort of message, that so puzzles Mary,
is God revealing in Jesus
what has been true for all time.
This is the overarching message of the Christmas story.
God is revealed to us
in the person of Jesus Christ
he is, what controversialist, John AT Robinson describes
as The Human Face of God
This is a description I find really helpful.
God cannot be described...he is indeed
"the mystery that was kept secret"
our philosophy, our history, even our theology
does not come close to fully disclosing who God is
if we want to know what God is like
then the fullest revelation is
Jesus.
So what do we see
We find at Christmas a deeply confronting story.
God chooses a young girl
about whom we know remarkably little,
in the short passage of this morning's Gospel
we know more about Joseph
....a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David
than we do about Mary herself
we know more about Zechariah and Elizabeth
than we do about their cousin:
he belonged to the priestly order of Abijah. His wife was a descendant of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. ⁶Both of them were righteous before God, living blamelessly according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord. ⁷But they had no children, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were getting on in years.
What does this tell us?
At the very least
we are reminded that
God views people differently from the way we do.
We make different choices
about what is important
so we look for wealth, success, power and prestige
..God looks differently.
There is an invitation here
in the Christmas story
to look with different eyes
at the world in which we live.
In the reading from the Hebrew bible too,
we read of David's desire to build a Temple.
This seems like a righteous desire,
a good thing,
but it is not what God wants.
We do not always get it right,
we are often fixated on the material when God is inviting us
to look deeper.
These are two modest insights
that we get from addressing the stories of the Bible
rather than sidetracking it.
Making room
Part of the frustration for us at Christmas
is finding Jesus
amidst it all.
Let us not so much complain
about what Woolworths and Target do,
let us rather see the challenge
to point ourselves and others
to Jesus.
Ask tricky intelligent questions
of your youngsters:
Why did God come as a baby?
What is he trying to tell us by being born in a stable?
Why did the shepherds and the wise men come? and what do you think they said to Mary and Joseph?
What would we say to them?
If we get that close then we have done very well indeed!
What would we say to Mary and Joseph?