So... I had a rough Christmas. First off, things have been stressful for the last few years. Secondly, I have two young daughters who try as they might just don’t have the emotional strength to handle stress. Third, it was hard to do anything in the house because of renovations that have torn everything apart. Finally, I got sick, with everything under the sun, culminating in shingles of all things...
My life this season has been about being told to live as stress free as possible while managing households, relatives, shopping, cooking, kids and endless regimes of brightly coloured pills.
Why do I tell you these things? Mainly to set the stage for a concrete understanding of Christmas and the seasons of our lives; you see, sometimes we fantasize that there is a “perfect” life out there somewhere. Most of us have far more troublesome times than good ones though. The Bremner’s are struggling with the near fatal accident that their grandson was in. Helen Patterson and June Oke lost their mother. And that is just the two things I know about that went wrong in our community.
I keep bringing up these aspects of our lives because I know that the Bible is not ancient history.
One can read the stories and think of them as just something that happened half way around the world to people we never met. But these stories were not written as history – they were written as stories to bring us closer to seeing our own lives the way they should be seen.
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So imagine this, all of you men out there... Someone comes to your home and tells you to go off to Toronto next Monday, so that the government can access you a new 25% tax. If you don’t go, the American Marines will come and burn your house down. Your wife is 10 months pregnant, and only 16 years old, and all alone with all those soldiers milling about. So, you put her in the station wagon and head off down the highway... hoping as you hit each pothole that she doesn’t go into labour. You have 100 dollars for gas, food, and lodging because pay day is next week, and there is a blizzard coming. How are you feeling? Is this your idea of a good time?
Okay... all you women back there... think back to being sixteen... now, imagine you are pregnant out of wedlock, and it is NOT your boyfriends. It really doesn’t matter whose it is, the main thing you and his family care about is that it is not his. And here you are overdue, in pain, barely able to walk, nauseous so you cannot eat; and the invading soldiers are making it impossible to get any help. Now you have to drive to Toronto – through roadblocks and sleeping in bed bug infested motels that are all you can afford. When you get there aren’t even any rooms, but someone lets you sleep on an old army cot in a garage behind the hotel. Paint and gas fumes make it hard to breathe, the blizzard hits, and you go into labour.
That is the story of Christmas.
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What do you think Joseph was thinking when Jesus was born? What do you think was going through Mary’s mind? Do you think it was magical? Do you think they were standing there, hands folded on their laps, watching the little baby as it slept quietly, halo softly glowing?
I have just one corrective to offer you... lack of anaesthetic.
Mary was probably passed out from the pain and effort, the baby was probably cold, hungry, screaming, and barely alive. Joseph was certainly out of his depth; not knowing how to care for either one; midwives did that sort of thing, or mother in laws, certainly not men.
I bet there was not a single person who could see God at work in all of this.
You’ve been there too... I bet. I would be willing to wager there are moments of every holiday, about every day, where we sit back, sigh, and say, this is not how I dreamt it would be. This isn’t how I thought it would turn out.
I also know that most of our lives we find it very hard to see where God is at work in all of this. We could be sick, we could be alone, we could be broke, we could be scared, we could be hungry, or we could simply be overwhelmed... and this is what God wanted our lives to be about?
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There was this writer once who wanted to tell a story that would help us see how God relates to us in these moments. He chose the most unlikely of characters, an unwed couple, a baby, some shepherds, and some Persian astronomers and fortune tellers... the so called Wise Men.
And Matthew says that all of a sudden, out of the blue, these people showed up in the lives of a poor labourer and his child bride and gave them unbelievable gifts. They brought gold in a world where a copper penny was a month’s wages; perfume in a world where even water was impossible to find, and Myrrh.
Myrrh is a spice so precious that most people got a little bit and kept it all of their lives, they kept it for something so special, so sacred, that it only happened once... anointing the body after death.
What if someone showed up this afternoon and did something so unbelievable that you knew, without a doubt that you had worth; that you were loved; that there was a God?
I have heard a lot of people say that God doesn’t give us more than we can handle... Which simply is not true; first off, God doesn’t cause pain. Secondly, there is going to be a whole lot in life we cannot handle. No matter how strong you think you are, something will happen that will leave you slumped at the foot of the bed.
It is in those moments that God does give you something.... God gives you a reminder of how special you are. The messenger who brings you that Good News will probably be someone you never expected. Angel is Greek for “Messenger” by the way. It could be a shepherd, or a fortune teller, or a friend, or a stranger, someone will come with the most precious of gifts – something that you can hold on to until you need it most.
In that moment, God will be reborn in this world once again.
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