The presents have been unwrapped, the feast has been eaten, now is the time to remember the Christ in Christmas.
Christmas cards, modern carols, and shopping advertisements, paint an idyllic picture of Christmas as a season of happiness and togetherness. However, that mandatory coming together around the Christmas season often highlights fault lines and issues in our families and relationships, or maybe our lack of family – separation, grief, poverty, homelessness.
Rushing, preparing, shopping, finishing off work before holidays, dealing with the emotional challenges of the season. Christmas is often a messy, complicated time of year.
It was in a messy, complicated time that Jesus was born.
Mary, the mother of Jesus, was no stranger to mess and complications. A young unmarried women pregnant in mysterious circumstances. Travelling in late pregnancy with no welcome at the end. This was Joseph's home town, where was his family?
Similarly, God speaks to us in the middle of our messy, complicated lives.
Are we listening?
At the heart of the Christmas story, ordinary humans, Mary and Joseph, heard God speak into their ordinary lives and responded in action. Mary's response to the angel Gabriel is "Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word." (Luke 1:38). Similarly Joseph's response to the Angel of the Lord, 'he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife' (Matt 1:24). Their faith gave rise to action.
Our response to the Christmas story should be to feel a call to action.
Christmas and down time brings into focus some of the messes in our lives, relationship or job issues, the people we miss, the things that worry us and weary us. It is a season which often highlights what we do and don’t have in comparison to others.
Yet, the whole story shows us that messy and complicated is life. From the ancient Israelites, displaced and persecuted for generations, to Mary and Joseph, to Jesus' ministry, to the life and witness of early Christians.
In Bethlehem, the Son of God, the one we know as the Saviour of the World, is born as a fragile human baby, surrounded by barn animals with 'unclean' shepherds as witnesses. The power to change the world can be found in the lowliest of places. He is Emmanuel "God with us!" not God above us. As he is one with us, we are one with him.
The message is the same for our modern world as it was for ancient Israel. And perhaps modern politics shows us the answer to be true. That is, that salvation in a messy, complicated world won’t come from someone we appoint as a leader. We cannot look to another for our hope. It comes from within ourselves and spreads when we join together – as neighbours.
In the words of John Lennon, "and so this is Christmas, and what have you done, another year older, a new one just begun."
As we reflect on the year past, and the year ahead – perhaps things haven’t worked out so well. Perhaps the new year ahead poses new challenges we are pondering right now.
And the good news is - there is no stable, no place in our world that is too remote, too messy, too complicated, that God cannot be there – all we need to do is let him in.
An old quote, but a goody.
“Each of us is an innkeeper who decides if there is enough room for Jesus”.
May the word live in us
And bear much fruit to his glory