Words for Worship

Ministry Today

There is electricity in a crowd waiting in line, or in a huddle, anxious for doors to be opened. This is true at a cinema or sports venue or on the first day of a sale. They can hardly wait; they feel that they are on the threshold of something marvellous.

 

Well that’s where we are at today as well. Because the readings we have just heard prepare us for the upcoming feast by giving us the clues to the mysteries we will be celebrating. They also bring together the major themes of Advent: promise, repentance, transformation and joy. And so we stand on the threshold, eager for the doors to be opened for us to step into Christmas and enjoy the marvels prepared for us there.

 But what exactly will we find inside?

 

Well the first few scenes, if Christmas was a play, or first few stalls, if Christmas was a fair, would seem disappointing. And the reason being that the basic nativity storyline is actually very very ordinary. Start – if you will - by looking at Bethlehem. Now this is grey dormitory town for the vibrant capital city of Jerusalem. For although it was remembered as the birthplace of the great king David, Bethlehem really never made a name for itself in any other way. A sort of early day Wolverhampton or paisley therefore. We see as well a young pregnant woman hastening to help an older relative who is also with child. Up to this point then the Christmas script is everyday, mundane even boring. It wouldn’t even fill an episode of a soap opera. And so we ask ourselves - What is God up to?

 

Nevertheless, the play goes on – the displayed scenes continue – yet they are becoming distinctly seamy if not squalid!

 

For now we see a child born into painfully spare circumstances, into the darkest of all nights. His mother had already endured contractions on the back of a donkey. In modern parlance this would be the back seat of some rancid old saloon car. Then after a 90 miles compulsory journey to Bethlehem – let make it over 400 by today’s standards-  there was nowhere but a barn to complete her labour. Let us replace this with a tawdry motorway service area or a filthy bus station of this day and age.  

 

Here then is a depressingly familiar story told almost daily by the tabloid newspapers.

 

Moreover, if we happened personally upon a birth like this - our eyes would smart with tears, and we would murmur, “Such a shame, such a tragedy.” Indeed, soon we know the scene would end with a social worker rushing in and snatching the baby Jesus as a child at risk.

 

And so even more we wonder what God is up to?  

Yet then a miracle unfolds in this unrelenting welter of human messiness and ordinary misfortune. For the child now cries. And that cry instantly pierces the delicate membrane that segregates heaven from earth. The enveloping curtain is torn asunder and we see for the very first time glory shining all around.

Now things start to happen. Now we are moving at speed. Now we experience new and rich scenes; visions of wonder and beauty; activities beyond our imaginings.  And as an outcome, we begin to marvel at events more worthy of Stargate than Coronation Street.  

Because now we hear angels singing, reminding us that this baby is God’s response to our hope. We hear the angel promising that this is indeed the child promised to frustrate the darkness with divine light. We join too the hard bitten shepherds sprinting toward the star.  For now, our mundane shabbiness is thrown aside by that message of Good News. In fact, the astounding news that this child is God; the Prince of Peace; the keystone to our eternal destiny.

Nevertheless – we are still left wondering – what in dickens is God up too?

Well, this two tiered story might be being told to encourage us. Encourage us with the realisation that the mystery of the Incarnation comes to ordinary people living ordinary lives in ordinary places. That the incarnation comes to the likes of you and me instead of high priests, film stars and multimillionaires. More to the point, it comes because of and not despite of the commonplace and muddle and sometimes grottiness of our lives. It comes simply because we are ordinary.

Because this week, I was preparing for my Christmas talk to Grove Academy when I happened across a video clip of people about what Christmas meant to them. Maybe not surprisingly they all prattled on about family, presents and chilling out. But not one of them had the meaning of Christmas – not one knew what truth was to being celebrated. And that is the idea of God coming to earth; the idea that a channel is open from the decidedly imperfect to the perfect; the idea that spectacular wonder is right here in our ordinariness.

 

Let us as practicing Christians then not make the same mistake. Since we must never forget what God is up to. Since in a few days time, he will once more transgress the boundary between the everyday and the wondrous to show up in the person of Jesus. He will shatter the wall between heaven and earth to show us that he truly loves us.  He will indeed open the doors between heaven and earth. All we need do is to walk in – in the ordinary way – that is.

 

Amen

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Game of two halves