Christmas Message

December 23, 2024

A Christmas Message for wherever you find yourself geographically or otherwise this season.

***

It’s been a strange few weeks in the run up to Christmas back in the UK. After almost a decade in the States, all the usual habits and plans for Christmas don’t work here. Cornbread dressing doesn’t really exist, peppermint bark is hard (but not impossible) to come by and if you’re friends with me on Facebook, you already know about the coffee cake dilemma there is on this small island (cf. before/after photos of my first DIY attempt). On the upside, mince pies, mulled wine and other British Christmas delights have been fun to rediscover.

One habit I’ve had through December is to read through some of Luke’s gospel. Sometimes I read the whole thing (it helpfully has 24 chapters to mark each day of Advent), other times I read smaller sections. Sometimes English, sometimes in the Greek. Either way, I find great value in coming back to the basics of the gospel: the story of Jesus, from his birth to his death to his resurrection. The story doesn’t change, regardless of which side of the Atlantic I’m on.

I had a student come and talk to me about an essay she’s writing on Hagar in the book of Genesis. She noted the remarkable similarity between Hagar’s encounter with God and Mary’s (Genesis 16:11 and Luke 1:31, if you want to look for yourself).

But others are quite striking too.

I was held by the comparison between the angel’s appearance to Zechariah versus that of Mary. I’ve often heard comparison sermons between these two figures and the discrepancy between how they responded to the divine message they were receiving (i.e. Mary had faith, Zechariah didn’t). But what really struck me this time was the geographical location of their respective stories: Zechariah was a priest in the temple, Mary was a betrothed young girl in Nazareth.

What difference does that make?

Well let me set you a scene…

In the very presence of God, Zechariah wants to 'figure it out'

Zechariah was a priest. He was trained in the Torah. We’re told he and Elizabeth were righteous and blameless before God, keeping all of God’s commandments. He knew the rules and rituals around temple worship. His section was on duty and he was chosen by lot to go into the holy of holies and offer incense. This was a morning and evening daily practice for the temple clergy (cf. Exodus 30:7-8). With about 8,000 priests in Jerusalem, that Zechariah was chosen would have been a pretty significant moment in his ministerial life. He would be the one to go into to the sanctuary of the Lord, the place of the ark of the covenant, where God himself said he would meet his people (cf. Ex 30:6).

In short: it was a pretty big deal. [The Mishnah Tamid describes what the practice likely involved: m. Tamid 5:3-6:2]

And in the execution of this duty, Zechariah encounters an angel of the Lord. He’s troubled. Terrified. The angel tells him his prayers have been answered and his wife is going to bear a child, despite being barren and post-menopausal.

And he asks how can he know this is really going to happen?

I don’t know about you, but if I was standing in the very place God had promised to reside and be present with his people, I’d hope my response would be a little more faithful. Here’s Zechariah in God’s throne room, questioning how something can be possible.

All that experience. All that knowledge. All that religious practice. But when push comes to shove, Zechariah is slow to catch on. Even when in presence of God himself. If not here, where would be good enough? The shepherds on the hillside might have more reason to question whether what they were seeing was a phantasm.

But Zechariah? In the Temple? Before the altar of God?

It strikes me that this just reveals the dramatic difference there is between the seen and known things of religion and an active and mature faith in God. If religious practice and habits we employ aren’t matched by a growing intimacy and walk with God, we can miss the obvious. Even when we’re the most obvious place in the world for them to happen We get too caught up in the details. We get caught up in the doctrinal weeds. We want to understand and “figure it out” more than we want to believe and receive the gift of faith on offer.

But faith isn’t about figuring it out. It’s about living it out.

In the back-end of nowhere, Mary’s ready to 'live it out.'

By contrast, Mary is in young virgin engaged to be married who is from Nazareth. Nazareth would have been a small village of about 200, maybe an hour’s walk from the much larger Sepphoris. It isn’t mentioned in the Old Testament. It wouldn’t have been well-known. Luke indicates this in 1:26 when says “In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth.”

Now no-one needs to introduce Dallas, Austin or Houston by saying “in a city in Texas called…” Everyone knows where they are. But how about Port Lavaca? Or Van Horn? They need a little more context. A little more introduction.

In Gabriel’s second appearance in Luke, he shows up in a very different place. From the holy of holies to the middle of nowhere. From the centre of religious worship to a unknown town.

I remember Stephen and I driving around Nottingham where we lived when we were first married. We drove through a very ordinary suburb. Not the kind of England you see on Morse or Endeavour or Christmas movies like A Very British Christmas (yes, we’ve just watched it). There are no cobblestone roads, historic pubs or fields of bleating sheep where we were. These were pretty generic homes in a pretty generic neighbourhood. People walking their kids to school. Waiting for a bus. Dealing with a flat tyre. Nothing to see of note.

Stephen turned to me and explained that since living in the UK, he’d realized this was far more the real England than the stuff you see on TV. And he was right. Nowhere-ville.

Maybe Nazareth was like that. Nowhereville, in Galilee.

It is here that Mary receives Gabriel’s message. A place you wouldn’t expect a divine visitation. And certainly not to a teenage girl about to be married. Mary hears she’s to conceive and bear a son.

And Mary, unlike Zechariah, believes. “How will this be?” she asks. She’s confused like Zechariah was, but she believes. And you know the rest of the story.

Where are you this Christmas?

There’s a lot of room for reflection here. I invite you to think about them for yourself. Where do you find yourself in this story?

There are lots of ways we could connect these two places. We could think about the two boys promised: one the last OT prophet in John, who would call for religious change and repentance in anticipating of the second, not a prophet but a promised one, God in the flesh, coming to dwell with his people not in the religious establishment but in the middle of nowhere and nobodies.

We could talk about those of us with long histories of serving in church, whether as clergy, vestry/PCC members, lay leaders, outreach workers or children’s pastors. How we so pre-occupied with the business of God we doubt the power of God when it is revealed. We could contrast that with those who encounter God in nowhere places, in their dreams and on the streets, that would challenge religious sensibilities and propriety.

But I want to leave you instead with this: God worked with them both. He had patience for Zechariah’s figuring it out alongside Mary’s readiness. He revealed himself in the Temple and in Nazareth. Perhaps the message isn’t only in the contrast but in what they share and they embody: God’s levelling purposes at work in the world. Zechariah’s doubt left him mute for months. God confounded his expectations and then shut him up. Zechariah was disciplined, humbled. Brought low. Mary was raised up from nowhere. Honoured. Now heralded as a figure of faith.

God works with us. Correcting. Disciplining. Humbling. Raising up the lowly. Bringing honour where the world might see shame.

My hope is that wherever you find yourself this Christmas, that you encounter something of this God. The God who brings down and builds up. The God who doesn’t rule in the way the religious elite ruled (then or now). The God who works in the hidden and the unseen and the insignificant. Let yourself be brought low by it all if you need to.

Be humbled by the scandal of the nativity where you’ve got caught up in religious practice.

Be open and receptive to the promise of a present God, even if you think you’re not qualified.

And be ready not to 'figure it out,' but to 'live it out.'

Merry Christmas!

******

Photo by Rick Oldland on Unsplash

< Older Post

Making a Beginning (or the "Both-And" of Worship): A Sermon on Ezra 3:8-13

By Suse McBay • November 24, 2024

This term, in the Wycliffe Hall Communion services, we are preaching our way through Ezra. After a rather brilliant sermon on the VERY length lists and genealogies in Ezra 1-2 and a thoughtful reflection on the festival of booths celebrated in Ezra 3:1-7, I was up to preach on the second half of that chapter, vv.8-13. The full text of the sermon is below the video.

What do we mean when we say God "cares"? Some thoughts on 1 Peter 5:7

By Suse McBay • November 15, 2024

“ Cast your anxieties on Him, because He cares for you. ” 1 Peter 5:7 This is one of my favourite verses in the New Testament, because it’s one that I’ve often read as an after-thought to the one that precedes it: “ Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you in due time .” As a post-script, I’ve heard it as a hasty reminder that God is nice. And even nice to me. But over time, they've taken on deeper significance. How? Well, it started by thinking about what it might mean for God to “care”? The term is used by the disciples when the storm is assaulting their boat and Jesus is asleep in the stern. " Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing ?" (Mk. 4:38). Their assumption is that one who cares is one who acts to rescue those who are in danger. If Jesus is asleep when they’re about to drown, then he must not care for them. Similarly, in John 10, the hired hands are those who do not care for the sheep in contrast to the Good Shepherd who does what? He lays down his life for the sheep. His care is not a feeling of goodwill but it acts to save . [[ That the role of shepherds is to act to protect and keep the sheep safe is a point I was reminded of this week in an excellent critique of the responses to the ABC's resignation and the abuse and negligence described in the Makin report... but that's a blog post for another day. ]] *** What I find most interesting and relevant to 1 Peter 5:7 is the story we find in Luke 10: Mary and Martha welcoming Jesus into their home. Martha is busy with the work of hospitality. Mary is learning from Jesus and remains sat as his feet, listening, which fuels Martha's complaint. “ Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me .” (Lk. 10:40) Does Jesus not care about the unfair divvying up of duties? That Martha has not just the lion's share but is doing it all . If he cares, then he should act and tell Mary to pull herself together and do her part. How does Jesus reply? “ Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things, there is need of only one thing… ” Martha is worried and distracted. Just like the person described in 1 Peter 5:7, she is anxious. She is pulled in different directions, she has a lot on her plate and she needs help. *** If we consider the Luke passage carefully and in light of 1 Peter 5:7, we can begin to see some of Martha’s willingness to trust Jesus. She is anxious (though she doesn't quite admit it as such—Jesus has to point that out). What does she do with that her fretting? She goes to the one she is coming to believe cares for her. Yes, she’s a bit demanding and pushy about it, but she knows Jesus is the answer. She knows that if Jesus cares about her, he will act. He will see her, recognise her struggle and do something to change the circumstances she’s in. However, there’s one thing missing. For 1 Peter 5:7 doesn’t say that God cares about us so much he’ll help us to manage our anxieties so all the plates we have up stay spinning. It doesn’t say we get to pretend we’re not anxious, that our life would actually be manageable if God would just provide the crutch or material solution to keep us going in our denial. 1 Peter 5:7 says we are to cast our anxieties on Him . Turn them over to Him. For Martha, that might have looked like putting down the pots and pans, cease chopping vegetables (or whatever it was she was doing) and give that burden of hospitality over to Jesus. The desire to welcome. The frustration that her sister was ignoring her responsibilities and taking the posture of a disciple. What if Martha had admitted it by physically putting down the weight of her frustration and angst and trusting them to Jesus? Trusting that maybe the world won’t come crashing down around her if she does. That somehow, in the letting go, things will find a solution. *** To be honest, I’ve had one or two things happen recently where I’ve been forcibly reminded that God’s care is real. It's been a little painful. It only came through action I had to take, but that action only came because I hit something of a brick wall in my own efforts: I learned the lesson the hard way. Yet whether learned the easy way or the hard way, I've been reminded that our anxieties can't be counseled into submission. No willpower will fix it. Instead, the solution is found through stepping out (or in reality, stepping back) and doing concrete thing that turns it all over to God. Things like saying no, admitting vulnerability, not demanding of others but actively resetting what my expectations are of myself. Saying things differently. Doing things differently. Making changes. Learning to embrace my humanity rather than fight it. It's been in doing these kinds of things that I have discovered once again that the world does not need me to live at maximum capacity for it to keep spinning. I don't need a caffeine-fuelled life (though I am still drinking an occasional coffee). It's in the letting go that I allow myself to be cared for by God. That I discover things will be just fine without me. And perhaps [ edit: by which I mean definitely ] the world will be better off as a result. *****