St John
1.14: So the Word became flesh; he
pitched his tent among us, and we saw his glory Christmas provides us with small beginnings for a big picture. The story may just be too familiar to us to see this or we may no longer be inspired by what is familiar. And yet, once the decorations have been put away, once the wrapping paper has been scrunched up and thrown out, once the turkey stock is well used up for pot after pot of soup, we are left with the familiar as that which lies ahead of us. It is not that joy and happiness are replaced by what is familiar; it is more that the familiar is where we need to start looking for the extraordinary – and, with God incarnate, we will surely find it there.
The baby Jesus is familiar to us at Christmas. Not only do we hear the angel announcing that the baby will be born in Bethlehem; we see through the eyes of faith God in human form born on earth in humble circumstances. God identifies physically with us in the humanity which is at the core of our identity. Identity is both the place and the pace of who we are. And God gives us more and more of God’s self, which means that our humanity above all is vital to who we are yet to become. And so the humanity of God is vital to us also. The belonging which we have with other people needs the familiar, if we are to make and sustain the connections with the God who became human at Christmas. We should never regret nor resent the familiar. It is who we are. It gives us life, belonging and dignity.
The shepherds are familiar to us at Christmas. They are in every crib we see in our towns and community centres and which we set up in our homes and they feature in every nativity play we watch – often with tea towels around their heads! There is little more familiar than a tea towel, I might venture to suggest. We ought to treasure tea–towels; they tell a story of hospitality and hospitality is at the core of the First Christmas. The shepherds are people who exercize, quite literally, pastoral care, that phrase so scattered around in the life of the church like fairy dust – and taken for granted. Pastoral care is gritty, it is grubby, it is dangerous and it is exposed. Shepherds know this. It also needs to be cautious and careful, protective and courageous. These people are often portrayed to us as simple. I suggest that they are far from it; they are shrewd and attentive and they challenge the sentimentality which so often is the ruination of Christmas by their realism. They have a livelihood to make, they have stock and capital to secure and replace. And yet these are the people who heed God and who take spiritual risks. And they do so in the midst of busy lives.
The angels are familiar to us at Christmas. And we have come upon them long before Christmas Day. They have brought good news to both Zechariah about John the Baptizer and to Mary about Jesus the Saviour. By the news they carry they have transformed what is familiar – the birth of children – into the place where God talks and acts, where human lives are shot through with light and life in ways which never ever happened before. As we meet angels at Christmas, the message they bring is one of joy and gladness. They set the scene and they create the atmosphere for singing on the part of Zechariah and of Mary. The angels give us the grammar and the vocabulary of the trust which overcomes fear, of the strength which overcomes foolishness and of the call and invitation which turn the unlikely – an old man and a young girl – into those who fight for freedom. And we shall see the angels very soon again in a different role, one of accompaniment and protection, because they will be there to shield and uphold this human Jesus in the Wilderness of Temptation in the Season of Lent.
John the Baptizer is becoming familiar to us at Christmas. He will be increasingly important as his life and the life of his cousin Jesus become intertwined in their adulthood. God has given them to one another in prophecy, in priesthood and in service in their infancy. Too often our view of leadership in the Christian way is one of pushing ahead, pushing past people, because our own message has an importance which cannot wait. We need to take stock of John who had to settle for being somewhat more in the background for another than in the foreground for himself. John, in his own person, has offered every disciple the following motto, if not mission statement: I must decrease so that Jesus may increase….
And, in many ways, this makes living with the familiar much more possible, indeed much more attractive. We are not asked or expected to do everything. We are not required always to be battling into a headwind in order to be someone who is acutely aware of being a child of God. And this is a way of life which suits many of us and brings to the fore the best in us because it genuinely gives us the scope and the permission to contribute in both service and leadership without having to think all the time about these words and wondering how we are performing or scoring. As God entered our world in both John and Jesus at Christmas, let us be led into God’s world in God’s good time.
The familiar is where all of us, sooner or later, find ourselves. To many of us in the Ireland of today it is unappealing and shows few signs of joyfulness. The scalpel of austerity digs deeper and deeper, particularly in the lives of those who already are well below the margin of survival, let alone comfort. The prospect of a wide range of embattled positions on abortion comes at a time when, inevitably, this will also be a plebiscite on Governmental performance in strained economic times – don’t ask me how, but I suggest it will be such!
And, of course, it is a highly complex and emotive ethical issue which emerges from a specific tragic human circumstance and one has to ask the question: Is this really the way to address such things? In Northern Ireland there is constantly need for communities not to drift apart internally and in their relationships with others. This danger is becoming more acute in parts of the Republic likewise and we need to be as careful and as vigorous as the shepherds right across today’s Ireland, careful and fiercely pastoral about the creeping threat of neo–sectarianism and neo–exclusivity as we live in the stomach–churning time of Centennial Commemorations.
All of this may seem far from the innkeeper and the child of Mary. It was the calling of Jesus Christ to bring and to strengthen peace. It is our calling to embrace the familiar in the name of Jesus Christ and to do likewise in the service and the leadership we give to others in the simplest and deepest of ways. The manger is our sanctuary and our town square. Jesus is our priest and our prophet – and the little child of Bethlehem.
St Luke 2.7a: Mary wrapped Jesus in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them at the inn.