December 25, 2016

Helen Jacobi

Christmas Day     Isaiah 9:2-7     Luke 2:1-20

In some ways they shouldn’t have been surprised; the people of Mary and Joseph’s generation.

Prophets down through the ages had promised that someone would come; a special someone.

Maybe because it had been so long, and the promises never seemed to be fulfilled, they had given up really expecting anything to happen.

Times were tough though;

Romans in control of Palestine;

puppet token kings on the throne:

Herod and his cronies;

people struggling with taxes and soldiers;

the kind of environment that leads to people hoping for a better life; hoping for freedom.

Like the people of Syria, the Sudan, Iraq and Palestine today.

People hope and pray for change and in the end will lay their lives on the line to bring it about.

Civilians will risk being bombed, day after day, trying to go about their daily lives; aid workers and medical teams, the now famous White Helmets carry on helping and working against all odds.

People hope and believe they can find freedom and peace.

What was a surprise for the people of Jesus’ time was the way God came to their aid.

There was no army, no political or military leader, no revolution, no overturning of governments.

Instead there was a baby.

An ordinary every day event; happens across the world every single day. Yet for mothers and fathers across the world the birth of your own child is no ordinary event; it is life changing; can be scary; can be exciting; can be traumatic; can be peaceful and beautiful.

A child born in Palestine today is born into a world of conflict just like Jesus was.

A child born in Aotearoa NZ might be born into a life of poverty and struggle or might be showered with wealth and possessions.

Both can be happy children if they are loved and cared for.

 I think every parent is surprised by the experience of childbirth, or adopting a baby.

Nothing can prepare you for the experience.

You have to live it and savour it.

Mary and Joseph were surprised.

Why were they the ones chosen?

Why this time, this day, and not another time, another couple?

Why angels and dreams and strange visitors?

But they would have also had the “normal” experiences and feelings of ordinary parents.

Will everything be alright?

will we manage?

Mary, we are told, remembered all that had been said to her and pondered these things in her heart.

She would surely have wondered and pondered a lot: what on earth does all this mean;

while she got on with the ordinary stuff of motherhood, caring for her family.

God it seems, uses the ordinary and the everyday to bring about the extraordinary and the special.

And really that should not have been a surprise either: all through the ages God had used unlikely, ordinary people:

Abraham and Sarah began the dynasty of the people of Israel very late in life:

Moses and Miryam were slaves in Egypt;

King David started out as a young shepherd boy; many of the prophets like Jeremiah were run out of town.

Mary and Joseph were nobodies.

But God chose them anyway.

So it looks like God could choose any of us for surprising tasks.

We might be parents astonished by the gifts of our children; not Xmas gifts but the gifts of love, pride in what they do and just being together.

We might be a friend to someone in real need of a friend;

we might find ourselves as a leader at school or at work when we didn’t think that was our job or our gift;

we might be welcoming family this year who have had a rough year and need our support;

we might be helping a friend face serious illness;

we might be taking on a new job in the new year which is daunting and exciting at the same time.

Any number of things we might do that are surprising to us; we look back and think; how did I manage that?

These things are not surprising to God and the fact that we stepped up and met the challenge is not surprising to God either.

For God meets us in the every day and the ordinary and somehow we keep on being surprised by that.

2000 years on we celebrate this birth and we can get stuck in the story of the birth and all its magic and we forget that the story is all about God meeting us in our lives; Immanuel, God with us.

God walks with us, journeys with us, stays with us in the bad times and the good.

There should be no surprise at all for God has promised that it will be so. Jesus showed us that is so.

God’s love is as predictable as the pop of a Christmas cracker.

It is always there.

We only have to pick it up and find a friend to share it with.

Then anything is possible.