You might be wondering why I have chosen to have two Gospel readings today, and no readings from other parts of the Bible. The thing is, the lectionary isn’t at all clear which to use, and gives both. So I thought, well, why not have both, for a change? They both, I believe, have things to say to us today.
From John chapter 1,
and verse 11:
“He came to his own
country, but his own people did not receive him.”
“He came to his own
country, but his own people did not receive him.”
The “He” we are
talking about is, obviously, Jesus, and we are looking at part of the
great Prologue to John's Gospel that we sometimes call the “Christmas
Gospel”.
I believe,
incidentally, that this first chapter of John is thought to have been
written last, a sort of summary, almost, of the whole thing,
or it may have been a
paraphrase of a then-current hymn, rather like Paul quotes one in
Philippians 2.
Not that it matters, of
course, not at this distance;
it is the Prologue to
John's Gospel, and it tells us of the Word of God,
the Light of the World,
who was rejected by his
own people but who adopted any and all who did choose to believe in
Him.
Which is basically the
whole of the Good News in one sentence, no?
Anyway, the thing about
this second half of the Prologue is that it spells out quite clearly
that anybody who does believe in Jesus becomes a child of God, not
through physical birth, but through spiritual birth.
John doesn't tell us
about the Wise Men coming to see Jesus –
only Matthew does that.
But the Wise Men are a
vital part of the Christmas story,
however strange a part.
Next week is the feast of the Epiphany, when you will be thinking a
little more about the coming of the Wise Men, but this week, we have
the second half of the story, the What Happened Next. And it doesn’t
make for pleasant reading.
Matthew tells us the
story largely from Joseph's point of view, of course, and there are
some very serious differences, not to say contradictions, between his
version of events and Luke's.
Matthew seems to think
that the Holy Family lived in Bethlehem, rather than Nazareth, which
was where they moved to for safety after they came back from Egypt.
No mention of mangers
or inns here –
and not even Luke says
the manger was actually in a stable!
As far as I can tell,
when he talks about the “inn”, he means the guest room that
many, if not most, houses had on the roof, and where Mary probably
expected to go to be confined, but if this was full of relations come
to town for the census, she had to give birth in the kitchen. The
manger would have separated the animal part of the house from the
human part – people lived together with their animals in those days
for warmth, as much as anything else. And we don’t know what time
of year it was, but probably not in the depths of winter, because the
sheep wouldn’t have been out in the fields then. So if the animals
were in the fields, the manger would be empty, and make a very
convenient cot for a tiny baby!
But none of that
matters, of course, not against the real truth, that God became a
human being:
the Word became Flesh
and lived among us, as our passage says:
“The Word became a
human being and, full of grace and truth, lived among us.
We saw his glory, the
glory which he received as the Father's only Son.”
That is what matters.
The details are just
details, and are not important.
So we are told that the
wise men came from the East – as far as we know, there weren’t
necessarily three of them, and they weren’t kings, either. But
they came from the East to worship the new-born King of the Jews, and
when they found out that He was to have been born in Bethlehem, off
they trotted – it’s only a few miles – and found Joseph the
Carpenter’s house easily enough. But when they had seen for
themselves – quite possibly, by now, a toddler staggering around
and falling over and being shy.... they went home by a different way
and avoided Jerusalem.
And Joseph and Mary and
the child had to flee, too, in the middle of the night. Some people
say the massacre may never have happened as there are no external
sources referencing it – but then, would there have been? I mean,
how many boys under the age of two were there likely to have been in
a village that size? They reckon Bethlehem held about 1000 people of
all ages, so probably only a handful of boys under the age of two –
and, sadly, probably no more children than are killed every day in
Syria. Absolutely awful for the parents, but not global newsworthy,
even back then.
But the Holy Family are
out of it, and have fled to Egypt. I’ve never been there, but my
mother went and sent me a picture of the Pyramids with the comment
that they would have been old when Jesus saw them as a boy! I wonder
whether he remembered that in later life?
We aren’t told how
long the family had to stay away, but with Joseph’s skills, he
would have had no trouble making a living for the family.
“Carpenter” isn’t quite an accurate translation of the word
“Technion” - it’s the word we get “Technician” from.
Basically, if it had to do with houses, Joseph did it – from
designing them to building them to making the furniture for them....
so no shortage of skilled work. And it’s probable that, because
they were, as far as we know, the only refugees at that time, they
were able to take a proper house in a village somewhere, rather than
have to live knee-deep in mud in a makeshift camp. But all the same
– a stranger, in a strange land. Joseph was glad, I suspect, to
pack up and go home again when he heard that Herod had died. But
even then he couldn’t go home, not back to his old home in
Bethlehem, but up to Nazareth, in Galilee – really provincial and
in the sticks if you were the sort of person who’d always lived
near Jerusalem. But it was safe, and the neighbours were Jewish, so
you felt far more at home there... and it was a lovely place to bring
up a growing family.
But we know that, once
he was grown, it was a different story. Once again, “his own
people did not receive him”, and he could do no miracles in his
home town when, home on a visit, he preached in the synagogue and
appalled the locals by saying “This Scripture has come true in your
hearing!”
And we know, too, that later on “ his own people did not receive
him” when the people who became his first followers were the
outcasts, the prostitutes, the collaborators, even the Gentiles, the
non-Jews. But we also know that “Some, however, did receive him
and believed in him; so he gave them the right to become God's
children. They did not become God's children by natural means, that
is, by being born as the children of a human father; God himself was
their Father.”
God himself is our
Father!
How true that is!
And isn't God great?!
The magi came to
Bethlehem to worship the new-born infant,
and we are invited to
do the same.
But we don’t just
worship him as a baby –
it’s not about going
smiling down at a baby kicking on a rug,
and saying “Oh how
clever” when he picks up a toy, or staggers a few steps unassisted.
No, worshipping the
Baby at Bethlehem involves a whole lot more than that.
It’s about
worshipping Jesus for Who He became, and what he did.
We kneel at the cradle
in Bethlehem, yes –
but we worship the
Risen Lord.
We celebrate Christmas,
not just because it’s Jesus’ birthday,
although that, too,
but because we are
remembering that if Jesus had not come,
he could not come
again.
And he could not be
“born in our hearts”, as we sing in the old carol.
Christmas isn't just a
remembering thing, I think, although that too –
it's also about
allowing the Lord Jesus to be born in our hearts,
about renewing our
relationship with him.
We worship at the
cradle in Bethlehem,
but we also worship
Jesus all year round,
remembering not only
his birth,
but his teachings,
his ministry,
the Passion,
the Resurrection,
the Ascension
and the coming of
the Holy Spirit.
And we worship, not
only as an abstract “Thing”–
what was that song:
“I will celebrate
Nativity, for it has a place in history....” –
it’s not just about
worshipping a distant divinity,
but about God with us:
Emmanuel.
Jesus, as a human
being, can identify with us.
He knows from the
inside what it is like to be vulnerable, ill, in pain, tempted.....
Jesus would have been
educated, as every Jewish boy was,
and probably taught to
follow his father’s trade.
After all, we think he
was about 30 when he started his ministry,
and he must have done
something in the eighteen years since we last saw him, as a boy in
the Temple.
I wonder, sometimes,
what he said when he hit his thumb with a hammer, as he undoubtedly
did more than once.
A friend and I were
discussing this once, and could come up with nothing more specific
than “Something in Aramaic!”
God with us:
a God who chose to live
an ordinary life,
who knows what it is to
be homeless, a refugee;
who knows what it is to
work for his living.
Who knows what it is to
be rejected, to be spat upon, to be despised.
Who knows what it’s
like to live in a land that was occupied by a foreign power.
Who came to his own
people, but his own did not receive him.
“Some, however, did receive him and believed in him; so he gave
them the right to become God's children. They did not become God's
children by natural means, that is, by being born as the children of
a human father; God himself was their Father.”
This, then, is the God
we adore. We sing “Joy to the World” at this time of year, and
rightly so, for the Gospel message is a joyful one.
But it is so much more
than just a happy-clappy story of the birth of a baby.
It is the story of the
God who is there. God with us. Emmanuel. Amen.
