Isaiah 62: 6 – end; Psalm 97; Titus 3: 4 – 7; Luke 2: 8 – 20
I wonder if you’ve been putting up Christmas decorations in the last few weeks. Or if, like me, you’re rather busy just before Christmas – perhaps in the last few days. Perhaps you have a crib scene as part of your decorations. Mine was made for me by my favourite Auntie, so it’s very special. It has a lovely star which I hang up over the stable. And it has a flat place for an angel to stand on one side of the roof of the stable. And there’s an angel dressed in white and silver which I always stand on top of the stable.
But in Luke’s account of the birth of Jesus which we just heard there is no star. And there are no angels hanging around the place where Jesus is born. They’re out in the fields outside the town giving their message to a bunch of shepherds, singing their song of praise into the dark skies.
Angels are God’s messengers. One comes, out of the blue, to a shocked and terrified bunch of very ordinary shepherds minding their own business – and their sheep – outside town. Next there’s a whole host of them, ‘Glory to God in the highest,’ they call – ‘the Saviour, the Messiah, the Lord is born – peace on earth and goodwill from God to all humankind’. The sign that this is true? Nothing so remarkable. Just a man, a young woman and a newborn baby in an overcrowded town. Every birth is a miracle.
Perhaps four or five centuries before this birth, we don’t know exactly when, the prophet Isaiah wrote these words: “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down” (Isaiah 64:1). This was a dark time when God’s people felt discouraged and abandoned. We too may wonder where God is, as we long for a better, juster, more peaceful world.
Remarkably, two thousand years after the shepherds first heard it the angel’s message is still reverberating because of the life of that baby. He was born in a village and grew up in another. He worked as a carpenter until he was 30. Then, for three years, he was an itinerant preacher.
He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family or owned his home. He never travelled far from the place where he was born. He did none of the things that usually accompany greatness. He had no credentials but himself.
He was only 33 when the tide of public opinion turned against him. His friends ran away. He was turned over to his enemies and went through a sham trial. He was nailed to a cross between two thieves. While he was dying, his executioners gambled for his garments, the only property he had. When he was dead, he was laid in a borrowed grave, through the pity of a friend…..Twenty centuries have come and gone, and yet still today Jesus inspires millions of people all over the world. One could perhaps even say that He was the central figure of the human race. [1]
In Jesus, Christians believe that God has indeed torn open the heavens and come down to us. In her poem ‘Bethlehem’ Carol-Ann Duffy imagines the responses of those who were there when Jesus was born:
“And one wept at a miracle; another
was hoping it might be so;
others ran, daft, shouting, to boast in the waking streets.”
And Mary, we’re told, treasures the words of the shepherds, turning them over and over in her heart. Adding them to what she already senses or knows about her extraordinary child. Waiting to see what will happen.
The angels and the shepherds tell us that God has indeed come to us. Not in the way that Isaiah and the prophets expected, not as we might have expected. But in all the vulnerability of a human life. A life lived selflessly.
Well, you might want to go home and rearrange your crib scene now. If you don’t have one, you can still perhaps go in your imagination to Bethlehem. Ask yourself where you fit in the scene. How are you going to respond to that one life which changed the world, our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ?
“Glory to God in the highest and peace to his people on earth”
Amen
[1] Attributed to James Allen Francis (heavily paraphrased)