Christmas Day 2009

Titus 3. 4-7
Luke 2. 1-20

You know much of contemporary life seems to be about trying to get ahead; at least about trying to keep up. As children our very earliest experiences of moving  from the warmth and security of home out into the world are about finding that the world is about competition: competition in sport; competition in friendships; competition in our schooling; competition in the world of work, competition for housing now in our big city. And the nightly diet of the political shenanigans of our politicians is one continuous carping competition of one-upmanship. Life seems to be about getting on top of someone else in order to get to the centre of things or getting to that place where the greatest acclaim comes our way.

Sports parents whipping their kids into a winning frenzy;
The things we buy to strut as badges of our status;
Education for our kids so they can get an advantage over others;
and the work world, which is no longer simply about making a living but is unrelentingly competitive.
It all seems to be getting worse as we round around in ever-decreasing circles to just keep up.

So it’s strange that the story of God coming into the world in Jesus is not about the much longed for child arriving in the centre of things but on the wrong side of the tracks;  on the margins; outside the town; where no one of any significance might notice.

The place, Luke tells us, where Joseph and Mary have to stop and where the Christ-child is born is like the local truck stop. It’s the place where the caravan trains stop for protection for the night. A place that house both people and animals; the people are housed upstairs; the animals housed downstairs. It’s amongst the animals that Joseph and Mary bed down. Clean straw and nicely groomed animals would be the exception here rather than the rule. It probably stank of human and animal waste, been full of rough men of the road and rough women and children who gather where they congregate. It’s not a pretty picture.
Why this place for such an auspicious birth? In nativity plays the shepherds always appear rather apprehensive about arriving at the stable but in reality they would have probably felt very at home here. It was probably one of the few places where their company was not proscribed.

I have been struck this year as we have moved through the reading cycle of the church year that the stories of scripture seem to be consistently about the transforming life of God coming into play in the most unlikely of places; in the darkness; in the difficult experiences of life; in the lives of people who were considered to be beyond the pail. It’s a troublesome theme because it reminds us that God will not be fitted into our categories of what it means to be of value.

Especially in the Gospel of Luke, from which we hear the story of the birth in the stable and the visit of the angels to the shepherds, the ministry of Jesus is always to those who live on the margins; they are rarely the winners and if they are, like the financial winner Zaccheus, then they have lost out in some other way. But Jesus seeks them out and gathers them into a sense that God first and foremost is concerned for them. Acts and words of healing which gather people into a sense that God is for them even if everything else is against them.

For us as people who seek to follow Jesus’ example and way our calling is to realise that God is so often found in the wrong place. This is an inner and an outer reality. An inner reality for ourselves as the work of God’s healing and renewal comes for us in those places of which we are most ashamed; where we are the weakest and the most vulnerable. And an outer reality, because as Jesus says in the gospel of Matthew: as you did acts of kindness for the least of these you did them for me.

Our calling is to seek God in our spiritual practice in the places which are personally most difficult and acts of kindness and compassion in the world around us in places which there is deep need and pain. And when we feel ground down by the competitiveness ourselves our calling is to distance ourselves from it and remember that the life of God is not be found here so we need only participate in our frenzied contemporary existence lightly.

Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favours! The words are stunning words for the shepherds because everywhere else the message loud and clear for them would have been God does not favour them. But God does say the heavenly messengers! This is good news! May God grant us grace to allow this good news to enter in and be born in us.