Chetwynd Shared Ministry
December 31, 2017
First Lesson: Isaiah 61:10 – 62:3
Reflection:
The history of the
ancient people of Israel seems to follow a cycle of disaster and heartbreak,
followed by redemption by God-Whose-Name-Is-Holy. There was a famine in their land and people
were starving; but Joseph had reached a position of power under the Pharaoh and
he was able to bring his family to Egypt where there was food to eat. The people ended up in slavery in Egypt; but
then God acted through Moses to bring the people out of slavery in to freedom. The people wandered in the desert for 40
years; but God was always present with them, guiding them, and eventually they
arrived in the land that had been promised to them and to their ancestors. Many generations later, this land was taken
over by the Babylonian empire, the temple which was the home of
God-Whose-Name-Is-Holy was destroyed, and the people were taken into exile in
Babylon; but then the Babylonian empire fell, and the people were allowed to
return to the Promised Land.
Throughout all generations,
their hope was sustained by remembering that God had always been faithful to
them in the past, and could therefore be depended on to be faithful to them in
the future. Even when they lamented what
had happened to them, and even when they were angry at God for allowing
terrible things to happen to them – and believe me, you just have to read the
Psalms to get a sense of the depth of their pain and grief and anger – even
through all of that, they knew that God was with them and could still hear them
when they were crying out.
The last part of the
book of Isaiah was written just after the people had returned from exile in
Babylon. Isaiah uses the language of
shoots coming up in the garden in the springtime. Even when the ground looks bare and desolate,
new life always appears; and even when our lives look bare and desolate, new
life is coming. God has been faithful in
the past, and will be faithful until time has ended. Thanks be to God!
Hymn: Joy to the World!
Second Lesson: Luke 2:1-7
Reflection:
If we were to just
read this passage and not know any of the history of what came before and what
comes after, it is a very ordinary story.
A young couple are compelled by circumstances beyond their control to
travel far from their home – they had to travel approximately 80 miles, or 130
kilometers. The young woman is pregnant,
and while they are there in that strange city, her first child is born. She wraps him in bands of cloth – a receiving
blanket – and lies him in a warm and quiet place.
If we just read this,
it could be a story that happens every day.
It makes me think of some of the pictures that came out this fall of the
Rohingya refugees who were forced to leave their homes in Myanmar and travel on
foot to Bangladesh. Some of the women
were pregnant when they were forced to flee, and their babies were born on the
side of the road and in refugee camps.
Forced migration seems to be part of our human story.
If we want to see what
is special about this particular baby who was born far from home more than 2000
years ago, we have to look in the scriptures to what came before in the story,
and what was to come after.
Nine months
previously, an angel had appeared to his mother telling her that she would
become pregnant by the Holy Spirit, and that the child she would bear would be
holy, the Son of God. And when this baby
grew up, he would become a teacher and a healer; he would preach against the
empire and about the coming kingdom of God, he would eventually be executed on
a cross, but on the third day he would rise again.
But for now, he is a
newborn baby, wrapped in a blanket, lying in a manger far from home.
Hymn: What Child is This?
Third Lesson: Luke 2:8-20
Reflection:
“Then an angel of the
Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they
were terrified.”
Popular culture has
co-opted the idea of angels, so that today, when you see pictures of angels,
they are usually chubby child-like things with feathery white wings and
halos. We have cherubs for Valentine’s
Day, and guardian angels that watch over us when we sleep. My mother collected angels – she had stained
glass angels, straw angels, porcelain angels, fabric angels, all on the shelves
in the kitchen.
But this is not the
biblical image of angels. Angels in the
bible are God’s messengers. Some of them
are named, like Gabriel and Michael, but most are unnamed. There is no description of what they look
like, or even if they have bodies; but when they appear, the first thing that
they usually say is “Do not be afraid.”
Maybe this is the first part of God’s message to all of us; or maybe
angels are just plain terrifying.
They shepherds in the
field were terrified, but the Angel of the Lord says to them, “Do not be
afraid; for see, I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people.”
Whenever God is doing
something new in the world or in our lives, it is our normal reaction to be
afraid. But instead of listening to our
fears and being led by our fears, I encourage you to listen to the message from
God, sent to us through God’s messengers, God’s angels. Do not be afraid.
Hymn: Angels We Have Heard On High
Fourth Lesson: Luke 2:21-40
Reflection:
Jesus was born to a
Jewish family, and he lived and died as a Jewish man in first century
Palestine. We read about how he and his
family followed the traditions and customs of their religion. When he was 8 days old, Jesus was circumcised
and named, as were all 8-day-old boys; a custom that continues in Jewish
communities right through to today. And
then when he was 40 days old, they went to the temple so that Mary could be
purified, as were all women after giving birth; and so that her firstborn son
could be redeemed. This is a tradition
that goes right back to the Passover story before the Exodus from Egypt. God “passed over” the houses of the Israelite
people, sparing their firstborn sons while the firstborn sons of the Egyptian
people all died. Because of this, all
firstborn sons belonged to God, and had to be redeemed, or purchased back. And so Jesus’ parents made the appropriate
sacrifice to God – a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.
And there in the
temple, our young family encounters the next two witnesses to Jesus
Christ. The first witnesses were the
shepherds – when they had received their angelic visitors and had visited the
newborn lying in a manger, they made known what they had heard and what they
had seen. And here at the temple, the
family meets Simeon and Anna – an elderly man and an 84-year-old widow. And these two faithful people praise God and
prophesy and witness, telling people about this child that they have seen.
In a culture that
worships youth and strength and beauty; we would do well to remember that there
is an important place for everyone, no matter your age or ability, in God’s
mission in the world.
Hymn: Go, Tell it on the Mountains
Fifth Lesson: Matthew 2:1-12
Reflection:
I am fascinated by the
magi. We aren’t told where they come
from; we aren’t told how many of them there are; we aren’t told how they
traveled from “the East” to Jerusalem and then on to Bethlehem. The word “magi” is related to our English
words mage and magician. They might have
been magicians, they might have been astronomers or astrologers, they might have
been learned or wise scholars.
But wherever their
profession, or wherever they came from, they traveled a long distance because
they had seen a star.
Christmas cards tend
to depict this star as hundreds of times bigger and brighter than a regular
star. But if this was the case, then
surely someone other than this group of magi would have noticed it. If there was a huge and bright star in the
sky, why wasn’t the whole world flocking to Bethlehem? Current-day astronomers have looked for some
celestial event 2000 years ago that might explain the star that the magi were
following, but they haven’t found any record of a comet or supernova appearing
in that period of time.
So the only thing that
I can think is that this group of magi was particularly observant. They studied the stars so carefully that when
something new appeared, they noticed it, even when the rest of the world
didn’t.
I see the magi as
offering a challenge to all of us. How
can we look for God working in our every-day lives? If we are looking for exploding stars and
supernovas and extraordinary miracles, then we will need to wait a long time;
but if we are observant, if we pay attention, we will see God working in every
minute of every day.
Hymn: Angels from the Realms of Glory
Sixth Lesson: Matthew 2:13-23
Reflection:
This is a part of the
story that we don’t often hear read in churches. We like to celebrate the newborn baby and
angels and shepherds and magi. We don’t
like to think about Mary and Joseph and Jesus as refugees.
In Luke’s version of
the nativity story, Mary and Joseph travel 80 miles from Nazareth to Bethlehem
where the baby is born. In Matthew’s
version of the story, they are forced to flee more than 400 miles after the
baby is born, for fear for his life.
Our modern day world
is filled with stories of refugees – people who are forced to leave their homes
and flee, out of fear for their lives. I
mentioned earlier, the Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, there are refugees from
Syria settling in every part of the world, and we see pictures of people
fleeing various conflicts in Africa, traveling by boat across the dangerous
Mediterranean Sea.
This scripture tells
us that God has experienced what it is like to be a refugee. God has experienced what it is like to be so
afraid of staying, that leaving home for the unknown becomes the only option. God-in-Jesus has been a refugee, and is with
all refugees and with all who are forced to flee or who have lost their homes.
Hymn: Away in a Manger
Seventh Lesson: John 1:1-14
Reflection:
And here is the core
of the Christmas message – that God thought that we humans were worth coming to
earth for; that we were worth becoming one of.
God’s Word became flesh and lived among us; lived as one of us; and in
the person of Jesus Christ, fully God and fully human, our humanity – our flesh
and our experiences – can never more be separated from God.
A literal translation
of that phrase that is translated here as, “lived among us,” would be “tented
among us” or “made his dwelling with us.”
I read a translation this week, that the Word became flesh and blood and
moved in to the ’hood.
Emmanuel. God-With-Us.
Jesus is born, and God is human.
God is here, God is now, and we will never more be alone. The light shines in the darkness of the
world, and the darkness of the world can never extinguish the light of
Christ. Thanks be to God!
Hymn: Silent Night, Holy Night
Waiting for the sunrise before worship started.
We can trust that the light of Christ has come in to the world -
even when it is -36 degrees outside!
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