Sunday 22 December 2019

Still Quarrying 99 - Light In The Darkness.

Last Christmas one of my sons presented me with a book entitled Hark! The Herald Angels Scream.  It has a rather lurid cover as you can see on the left which is a guide to the contents, a collection of short horror stories all set in or around Christmas.  They all tend to follow a similar path.  The peace, joy and family cosiness that we all aspire to at this time of the year are all disturbed by some ghastly event which usually has a dark supernatural source.  

I can understand why you might want to turn up your nose at this and declare it unnecessarily cynical, mean spirited, even cheap.  But when you read  Jesus’ birth stories as they are written by Matthew and Luke they have a dark side which cannot be denied.  Think about Mary falling pregnant during a period of betrothal when sexual intercourse would not normally take place.  A challenging time for her but also for Joseph who has  to decide if the betrothal will continue.  Then there is the journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem in the later stage of Mary’s pregnancy, a distance of approximately 90 miles - and no little donkey is mentioned.  When they arrive in Bethlehem there is so much pressure on accommodation that the birth of the baby takes place in an outhouse or stable and he is wrapped in rags and laid in an animal’s feeding trough.  

It is some months later that the real horror breaks in when the Magi come on the scene.  Their contact with King Herod and their news that the Messiah has been born results in the deaths of all the baby boys in Bethlehem under the age of two years old.  

Jesus was born in a world where there was significant personal stress, where a nation was under the control of an invading power, where babies were born in squalor, where the slaughter of innocent children was ordered and carried out.   This is a long way from Christmas as we like to think of it but a light shines in the darkness bringing a hope that brings true meaning to our celebrations.   The Christmas hymn reminds us of the love that motivated the Incarnation:

‘Sacred Infant, all Divine,
what a tender love was thine,
thus to come from highest bliss
down to such a world as this.‘  

The world in which Jesus was born was broken and in need of redemption.  It is still the same.  Relationships are put under strain, people are homeless, political oppression causes untold distress, children are born in the worst of circumstances with little hope for the future.  It has been the same in every age but the Gospel tells us that in the midst of the darkness God shone a light with the birth of Jesus.  Here is the assurance of His love for humankind.  He calls us to embrace that love, to show it to those in need and to bring the Kingdom of God closer.   The hymn lampooned by last years Christmas book speaks of the purpose of Jesus’ coming:

‘born to raise the sons of earth,
born to give them second birth.’

It is as we experience the renewal that only His Spirit can bring that we as a people can being hope to our community, our nation and the world.  The angels did not scream on the night that Jesus was born.  They sang a song of hope and assurance:

‘Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace to men
on whom his favour rests.  (Luke 2: 14)


In a quiet moment this Christmas focus on these words.  What they tells me is that God believes in us, that His Spirit can dwell within us, that we can live our lives in communion with Him, that we can be the light in a dark world as Jesus envisioned we could be.  He said: ‘You are the light of the world.‘  (Matthew 5: 14)