Luke 2:1-7
In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to their own town to register. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.
This Advent, we set out to discover the promise of Christmas, and we have found truth and justice and restoration and compassion, in the words of the prophets who foretold Christ's coming, and in the songs of those who were among the first to know that his coming had at long last arrived.
Tonight I invite us to reflect on another promise, the promise of life. Christmas is at its core the celebration of a new life, and the night crackles with all the possibility of life at its beginning. I'm sure as Mary and Joseph cradled their son, born into a turbulent world and a makeshift bed, they wondered all the things that new parents do. How tall will he grow to be? When will he say his first words? What joys and sorrows will he know? I'm sure as they looked into his newborn face, promised by an angel and conceived by the Spirit, they wondered other things too. How great will he become? When will others understand who he is? What marvellous things will he do? Life is always so rich in promise, but perhaps none so rich as this life.
But Christmas is not just about the life of Christ, and the night also crackles with all the possibility of life at its remaking. The world is forever changed and a new life begins for all of us, a life that is full and abundant as Jesus himself promised. That truth is so much at the heart of Christmas that it is the thread that runs through almost every festive film. Ebeneezer Scrooge rediscovers the joy and the generosity he lost to cruelty and commerce. George Bailey is brought back from despair and to understand his place in the world. John McClane is reunited with his wife and given a chance to try again. There is a kind of rebirth, or at the very least a return. There is healing, and the deepening of an earlier happiness. And so perhaps we and the world are not so much changed as mended.
The actual birth of Christ happened at one time and in one place, but the rebirth it promises us has no such temporal or spatial limits. We might pull the manger out of storage once a year, but in truth it is always waiting for us to approach, to find healing and happiness amid the hay. Last year we wrote our hopes and fears and laid them in the manger, and they were still there when I set it out in preparation for this evening. I am keeping them safe, as I endeavour to do with all the prayers that are offered in our worship. I pray that this year your hopes have been realised and your fears have been released, but perhaps some of them you carry with you again this evening, or perhaps there are new hopes and fears you bring with you tonight.
In church we will have lit Christingles, which speak of the light and love and blessing that Christ brings to our world, and had the chance to once again place our hopes and fears in the manger. I invite you to take a moment to sit before the manger this evening, in whatever form that takes for you, reflecting on the new life it held two thousand years ago and may hold for you now.
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