Isaiah 9.1-7 A Son is given to us
Titus
2.11-14
God’s grace has been revealed to the whole human race
Luke
2.1-14 ‘In
the town of David a saviour has been born to you’
‘Mary wrapped Jesus in bands of
cloth,
and laid him in a manger,
because there was no place for them
in the inn’ (Luke 2.7)
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There’s
an old adage in television and the theatre: ‘don’t work with children and
animals’!
We
all know why.
Animals
can be unpredictable when you want them to perform and, as was famously
discovered on Blue Peter once, they can ‘perform’ when you don’t want them to:
just Google ‘Blue Peter and Lulu the Elephant.’
And
how many children have been rehearsed to deliver one line in a nativity play
and then clam up.
Don’t
work with children and animals.
And I
heard some more advice the other day - from a woman working in the costume team
at the pantomime at Fairfield Halls at the moment - ‘don’t work with adults
either’.
Adults
can be wilful, stubborn, uncooperative and know best.
So
don’t work with children or adults or animals.
The
nativity of Jesus Christ flies in the face of that advice.
God
works with the unlikely.
The
nativity of Jesus Christ shows God working with animals and adults and coming
to us as a human child.
The
advice not to work with children and animals is saying ‘don’t work with those
you can’t control’.
And
don’t we so want to be in control?
Don’t
we so want to order the world to our own preferences and dreams?
The
world has become, well always was, about human beings trying to assert control
in a world that resists it.
What
is revealed at Christmas in the birth of Jesus Christ, God in human flesh -
what we call ‘the Incarnation of the Word’ - is that the strategy of the
world’s creator is not to control but to love the world into being and life.
The
world’s creator is not a controller pulling levers to make things happen but is
the One who, out of love, yearns the best for all his creatures.
The
way his creatures find full dignity and stature is by becoming his children ‘by
adoption and grace’
It is
said that the sheep ranchers of Australia do not erect fences to keep their
sheep from straying - they can’t, their land is too extensive - rather they
sink wells to which the sheep are drawn.
God
gives himself to us in the Child of Bethlehem, not as a controller, not as a
fence to restrict our lives, but as a wellspring of living water to draw us to
himself, so that we may drink deeply of his love.
Tonight
we heard of shepherds drawn to the Good Shepherd.
That
call signifies people being drawn from their own drama and concerns to entering
into the Theodrama, the drama of God, which leads them to worship and adore and
contemplate and go tell.
That
is the move Christmas invites you and me to make, fellow sinners: move away
from self; move to God; go and tell.
Christ
was born in the feeding trough of animals: tonight we are called to feed at the
altar of the Good Shepherd.
As
the choir will sing later:
O great mystery,
and wonderful sacrament,
that animals should see the newborn Lord,
lying in a manger!
O blessed virgin, whose womb
was worthy to bear
the Lord Jesus Christ.
Alleluia!
Consider
your life and then like Mary, the Mother of our Lord and God, ‘ponder these
things’.
Don’t
work with children and animals and adults! Well, God chooses to work with, and
for, you and me: there is indeed an great mystery and wonder.
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