An Uncomfortable Christmas // Old Story, New Twist, Part 3

Christianityworks Official Podcast

Christmas is supposed to be a lot of things these days. And yet it doesn’t always deliver all that it’s meant to deliver. But then, the very first Christmas, it wasn’t all sweetness and light either. If nothing else, it was a decidedly uncomfortable Christmas.

OVERTAKEN BY EVENTS

There are times in our lives when it feels as though circumstances or events outside of our control have completely taken over our lives. We've all been there and some people I know are there right now.

Perhaps you were looking forward to a family Christmas and your marriage or somebody else’s marriage in your family is starting to fall apart. Or perhaps, you find yourself completely alone or maybe sickness has struck and you're wondering how to get through it. And at this point, the whole idea even of celebrating Christmas seems completely irrelevant, off this planet.

Despite what all the happy Christmas ads on television would have us believe, Christmas is not a happy time for many people. It's sad but true. Now, that's not to say that we're all going to have a lousy Christmas, no. But when we scratch the glitzy veneer of what Christmas has become in the twenty-first century, when you go below the surface, most people have something going on in their lives that takes the shine off what should be (according to what everybody else is telling us) the celebration of Christmas.

Season's greetings, peace on earth, merrrryyyyy Christmas, ho ho ho. Yeah, right. Somehow the umpteenth re-enactment of the Christmas pantomime at Church and that nativity scene in the store window (if you can even find one anywhere these days) just doesn't seem to connect with life's realities when we've been swamped by a wave of whatever it is in our life, in your life, this year.

I've had many a Christmas like that over the years. Truly, I have. Life can be tough sometimes. And when you're involved in ministry in any way, shape or form, you'll know that it's even tougher because the devil is on your case. You run into opposition and attacks sometimes seemingly from every direction and on those Christmases the pantomime version of Christmas simply isn't enough. You with me?

But let's wind the clock back to the old, old story, to the days leading up to the birth of Jesus, the Christ. Because when I go back to that story, there's nothing safe, there's nothing comfortable, there's nothing pantomimey at all about it. The road to that very first Christmas was a hard road and it's on that road that we discover a God who's prepared to get on the journey with us.

Think about the circumstances that had overtaken Joseph and Mary's lives to that point. Firstly, they'd fallen in love. Hey, that's a good thing, that's a great thing, that's a special thing. But then Mary falls pregnant to the Holy Spirit, out of wedlock in a day and age where that was a scandal. You can imagine how Joseph felt, right? – robbed, betrayed, dismayed, hurt, alone, disappointed, angry, the full gamut of emotions. Events had overtaken his life.

This one painful event which was completely outside of his control. It hurt so much but being the good guy that he was, he planned to cut off the engagement and to dismiss Mary quietly so as not to make a big thing of it in public. Events, circumstances, things out there that were going to rob him, unbeknown to him at the time, of the very first Christmas.

You see if you're in that boat, you're not the first one. This old, old story has a modern twist in its tail, does it not? The truth of that first Christmas (even though it happened two thousand years away) is here and now when you get behind the pantomime version and you check out what really happened.

So there's young Jo about to be robbed of that first Christmas and then God. Whenever circumstances are about to roll over the top of us, it's always, always a case of 'then God' because this God who loves you beyond any measure that you would care to apply to His love, He always shows up. He showed up back then for Joseph. Let's have a listen:

Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph but before they lived together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband, Joseph, being a righteous man, unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.

But just when he had resolved to do this an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, 'Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus for he will save his people from their sins."

All this took place to fulfil what had been spoken by the Lord through the Prophet, 'Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and they shall name him Emmanuel which means God is with us'. When Joseph awoke from his sleep he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, he took her as his wife but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son and he named him, Jesus. (Matthew 1: 18-25)

I wonder how many times you and I have skimmed over that old, old story with the attitude, "Oh yeah, I know that one. Yeah sure, it's fine," without ever really thinking about what it meant for Mary and poor old Joseph. The stress it put on their relationship, the glances and the whispers of scandal that happened in their tight-knit little community.

And just when Joseph was about to do what he thought was the decent thing out of his pain – God showed up. God showed up in a mighty way to speak truth and comfort and love and destiny into Joseph's heart.

I don't know how real that dream felt to him at the time, probably it was a really powerful dream if it was from God. But when he woke up it was still only a dream but it was enough for Joseph to act upon. He didn't have the Gospel accounts of Matthew and Mark and Luke and John to rely on back then, like you and I do have now, he didn't know how it was all going to turn out. But when he heard the voice of God he acted on it.

Christmas is about difficult circumstances. Christmas is all about God breaking into this world in an exquisite blend of love and power and humility. Christmas is about God and it's about you.

A LONELY JOURNEY

Now I know that this is not going to come as any great surprise to you but I have never been pregnant. Something (by the way) that I've often given thanks for because I'm your typical male – the idea of going through childbirth is something I can't comprehend. Which is why, I guess, God didn't leave it up to men to be mother's – wise move God, wise move.

Anyway, back to Christmas, I'm trying to imagine what it was like for Mary who was pretty much full term to travel from Nazareth the Bethlehem for the census. We don't think too much about it because these days the drive from A to B would take, umm, two to three hours I'm guessing; maybe four, if you took it slowly and you had a break for lunch along the way. You'd probably do it in a comfortable air conditioned car although even then, let’s say a three to four-hour car ride wouldn't be particularly the most delightful experience for a woman who was close to full term, would it now? But back then it was a one to two-week journey.

Tradition has it … if you believe all the paintings and drawings that Mary rode on the back of a donkey, of course, there's no Biblical evidence for that, we're not told how she got from Nazareth to Bethlehem. But for her sake, I'm hoping she was on a back of a donkey or riding in the back of a cart somewhere rather than walking the whole way because one thing's for certain she wasn't riding in an air conditioned car.

My point is this … we often look back on the old, old Christmas story as though it’s a fable or a pantomime or, I don't know what. It was so long ago and we've heard it so many times that we just have this two-dimensional view of what went on. Yeah, yeah Mary, Joseph, angels, shepherds, wise men, Bethlehem, manger, yeah all that jazz. And when we look at Christmas that way, it's almost as though we're closing our hearts off to the wonderful real, gritty, here and now things that God’s wanting to speak into our lives.

Mary and Joseph didn't have an easy run of it. It was time for a census. The Roman emperor had decreed that it was time to do a people stocktake. And the way they did it back then (before marks sensing, computer readable census forms distributed to each household) was that you had to head back to your ancestral home and for Joseph that meant Bethlehem.

In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea to the city of David called Bethlehem because he was descended from the house and the family of David. He went to be registered with Mary to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. (Luke 2: 1-5)

See, the Romans were nothing if not efficient administrators. They, in fact, had a huge impact on the distribution of the Gospel after Jesus' resurrection and ascension because of the road and port infrastructure that they'd built and the relatively peaceful and homogenous Roman Empire that dominated the known world at the time.

But on this occasion, as far as Mary and Joseph were concerned, they were being a right proper pain in the backside. Quite literally for Mary if she was fortunate enough to have travelled the journey on the back of a donkey. I imagine that if you or I had been Mary or Joseph, we would have had a few choice words and thoughts about the timing of this rotten, lousy census. Why now? What a pain! How inconvenient! Mary is almost full term and she and Jo are travelling with a sea of humanity in all different directions heading for their ancestral homes, in their case that was Bethlehem.

Isn't that how it feels when circumstances and events beyond us seem to dictate the course of our lives? Pretty frustrating, isn't it? – inconvenient and sometimes, downright dangerous and hurtful.

But this census wasn't just some random event. It wasn't a happen chance thing. As with everything, God was in it because centuries before through the Prophet Micah, He had spoken to His people about their Messiah whom He would send who would be born in, yeah you guessed it, Bethlehem. Let's take a look, Micah 5: 2 and 3:

But you O Bethlehem of Ephratah, who are one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel whose origin is of old, from ancient days. Therefore he shall give them up until the time when she who is in labour has brought forth, then the rest of his kindred shall return to the people of Israel.

See, God had a plan. His plan was that Jesus, the bread of life as He later referred to Himself as, would be born in the town of Bethlehem, a word which literally means 'the house of bread'. God’s plan was to speak powerfully to His people through the Words of Micah's prophecy and through the fulfilment of that prophecy in the birth of Christ in Bethlehem.

My point is this, events are never random. Events that seem to roll over the top of your plans and your hopes and your dreams even never just happen by chance. Sometimes the most difficult and devastating events are the most powerful moves of God in our lives and through our lives and into the lives of other people around us. Of course, it never feels like it at the time. And rarely (if ever) does God give us the big picture if you will to explain what's going on and what He's up to when He's doing that and letting these things happen to us.

But that doesn't change the fact that God's sovereign will is playing out right there and then. Psalm 135 verse 6 says:

Whatever the Lord pleases he does in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all the deeps.

So whatever that looks like in your life right now, remember your God is up to something good … I mean really good.

NO ROOM AT THE INN

Well, here we are on Christmas Eve and I’m guessing you know where I’m headed with this story, right?

I remember a few years back, my wife and I flew from Australia to the US, to Chicago, in fact. That's a long flight, about twenty-four hours door to door. We had a room booked at a hotel on the Golden Mile in Chicago because I was speaking at an IT conference there and the conference organisers had set it all up for me.

In LA where we had to clear customs, we discovered that they'd lost Jacqui's suitcase (along the way), fantastic! And then when we landed in Chicago, we had to part ways because I had to fly on for a couple of days to Minneapolis, St Paul. So the plan was Jacqui would catch a cab to the Chicago hotel and I would join her in a couple of days time.

Now, it was her very first trip to the US of A. She doesn't do a lot of travel so heading to the hotel on her own was just a little bit daunting. So not only is her luggage missing but she has to find her own way to downtown Chicago and when she arrives, get this, she's told, "No, sorry but the hotel is fully booked."

"Hang on, there's a conference here and my husband is the keynote speaker and the conference organisers have booked a room and ..." Well, you can imagine her despair, right? She was ready to cry and she's been travelling now for the last twenty-four hours so she's exhausted. She's alone in a foreign country, her luggage is missing and now they tell her there's no room at the hotel.

Two hours it took to get it sorted. At one point they found a room but because the booking was in my name and not hers they weren't going to let her have it. Fortunately, the hotel manager got involved and saner heads prevailed. We did, by the way, eventually find her luggage but that's a whole another story.

Now, if you have any sort of heart beating inside you, you'll be feeling a bit sorry for poor old Jacqui. A bit like a lost soul in a foreign land, all alone with waves of exhaustion and despair crashing all over her. For her fortunately, it all worked out.

But if I now take you back to the old, old story, the first Christmas story, there was a couple who rocked up to Bethlehem for whom things didn't work out so well – Mary and Joseph. They've come down to Bethlehem from their hometown of Nazareth, up north. A few hours by car these days, as we saw yesterday but for them it's been a one to two-week journey by foot perhaps with the aid of a beast of burden to carry the full term, very pregnant, almost due Mary but perhaps not.

It's a journey that makes our twenty-four hour flight from Sydney to Chicago look like sheer luxury by comparison. They're tired, they're exhausted, they're ready to get to their room and dive into the Jacuzzi and relax, but let's pick up their story:

In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration that was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered, Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea to the city of David called Bethlehem because he was descended from the house and the family of David.

He went to be registered with Mary to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there the time came for her to deliver her child and she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth and laid him in a manger because there was no place for them at the inn. (Luke 2: 1-6)

Much of the nation of Israel was on the move at this time because of this wretched census ordered by the Emperor Augustus. So, there really was a convention in town when they arrived in that small village, as it was back then, the village of Bethlehem. They weren't in downtown Jerusalem there on the Golden Mile but out of town in this hamlet. And frankly there weren't a lot of five-star or even two or three star hotels available, those that were choc-a-block.

And so after, presumably, a few hours of schlepping around and discovering there wasn't a room to be had anywhere some kind inn keeper, seeing Mary's condition, offered them a shed out the back which housed animals. Now I don't know, sheep, goats, maybe the odd cow if he was really wealthy.

Can you imagine how Mary's heart sank when she entered that stable where she knew she would give birth? After that whole fanfare with the angel and falling pregnant, not the normal way but through the Holy Spirit? Hey, surely God was with her. Surely, God knew what was going on, His Son, the very Son of God is about to be born. "My son too" Mary is thinking to herself and now I get a stinking stable?

Come on you women who have had children put yourself in Mary's shoes, how do you feel? Not all that impressed, right? Your water's break, the pain starts and you lie down on the floor of a stable that's been pooped on and weed on by the assemblage of farm animals watching you give birth. Just fantastic.

I don't know what you're expecting of Christmas this year. It's almost upon us and it's supposed to be great. The world hypes it up as being a great celebration, Christians and Churches hype it up as being a great celebration. I don't think that's how it felt for Mary on that day and I know that's not how it feels for a whole bunch of people today.

But let me tell you this … God was in that place with Mar. He was watching over her, He was with her and yes He chose a humble, uncomfortable place for His Son – the Son of God, the Creator of the universe, to be born as a man. God often chooses humble, uncomfortable places for His people. It's just His way.

But no matter how uncomfortable it may be for you, no matter how God forsaken this place may seem in which you've found yourself, I want to tell you this, God is with you because Jesus on that first Christmas, Jesus came for you.

Do you remember what it was that the angel said to Joseph in his dream when he was explaining to him what had gone on with Mary falling pregnant? Matthew 1: 21-23:

‘She will bear a son' said the angel, 'and you shall call his name Jesus for he will save his people from their sins'. All this took place to fulfil what the Lord had spoken through the Prophet 'behold the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and they shall call him Emmanuel which means 'God is with us'.

Jesus is God on the journey with us.

Back in Chicago when Jacqui stood negotiating with those difficult hotel employees over the counter, she no doubt felt incredibly alone, lost in a foreign land. Her husband off in another city, completely uncontactable.

Perhaps, as you face whatever it is you're facing the same thoughts race through your mind as no doubt went through Mary's when she lay eyes on that crummy, stinking stable for the very first time. Doesn't God get it? How can He let this happen to me? Why doesn't He fix it?

And so you're sitting here on this Christmas Eve wondering even what Christmas is all about. If that's you, if that's a bit of what you're feeling right now, then I have just one word for you from the Lord, 'Emmanuel'. God is with you. You are never alone.

And though He may have chosen circumstances for you right now that you may not have chosen for yourself, on this day, on this Holy day, know this … your God is with you and that beautiful wondrous truth, this truth that we are celebrating right now, at this time that we call Christmas, that truth is something that nothing and nobody can take away from you.

Your God is with you.