“I wish it could be Christmas every day” goes the song.
Do you? Really?
Christmas is long awaited, but most people today think it’s an annual knees up and gift exchange that happens to have a quaint story attached involving angels and shepherds. As Christians we are expecting more-gospel is not quaint-it is a radical, exciting message about the God who made the whole universe coming to earth as a weak, dependent baby out of love for each of us in order to allow us to come into relationship with him.
Luke 3, 1-6
In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar—when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene— 2 during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. 3 He went into all the country around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 4 As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet:
“A voice of one calling in the wilderness,
‘Prepare the way for the Lord,
make straight paths for him.
5 Every valley shall be filled in,
every mountain and hill made low.
The crooked roads shall become straight,
the rough ways smooth.
6 And all people will see God’s salvation.’”
The writer is very specific about exactly when and where this was happening, and then harks back to the writing of a prophet from 600 years earlier. We are invited to think about history unfolding, about hopes and expectations.
So let’s think about our expectations.
What are you expecting for Christmas? Who has written a list? Our expectation of Christmas is based on and influenced by our experience of Christmas.
Christmas at my house when I was younger was always the same-presents in the morning, then church, then hours of sitting at a table drinking and playing silly games, making lots of noise and eating constantly. When my sons were young we took them to my family Christmas gathering and things had to change. My wife and I didn’t drink or join in all the games, the need for routine and nappy changes meant that we kept interrupting things, and afterwards one of my sisters said to me “Christmas was ruined”.
She had been so busy trying to recreate Christmases past that she couldn’t see the good news that was right before her eyes, new life and a possibility of even better Christmas gatherings in future.
We need to navigate our past in order to be able to bring the good news of the kingdom of God into the present.
God did this with Jesus, navigating the past expressed through the covenant made with a bunch of rag-tag wanderers called Israel who were to become his chosen people to proclaim it afresh in the person of Jesus Christ, the good news of the kingdom of God for all humanity.
So just as God subverted and then surpassed the expectations of his chosen people around the time of that first Christmas, we too must be prepared to have our expectations subverted and surpassed. We need to have big dreams about what God could be doing in our lives this year. What might be possible?
I read recently of a debate about asking people “are you saved?”-The answer is simple: “I have been, I am being, I will be…” It isn’t enough for our faith to be about recreating a past event…it needs to keep being transformed, altered, developed.
As we let God speak to us about the possibilities here, as we allow ourselves to imagine the kingdom of God ever more present, ever more evident in this place we need to be open to the fact that new dreams and expectations might require of us that we lay down some of our old dreams.
In the 61st year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth the 2nd, while David Cameron was Prime Minister and Nick Clegg deputy Prime minister, and the MPs for the City of Coventry are Jim Cunningham and Bob Ainsworth, during the oversight of Archbishop Rowan, the word of God is coming to you.
What are you prepared to lay down from your past in order to be able to step towards your dreams?
