Look for the ‘sign’….

This short reflection is from the Cross Generation Christmas Eve Service, 2015. Merry Christmas – may the joy, peace, hope and love of Christ be with you all.

Text: Luke 2:1-20

Those of you who braved the weather to come to the Carols under the Ironbarks on Sunday night might remember that I began my reflection by confessing my guilty secret about being a collector of nativity sets. On Monday morning I had a phone call from Jeff Wild, Margie’s husband who spoke at the service about Act for Peace, to let me know that he works with a woman who supports Christians in Palestine who import Nativity Sets in Olive wood from Bethlehem. Did I want one?

Well how could I say no to such an offer? And the result is here on the communion table. A beautiful nativity scene, carved in olive wood grown on the West bank near Bethlehem.

There has been an industry carving Christian paraphernalia for pilgrims and visitors to Bethlehem since the 4^th century when the Church of the Nativity was completed. The timber comes from ancient Olive trees: some of them are thousands of years old. Whilst the industry is ancient, it is particularly important to the locals now: Bethlehem lies in Palestine and as part of the annexation of the West Bank by Israel many of the ancient Olive groves and farming land where sheep once grazed have been bulldozed to make way for housing for wealthy Israelis colonizing the area. As families lose their land and their livelihood, the only way they can make money is to make use of the wood to create products for sale. Today in the region around Bethlehem, among its population of about 15,000, there are 135 registered olive wood carving workshops.[1]

But there is a strange element in my particular nativity set that is not usually there – can you see it?

There’s a wall across the middle – preventing the holy family from reaching Bethlehem. A reminder that today, Bethlehem lies in highly contested, dangerous country. A war torn state, where daily life is a dangerous thing.

Not that life was terribly different when Joseph and Mary made their journey to Bethlehem to register for the census at the instruction of the Emperor Augustus. Luke tells us that this was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. We could skip over this historical detail because it doesn’t make much sense to us, but in fact it tells us something important about the place where Jesus was born. Then, as now, Bethlehem, as with the whole of the Holy Land was occupied territory. Jesus and his family were bought there by decree of the greatest earthly power of the day. An irony, because the census means that Jesus will be born where Israel’s messiah should be born: in David’s city, Bethlehem.

At the Carols we focussed on the character of Mary and what her story told us about what God was up to, and who Jesus is. Tonight I want to focus on that other group of characters: the first people who come to visit Mary and Joseph– the shepherds.

Bethlehem. From the east, showing Shepherds Fields, figure seated – Date Created/Published: [between 1934 and 1939] – Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Matson (G. Eric and Edith) Photograph Collection – Reproduction number: LC-DIG-matpc-22258 (digital file from original photo) – Rights Advisory: No known restrictions on publication.

Shepherd I found this wonderful image on the internet, a photo taken some time just before the outbreak of the second world war. A shepherd sits under an ancient olive tree. (is it the tree my nativity set is made from?)

 

It’s a barren and harsh landscape in which to graze sheep. I wonder if this is the kind of field the shepherds in our Christmas story were sitting in when the angel appeared to them? Shepherds are marginalized and poor people – on the outskirts of society. Not the powerful. Not the elite. Out in a barren, rocky field, eking out a meager existence caring for sheep.

So Jesus, the Son of God, who will bring God’s hospitality and relationship to all of human kind is born in an occupied and marginalized town. His parents are unable to find hospitality anywhere themselves –Mary ends up giving birth and placing her baby in a manger, which suggests that the only place they could find was where the animals lay. And the first visitors to come and experience the hospitality of God are likewise poor and marginalized.

It is precisely this location and these visitors that renders this story accessible to us. As they are out in the fields that night, the shepherds hear the third ‘annunciation’ from God thus far in Luke’s gospel: an angel appears and announces to them good news to all people: “Today in the city of David is born a savior who is Christ the Lord.”

Like Mary, who was sent to find a ‘sign’: in her case to see her elderly relative Elizabeth who was also pregnant – the shepherds are told to go in search of a sign. A child lying in a manger. One who has come to bring peace to the world.

And this is the message of hope for us this Christmas. For those of us who are marginalized. For those of us for whom Christmas will be difficult or painful for one reason or another: we who miss loved ones absent from our Christmas table, we who have suffered family breakdown, difficult relationships, anger and maybe even violence. Christmas brings a message of peace and hope for those of us who suffer from brokenness, from alienation from God, from mental illness, from addiction, from despair. For those of us who are outsiders like the shepherds, who need a sign of peace and hope: that God, who created the universe, who put the stars in the sky, the birds in the air and the animals on the earth seeks a relationship with the likes of us. Imperfect, marginalized people like the shepherds. Imperfect, marginalized people like you, and me.

And that is why I like this nativity set. Because the message to us all is that Jesus comes to bring peace. To break down walls that separate us from God. (remove the wall from the nativity scene) Jesus is born in a stable in a dangerous and difficult place to provide a way for all of human kind to come back into relationship with God. I pray that we might all experience something of God’s deep peace, birthed into the world at Christmas for the sake of all of the world this year. AMEN.

 

 

[1] Bethlehem’s Olive Wood Carvers, Al Jazeera 19 December 2014 http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/inpictures/2014/12/pictures-bethlehem-olive-wood–2014129132359492485.html