It is very easy now that Christmas Day has passed to put
away the Christmas story for another year, to wind down the carols and to focus
on the social aspects of this season. After all by next Sunday we shall be
thinking about the New Year and what 2018 will bring.
However before we consign Mary, Joseph, the baby Jesus,
shepherds and wise men to the spiritual attic of our lives, it is good to take
a moment to reflect again on these key players in the greatest birth that the
world has even seen. The whole event was upside down.
Royal births are a major occasion and Jesus’ birth should
have been the most royal of royal events. Yet nothing could have been more
removed from this birth of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. This was not a
birth to royal parents in a palace with every convenience that 1st
century Judea could provide. This was a birth in a stable of all places to two
very ordinary but Godly people, carefully chosen by God to fulfil this most
precious assignment – to parent the Son of God.
I often wonder what Mary thought when she realised she was
going to have to give birth in a stable. She had had to deal with all the
social ostracising that her pregnancy had caused, all the gossip and rejection
that she and Joseph must have had to bear in small town Nazareth. Now it seemed
that God wasn’t even going to provide a small clean room to give birth to his
son. Poor Joseph too must have been distressed that he couldn’t provide a suitable
place for this royal birth.
As I’ve said before it is so easy with the benefit of
hindsight to see the significance of these events but when you are living them,
Mary and Joseph had a tough time. Then
the first visitors were not the good and great, the significant and famous as
it should have been – it was shepherds – unclean in every way - shepherds. These
were probably the shepherds who looked after and provided the sheep and lambs
needed for the temple sacrifices. More deep significance that those at the
bottom of the social ladder, those providing the sacrifices for the temple,
were the first to see Jesus the perfect sacrifice, the lamb who takes away the
sin of the world.
I wonder how many mangers in how many stables and outhouses
the shepherds checked before they found Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus. They would
have entered awkward and gauche to see the baby but bringing the story of
angels coming to their hillside telling them that a Saviour had been born – the
Messiah. They were so excited about what had happened that they told everyone
about it. I expect Mary and Joseph received a lot more visitors after that. But
the Bible makes clear Mary treasured all these things in her heart and pondered
them.
Before we pack away Christmas for another year it is worth
taking a moment to also ponder the amazing fact that Jesus came in the most
unlikely of circumstances with the most improbable of people as the key players
to come and save us, the most underserving of people. Do we treasure up in our
hearts the wonder of our salvation by the King of Glory?
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