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Thought for the
Week Sunday
16 December 2007 – 3rd Sunday in
Advent
Christmas,
they say, is all about the children.
Or some people put it slightly differently – Christmas is all about
family. Of course that is true. It is
about the Holy Family, Mary and Joseph and the birth of their first child,
the infant Jesus. And that makes it a
particularly difficult time for those with no families. I was
in the local post office in Merville today, and there was a long queue. As I waited, I glanced idly at a large
stand of Christmas cards. There were trees,
and children with sledges, tinsel and decorations, parcels and even reindeer,
but there was nothing at all about Jesus, nor Mary and Joseph. Nothing at all about the birth of the Son
of God, nothing about the most amazing event in history. Of course,
it is partly the church’s own fault.
If the eighteenth Century French Roman Catholic Church had not been so
closely identified with the Ancienne Régime, perhaps it would not be so
thoroughly excluded from public life in The official Christmas in The
official Christmas in It is
one of the enduring paradoxes of human existence that the sources of pain and
pleasure are so often the same thing.
God’s coming into the world is of course the greatest joy for all of
us, but it is also about judgement, and which of us can face the judgement of
God with no qualms? God loves me, and
formed me in his own image, He feeds me and gives me life and breath, but He
is also my Judge, who sees all my sins. Family
is another case in point. We learn
about love through our families, and they are a source of comfort, strength
and help, and even of life itself, because all of us have to begin with a
mother. Mummy and Daddy love me and
feed me, but it is Mummy and Daddy who have to say “No!”, and who tell me
off. Nearly all our standards and
values come from our families – over eighty percent of us even vote in the
same way as our parents did. Last
week, we looked in some depth at the appalling, murderous, incestuous Herod
family, which spawned some of the worst tyrants in history. In many ways the Herods just represented
all that was worst about And one
of the reasons that I am not so sure is the Zechariah family. Zechariah
and his wife Elizabeth were of the tribe of Levi, descended from Aaron. They were the exact opposite of the Herod
family. Zechariah and Elizabeth
represented all that was best in Every
day, at about tea-time, one of the priests on duty would offer incense on the
great bowl of glowing charcoal which was immediately outside the Holy of
Holies, the most sacred part of the Holy Temple of God. From the very beginnings of human history,
God had been understood in terms of fire and smoke, and the fragrant smoke of
the incense rising up from the brazier symbolised not only the enduring
presence of God with his people, but also the prayers of the Children of
Israel rising up to heaven. The
offering of the Incense lay literally at the heart of the faith of the
Jews. Offering the incense was just about
the holiest thing a priest could do, and to a good and holy priest like Zechariah,
it must have been the highest point of his life and his priestly duty. There
were over 4,000 men in the Abijah division, and just 14 of them, chosen by
lot, would be given the chance to offer the incense each year. In other words, offering the incense was a
once-in-a-lifetime experience, and many would never actually be given the
opportunity at all. Zechariah
and Elizabeth had completely centred their life on God. They were good people, people of prayer,
and of faith. But they had one great sadness
– they were childless. God sent the
Archangel Gabriel to Zechariah as he was offering the incense, to tell him at
the holiest moment in his life, in the holiest place on earth, that their
great sadness was to be ended with the miraculous birth of the baby we know
as John the Baptist. A baby not just
for Zechariah and Elizabeth, not just for the Children of Israel groaning
under oppression, but a baby for the whole world, the herald and messenger of
the Messiah. We are
told that John grew and became strong in Spirit. But like the children of the terrible Herod
Dynasty, John did not grow up in a vacuum.
He had the example of his parents’ selfless devotion to God, and their
service of the Children of Israel. He
had their love, and he was brought up by them in the faith of God. He understood that God was, and is, a God
of love and of justice, and that He actually minds very much how we behave,
and what we believe, and above all that He sees right through all pretence,
and all disguising of our true nature. The
children born to the Herod family on the other hand, did not have their
beginnings in the So,
what kind of family celebration are we all to have this Christmas? Will it be the sanitised version, with any
dangerous reference to God getting his hands dirty removed? Will it be like the tree with no roots? Or are
we going to follow the example of Zechariah and Elizabeth, and bring up our
children deeply rooted in the faith of God, working to bring about his
Kingdom on earth? May God
bless you in your celebrating, and in your family, that you may be truly
rooted in the joy of the incarnation.
Amen. Fr. Charles Howard: Anglican Chaplaincy
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