Christmas.
Christmas is my favourite holiday, easily. Snow suddenly becomes a winter wonderland (as opposed to the white wild-land it is the rest of the winter), people are mostly merry, there’s an over abundance of chocolate (and this is NOT, I repeat, NOT a bad thing), hot cider, wood fires…the list is endless, really.
But Christmas is my absolute favourite because of what happened in a stable on the very first Christmas. It’s been the ‘Christmas Story’ for as long as I can remember, and it’s a story that I’ve come to look at a little differently each year.
This year it was made known to me that it was NOT a silent night, like we sing about. It might’ve been silent until that poor group of shepherds out tending to the sheep had the living daylights scared out of them. Can you imagine watching over a group of sheep in the dark (and while I know this job had it’s dangers, I can’t imagine it to be a consistently exciting one), when all of a sudden the entire night sky LIGHTS UP with not just moonlight, but an entirely heavenly host?(Luke 2:8-13). I don’t know about you, but seeing one heavenly being would terrify me, let alone an entire expanse stretched above of me. No wonder it says they were terrified! (Luke 2:9-10)
Birth announcements always fascinate me. They range from phone calls to pictures, to formal announcements in newspapers and online. If you’re a royal born this day in age, it’s formally posted outside the castle and a happy herald announces the news. People lined up for days to hear of Prince George’s birth. People actually camped out in tents while on ‘baby watch’. There were parades and celebrations! Celebrities and royalty from around the world sent gifts and their congratulations to this baby boy that will one day inherit the throne.
You would think that the Saviour and King of the world would have such a grand arrival, would you not?
Our Saviour and King came into this world in the most humblest of ways. To unwed parents that had travelled a great distance to partake in a census, only to be told that every inn in the area was full. I don’t know what that humble little stable looked like, but I’ve been in my share of barns, and it isn’t in my top choices of places I’d want to give birth. You have to wonder, at this point, were Mary and Joseph doubtful of what they’d been told by the angel?
28 The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”
29 Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30 But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. 31 You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.” (Luke 1: 28-33)
To be told that before you’re even pregnant, is one thing, but then to be in the throws of labour in the middle of stable because there’s NO ROOM anywhere else, is another thing entirely. Then you have this young couple, who are exhausted, who now have a baby boy and no where to put him. So Mary wraps baby Jesus in cloths, and puts in the cleanest and warmest spot she can find-in a manger. It’s not a royal crib with silk sheets and lush pillows, or a room packed with attendants waiting to tend to every whimper and runny nose. It’s a barn.
This is the part I love. The Saviour of the world has arrived into a humble setting and while the town of Bethlehem is bustling at the seams because of a census, no one knows of his arrival or is rushing to be at the side of a manger. Except for a group of shepherds, the lowest on the social totem pole, who’ve just had the daylights scared out of them by a choir of heavenly host.
God doesn’t send the Kings of the earth, or the celebrities of Bethlehem to attend the birth of Jesus. He allows a motley group of social misfits the pleasure, no, the honour, of knowing that the Saviour of the World has just arrived. The greatest Christmas gift of all, is quite simply, for everyone. Did the shepherds race the streets of crowded Bethlehem afterwards, I wonder, shouting, “Come to the stable!”
You and I don’t get to rush out to a stable to see the Saviour of the World. Our invitation is a different one.
We fast forward thirty three years later. Jesus, the Saviour of the World, you’d expect to have a heroic death like men of the old and Kings of the past. A valiant death in a grand battle? On a throne with the splendor of his kingdom stretched before him? He leaves in as an unconventional way as which he arrived, on a cross.
Now who on earth in their right mind, would follow a King that’s born in a stable, and then dies a painful death at a young age on a cross with some thieves, and how on earth is that a good gift to anyone?
We have to go back to one of my favourite stories to understand our invitation. Back in Exodus, when God delivers His people from slavery in Egypt. The people endure 10 plagues, and then God tells them through Moses that the most terrible plague is yet to come. A plague that will take the firstborn son of everything, Israelites, Egyptians, and animals. While we don’t put such a high note of favour on our firstborn sons these days, it’s important to remember that this day in age, a firstborn son was everything. This is someone who is going to carry on your family name, and inherit all your earthy belongings and wealth. If the Israelites want to survive this, they have to take a lamb and slaughter it.
7 Then they are to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the doorframes of the houses where they eat the lambs. 8 That same night they are to eat the meat roasted over the fire, along with bitter herbs, and bread made without yeast. 9 Do not eat the meat raw or boiled in water, but roast it over a fire—with the head, legs and internal organs. 10 Do not leave any of it till morning; if some is left till morning, you must burn it. 11 This is how you are to eat it: with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand. Eat it in haste; it is the Lord’s Passover. 12 “On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn of both people and animals, and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the Lord. 13 The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt. (Exodus 12: 7-13)
The Passover celebrated this very event for generations to come and still to this day. The exodus was in fact, what Christ would do in delivering His people from bondage to sin, through his seemingly unconventional death on a cross. The Lord’s supper, which replaces the Passover in celebrating what happened on the cross, so it remains at the centre of our faith.
The cup containing wine/juice that we take at the Lord’s supper points to the shed blood of Christ, the true Passover lamb. Just as the angel of death passed over every Israelite home where the blood had been applied to the doorposts, so now everyone who has faith applied the blood of Christ to his/her sins will be safe from the wrath to come at the future judgement day. Same as the bread represents His body, and reminds us that God took on a human body and that He bore our sins in the same sinless body when he died on the cross from us. In Luke 22:20, Christ says,
“This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you”.
Just as a blood sacrifice was the same in the old covenant, so is the new, which is Christ’s death on the cross for us. This new covenant means that God has once and for all forgiven our sins through the death of Jesus! The Lord’s supper is a remembrance that Jesus was the one sacrifice that has cleansed our every sin! We are no longer slaves to our own sins! And this very act, is the basis of forgiveness and our personal relationship with God. And what an amazing gift that is!
This is the very same invitation we get today.
This is where grace begins. Where hope begins.
Where love from The Creator to the created, flings wide the door of the great divide, and the invitation is meant to be shouted from the rooftops:
Come to the table.
The Northern Heart 