An article for December editions of parish magazines from the Archdeacon of Worcester, Mark Badger.
Advent and Christmas, the season of songs. Mary sang her “Magnificat,” Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, sings his “Benedictus.” The birth of John causes Zechariah to bless God for the birth of Jesus and John's birth was a sign of the Messiah's advent.
Zechariah’s song is full of a father’s joy an ecstatic prophecy which comes from heaven to the earthly realm and speaks of the wondrous events to come, those in which God is come to earth and the divine is mixed with the mundane.
I say mundane because I always want to look at these biblical scenes through the eyes of one who’s feet are firmly fixed in the here and now and reality in the mundane! I think that it’s important to acknowledge such realities at this time of year, Advent and Christmas, because we so easily become lost in a land of fantasy and the worrying this is that so often we find it so much easier to believe in and find God amidst the fantasy. But the Christmas story is so earthy, just imagine how Mary and Joseph felt having to make such a journey just so some powerful Roman could work out the tax levy for Syria. It’s easy to romanticise about the donkey, but the reality was harsh and uncertain. Yet the Gospel tells us that God came among us in just such reality in just such unlikely and ordinary circumstances. Indeed, born in the filth and stench of a stable!
For God’s birth we prefer the more spectacular, yet even the sign that the angel gave to the Shepherds to recognise the saviour was simple and every day, a child in swaddling bands lying in a manger. Christ came among us in events to ordinary for most of us. And true to that first Christmas, Christ the Lord comes to meet us, not apart from our ordinary lives, but within each day and in each other. That is what is extraordinary!
