Carol Service The Nativity, By Peter Mead, 14 Dec 2014

The Unusual Setting of the Nativity

Well, I suppose it's a little bit unusual to come to a leisure center for a Christmas carol service. For us who come here every week, it's kind of feeling a bit normal now. We come on Sunday mornings for Trinity Chippenham, and this is where we meet for church.

But I suppose you kind of think at Christmas time you need cathedrals and stained glass windows and all of those things, which of course we don't have here. But actually maybe this is the the perfect place for a carol service.

Maybe this is exactly where we should be, because if you think about the first Christmas, it wasn't in an impressive location. It was in a place where normal people would go about normal life. In fact, if we can get a picture in our minds of that first nativity scene, and let me put one up here just in case your imagination is struggling a little bit, and as we think about the first nativity, you've got this scene with some very familiar characters.

But when you think about those characters, they're actually quite an unusual bunch, a bit of a motley crew. For example, you've got a group of shepherds. Shepherds were poor, insignificant nobodies. They stayed out in the fields, and they looked after sheep, and they were so low on the sort of status scale of their society that if there was a court case, a shepherd's testimony didn't even count.

They were nobodies, and yet they received an invitation from heaven to come and to gaze at the child in that manger. So you've got shepherds, nobodies, poor, local people, and they're joined by another group of people.

What were the other people called? I suppose we call them kings sometimes. Yeah, go ahead. The three wise men, good job. And the wise men, we don't know if there were three, but they had three presents, and so normally there's three.

On this picture, I think it's only two, but these wise men came, and they came from a long, long way away from another country, and they were all probably dressed in their fine attire, and they carried these gifts.

I mean, Mary and Joseph weren't used to getting gold. This was kind of special. And when they came, they were so significant and so out of the ordinary that they caused a stir throughout the land. And they too, just like the shepherds, had received sort of a heavenly invitation, and they followed the star, and they came, and eventually they arrived where the baby Jesus was.

Now, some people like to say that they probably arrived quite a bit later, because it says in the Bible that the wise men came to the house where the child was. Now, actually, I think they could have come the same night.

Mary, Joseph, and the Guest Room in Bethlehem

And the reason for that is because I'm not convinced that Jesus was born in a stable, or a cattle shed, or even a cave. What was going on, I think, that first Christmas, as Mary and Joseph came to Bethlehem, they were trying to find a guest room.

That's the word that we've translated as in in our Bibles, but they were trying to find a guest room. And so on each house, they'd have a guest room added, and as they came to the people that they would probably stay with, relatives or contacts, they said, we're really sorry, but our guest room is full.

And then I imagine they would have brought them into their living room. People in the Middle East don't send anybody out to a stable. And in the living room, you say, well, how can it be the living room?

Come on, there was a manger there. Well, actually, the living room is where they bring the animals at night. They bring in their couple of sheep and the donkey and lock the door so nobody could steal the animals.

And then they'd have their animals secure, and let's face it, they'd have central heating for the night as these animals would be in the house. And right there in the floor, either freestanding or cut out of the floor, would be the feeding trough, the manger.

And so, I think it's quite possible that the wise men came knocking on the door and came in into this fairly confined space alongside Mary and Joseph and the shepherds. That's a set of extremes, isn't it?

You've got the poor and the rich. You've got the locals and the foreigners. You've got the nobodies and the somebodies. You've got these very significant people right next to some very insignificant people.

And right in the center of the picture is a couple, Mary and Joseph. They were a young couple. Joseph was a carpenter. He had his life before him. He had his wedding before him. And then he had his fiancée before him pregnant.

He wasn't anticipating that. And all sorts of things swirled through his mind. So much so that God had to send an angel to give him a heavenly invitation to be a part of what was going on. To not give up on her, but to be the stepdad of this little one.

Mary, of course, got the first visit. She was just a young, probably 13 years old, something like that. A young, young lady. And one day she was visited by the angel too. And the angel said to her, you're highly favored by God and you're going to have a child.

And she was open to this whole suggestion, but she sort of scratched her head. She said, how is this possible? And the angel had to explain that this is possible because the Spirit of God is going to come upon you so that the child inside you is Christ the Lord, the Savior of the world.

The Reconciliation of Rich and Poor, Local and Foreign, Male and Female

And so she was invited by a heavenly visitor to be a part of the greatest story ever told. So if you think about it, you've got shepherds and you've got wise men. You've got Mary, you've got Joseph. You've got the poor and the rich, the significant, the insignificant, the locals, the foreigners.

You've got the male, the female. You've got a very complicated family situation. You've got, if you like, a blended family before they've even started with a stepdad on the scene. I mean the whole thing is really remarkably complex.

And yet this was the way God designed it. This was the way Jesus designed it because of course he is the only person ever born who got to choose where and when and how. And he chose that. Why? I think the reason for that is because God loves to bring people together.

There's a verse in the Bible that says this, in Christ God was reconciling the world. Remember what the angels said to the shepherds? They spoke and they sang about glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace.

The Christmas message is a message of peace. Who else could bring together all corners of society and different cultures and different kinds of people and bring them into one room united around this little baby boy.

Has anyone seen the Sainsbury's advert on television this Christmas? The Sainsbury's advert, if you haven't seen it, you need to look it up online or find it somehow. It's a depiction of what happened 100 years ago.

100 years ago, the great war, the first world war was happening and the soldiers were facing their first Christmas away from home in the trenches. My great grandfather was there. And they were in these trenches and as Christmas came the sound of silent night came wafting out of the German trench and the British trench joined in and the fighting stopped and as as the day dawned they came into no man's land.

And they played football with one another. Now apparently my son tells me that the score was 3 -2 to Germany. Which is kind of typical, isn't it? It's been pretty much that way for most of the century since but I will just want to point out one other fact.

They were playing with two extra players. Okay, so let's not feel too bad about it. I think we could have won but they played football together in no man's land. It was a beautiful moment of truce and peace in the midst of conflict.

And just a few hours later back in their trenches the senseless killing continued and hundreds of thousands of young men lost their lives. Is that what Christmas is about? Just a little bit of peace in a in a world full of war.

I don't think so. And if we had the time we could tell story after story of how God has brought people together because of Jesus. People with different color skin, people with different socioeconomic status, people from all sorts of different backgrounds and united them together to serve each other and to serve the world.

Christmas as Reconciliation to God Through Christ

But actually the big story of Christmas is not just that in Christ God was reconciling the world. But I want to finish that phrase. In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself. That's the big news.

That little bundle of flesh seven pounds. I don't know what size were babies in those days. Six, five, seven, eight pounds. Whatever he was he was tiny and helpless. That little newborn cry so precious for a few weeks.

And just a little one that can do nothing for himself and yet that was God's son. Choosing to come into this world, choosing to become one of us so that he could bring us to God. That's the message of Christmas.

It's not a sentimental Christmas card image. It's a life transforming truth that here at Trinity Chippen and we find gloriously exciting. That the the God who created everything, the father and the son and the spirit, that's what we use the word trinity for.

This God, the God who made everything has forever been in this loving relationship. The father loving the son and the son loving the father and the father sent the son so that the son could share his relationship with his father with us.

In many of those stories, many of those invitations, the message was this. There's a savior who's going to save people from their sins. Here we are. Rich and poor, old and young, male and female, local and foreign, different colors, different backgrounds, all sorts of different issues.

And if if we told our stories what diversity there would be in this room. And yet the invitation comes to us. Would you come and take a look into the manger and see this little bundle of flesh so helpless would you see that this is God's gift to the world?

That he has come not just to give us a wonderful holiday at this time of year, but more than that he came to live a perfect life. The reason you probably heard this before, of course, the reason for the season is this, that Christmas leads to Easter.

Jesus came as a little baby to grow into a man who lived a perfect life. He never sinned. He never did the things that you and I have done. He never even thought of doing the things that you and I have thought of doing.

And the Bible says that because we're sinners, because we we are curved in on ourselves as if we're the center of the universe, God has done something to draw us back into relationship with him. He sent his son and he came as a baby that first Christmas and he grew to be a man and eventually Easter.

As a man, he went to the cross and he died a death. He didn't deserve to die as a substitute for us. He stepped into our place so that if we will accept that he has done it all, we can give up trying.

We can give up striving and we can give up trying to impress one another and trying to impress God and we can say, okay, God, if you're giving me your son, then I'm accepting that as a gift. I'm accepting that he died in my place.

Would you forgive me for my sins? The price has been paid by him and would you welcome me into your family? God loved the world so much that he gave us his son. Jesus loved you so much that he's given you his relationship with his father.

And it's an invitation from heaven, an invitation for for each one of us. And it's my prayer that as we go through this Christmas season and and we see the lights and we see the trees and we see the nativity scenes that we'll remember this is God stepping in to invite each one of us, no matter how insignificant we may feel, inviting us to come and have relationship with God, the relationship that we were designed for.

No matter what we've done, no matter how disqualified we feel, God loves you and he's given you his son to prove it. In Christ, God was reconciling the world. Rich and poor, old and young, male and female, black and white, all people.

He was reconciling the world to himself.