Take us to Bethlehem, House of Bread
Where the hungry are filled
And the satisfied sent empty away
Where the poor find riches
And the rich recognize their poverty
And all who worship are filled with awe.
Song "Be blessed prepare the way"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnBgMD3heUY
Lighting of the four Advent candles
Forgive our mean spirit
Stretch our hearts
To extend love and compassion
To those we meet
Even if we don’t like them
Light of the world,
Mary's child,
dawn on our darkened day. Amen
We say the Lord’s prayer in our own language
Song “Mary had a baby yes Lord” https://youtu.be/syS9wU1Sr8A
Reflection on Matthew 1:18-25
The Christ Mass festival has been celebrated since about 400 AD, Christ' means 'Messiah' or 'Anointed One' - the title given to Jesus - and 'Mass' was a religious festival. Today if you visited my country from another planet you would be forgiven for thinking that Christmas was a retail festival! This Christmas we will rush around fulfilling the need to buy presents for our loved ones and friends. But this is not what Christmas is about.
The Old Testament prophets spoke of a return to God and to keeping Gods laws as a basis for living in peace, peace with God, with one another and themselves. When God’s people wander away from their true calling, and forget the plight of others, they become aimless and empty, and their souls are not fed. Only God can satisfy the hungry soul, and so Gods prophets cry in the emptiness and chaos, because in their hearts is a dream which refuses to die. Isaiah speaks of a light in the darkness. Its an everlasting promise, there will be light in the darkness for Gods people, because as the passage goes on to say a child will be born who will save the people. This child, this Jesus.
Unusually for Advent readings this account is about Joseph. He is engaged to Mary and finds her pregnant. So as he knows this is not his baby. He decides to divorce her quietly. Betrothal was equated to marriage in Jewish society, so he assumed Mary had been unfaithful and could be stoned, had not Joseph acted on her behalf, according to Palestinian justice at the time. And yet it is Josephs genealogy that is important as we are told at the beginning of Matthew, because it goes back ...to Adam. Ive wondered about this. Maybe it was possible with oral history to go back generations. Its very grounding in a way we are not in my culture. But Joseph decides to keep quiet and avoid any public disgrace for her or him. It’s the way we often behave in families, though this secret will out.
Then as Joseph sleeps, obviously mulling all this over, an angel appears to him in a dream. I love this because unlike other cultures even post Jungian, we tend to ignore our dreams, but this dream changes Joseph’s perspective on the matter. The angel tells Joseph to take Mary into his home as a sign of their union. This would indicate they were married. No lavish wedding ceremony. The angel then gave Joseph the name for the baby and its meaning, Yahweh of salvation, in Greek “Joshua”. In Hebrew, the word “Jesus” sounds like “he will save”. And this was to fulfil Old Testament prophecies. So when Joseph woke up he took Mary home as his wife. And the baby was born as predicted, a light in the darkness, an everlasting promise, there will be light in the darkness for Gods people, because a child will be born who will save the people.
God invites us to turn our lives, to live new and different lives and as the angel said doing so in the face of fear, but not be afraid. Then new ways of being can be imagined personally and globally, but we have to trust our dreams and start to live them!
This Christmas there will be no hope in the noisy shopping rituals and the exchange of presents if there is not also a humbling, a waiting, a vulnerability, to Christ’s coming again, the perspective of God with us-Immanuel, can change us, forever, completely. For many of us we need to feel the brush of angels wings and the whisper of hope this Advent, this waiting time, to give our lives to Christ, knowing our own inadequacies and failings and by the presence of the Holy Spirit living a new and changed life.
This week take time and space to be still before God, take time to look at your priorities as we approach the end of another year, take time to give to others less fortunate than yourself and the God of Hope, the God of Light will be with you, and you will know it by the peace in your hearts. And of such stuff are dreams made of and of such stuff is the journey that as Christians we embark on when we decide to truly follow the Light of All Lights.
Song “The Angel Gabriel to Mary came” https://youtu.be/UibY8twQTOQ
Come to us Holy one
To challenge our complacency
Come to us Holy one
To fill the hungry with good things
Come to us Holy one
To exalt the lowly and meek.
