| Archive Emmanuel |
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| How often do we hear that "Christmas is for just for the kids"? Indeed for
many young children it is a magical time with glittering lights, sparkling
decorations, presents, parties, pantos, carols and cribs. It is special for
children but what about us adults? A fairy story In the popular imagination Christmas is a fairy story with angels, shepherds, a baby born to be king, a donkey, kings and a star. Add to this Santa and his elves, Rudolph and toys galore, then you've got a glorious confection that takes the bitterness and pain of 'the real world' away for a while. That is until the bills have to be paid and it's back to work, back to a broken and hurting humanity. So, is Christmas in the words of Scrooge "Humbug"? But what is the truth? Yes, there are still angels, shepherds and a baby born to be king, wise men for kings, probably a planetary conjunction and possibly a donkey. The rest of Christmas in the popular imagination is icing. But there are uncomfortable elements to the story that are often edited out, Mary is a teenage mum and her baby rumoured to be born out of wedlock, Joseph and Mary are certainly homeless and probably destitute, they are forced to run for their lives and become refugees because of the obsessive jealousy and fear of Herod, who casually indulges in an act of child slaughter to preserve his position. Poverty, scandal, homelessness, rejection, living as refugees, callous brutality and cruelty towards innocent children - this has an all too a contemporary feel to it. Told in full it is not a children’s fairy story as popularly conceived, although similar violence and suffering can be found in the unexpurgated versions of Grimm. God with us Nonetheless this is the story of Jesus. He is called Emmanuel, God with us, sharing in the toil and torment of our human condition, living in the darkness of rejection and pain, yet demonstrating by his life and teaching the truth and grace of God. His destiny was to be a king - true, but wearing a crown of thorns and a purple robe of mockery, with a criminal's cross as his only throne. Most of his subjects were those on the outside, the poor, the hurting and the sad. He was repudiated by the respectable, damned by the religious, and condemned by the powerful. Yet he was vindicated by his Father, for death could not hold him. He rose from the grave, appeared to his disciples and still encounters those who seek him today. So the message of Christmas is contained in that one word Emmanuel. God with us, God on our side, God with a human face, God who suffers with us and for us, God who knows us by name, that is what the party's about. Two thousand years on the wonder is not tarnished, the glory not diminished, the compassion still unfailing. This Jesus in the manger is our Emmanuel, our Redeemer, our Saviour, our Brother and Friend, our Lord and our God. So we are part of this never-ending story of the truth and grace of the Word made flesh. Our hearts can be either the closed doors of the inn, or the manger in which he is laid. We are there as a shepherd running to greet the child with joy, or as a sceptical priest dismissing it as yet another outbreak of religious mania, or as a Herod who sees Jesus as a threat to be eliminated. We can approach the birth of Jesus with the tired cynicism of an adult or with the openness and wonder of a child. If Christmas is to exert its proper magic it needs the eyes and heart of a child. As Jesus said we need to become as children to enter the kingdom.
Don Dowling |
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