How can this be?

Perhaps like me, you watched The BBC production of The Nativity in the run-up to last Christmas. Its producer Tony Jordan, best known for his EastEnders scripts, said to The Telegraph newspaper:

"I don't come from a religious background. I don't think I'm anybody's fool. I was expelled from school at 14. I've been in trouble. I know people from my background have discounted the story of the nativity. I certainly didn't believe it when I started on it three years ago. But now I do." “If you accept that Jesus is the Son of God, why would you not believe that Mary was a virgin and that God might have had some hand in the impregnation?... “The only thing I know for sure is that the words I read as coming from Jesus Christ are the most truthful thing I have ever heard.”

Quite a transformation!

I used to be an English teacher and one of my favourite lines from Shakespeare is spoken by Hal, the King's son in Henry the IV part one. Hal is a bit of a waste of space really. He knows that he has been wasting time and is ill-prepared to be king but intent on changing his ways, he says about his future life, his improved life, his reformed character, that 'like bright metal on a sullen ground, my reformation glittering o'er my fault shall show more goodly and attract more eyes than that which hath no foil to set it off.' And indeed he is right, if we couldn't compare the renegade Hal with the improved and reformed Hal, we would not know how great the new version was. Tony Jordan experienced a reformation of his outlook on life.

In this passage too from Luke about the conception of Jesus, the angel's news to Mary that she will bear a Son: the Saviour of the world, we can not help but compare this bright metal to that foil - John the baptist. God's gift to Zechariah and his barren wife Elizabeth is John, a foil to the greater Jesus – the brightest one of all.

Jesus is greater than John, and John is always keen to tell us this – John is not worthy to tie up Jesus' shoelaces remember! And... Whilst John baptises in water, Jesus will baptise with the Holy Spirit … so in their births too, Jesus' is more miraculous, completely miraculous, so much greater than John's.

Jesus' birth occurs like the miracle of creation -- out of nothing - God creates life in Mary through the power of the Holy Spirit which overshadows her. Compared to this John the Baptist's conception is at least conventional, even if it occurred probably long past Elizabeth being biologically able to conceive.

What this birth means for Elizabeth also points to the greater meaning of what Jesus' birth means for us. Whilst God's miracle for Elizabeth delivers her of her shame – for it was harder then to be a woman who could not have children than it is now for all sorts of social reasons - Jesus' birth delivers us of our shame. Jesus' birth delivers the whole of humanity of its shame. For us this baby's birth is the fulfilment of a promise of long ago, a promise our reading from Isaiah made plain. It is as if the whole world has forever been waiting pregnant with expectation for this moment of delivery from its shame. For in the birth of Jesus, we have the promise of a deliverer, a deliverer will be delivered as Mary gives birth to one who will deliver us from death and sin and shame and set us free and give us life, indeed new birth in the miracle of eternal life.

In our creed we profess that For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven. Was incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and was made man. This is God's plan from the beginning, his dwelling with us, is a becoming one of us. His love for us is so great, he chooses to send his Son not in the form of a great King or emperor but in the form of a small, helpless child to an unexpecting and then expectant, frightened teenage girl. This king for the whole world is born to a poor family in an insignificant city on the outskirts of Israel. Born in shame and dying in shame he delivers us from our shame.

And even though this passage leaves us in no doubt about Jesus' status, The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob for ever. And There will be no end to his kingdom (v. 32), it is important too that we concentrate on this Jesus, this Son of God, also being the son of Mary. Because of this, like us, he was born. Because of this, like us, he grew up. He died. Because Jesus, the son of Mary, was human, he rejoiced at a wedding and wept at the death of a friend. He was misunderstood. He suffered distress and was betrayed a great many times by those he loved. He experienced physical pain. He became tired. Sometimes he just needed to disappear for a while by himself to find himself and his purpose again in prayer. He even felt abandoned by God. It is because he was also Mary's Son and therefore completely human (as well as completely God) and son of the "Most High God" that we trust that God not only knows, but has experienced everything that we experience. It is also because of this very humanity that we also live with hope and expectation because this Jesus, this son of Mary -- this human being -- died but was raised from death, and so we, too, are promised the same thing and look to him, to Jesus, as the risen one to know that that promise is also true for us.

You know, struggling to believe it at times means we are in good company. Mary was unsure, could she really be carrying such life within her, the angel understood her confusion, God understands ours. The angel told Mary of her cousin Elizabeth – she is pregnant even now and far gone and she had been barren, look to her Mary and see the truth unfold there as it will in you. God says to us I know you also doubt, you say those words of the creed and marvel at them, you wonder if you have such life within you, look to my Son, the resurrection life that is his, is also yours. You can expect to follow where he has led.

The message we take away from this then is that it is okay for us to be weak and uncertain at times, to be simply human and questioning. Like Mary we can ask – How can this be? We do not have to try and be something else, we can be just human – we can ask God to unfold in us his truths over time. God will bring to birth his life in us, we are just being asked to make room for him and wait.

And in that waiting too, we are to wait for one another – one of my favourite verses in scripture is this – When you come together to eat, wait for one another – we are to apply it to everything and if in everything we wait for one another, then we will open up our church more easily to those who are uncertain, to those who don't even believe yet. Ours is the waiting, God is the deliverer. Jesus will come to live in us, sometimes quickly and sometimes slowly, as with Mary and Elizabeth the gestation periods differed. If we can look at every person in our world and think to ourselves I only have to welcome and wait, God is the one who can create life where there is nothing, then we will wait more generously and with greater expectation. God manifests himself in the least expectant people, in the lowliest of places, in the doubters and in the uncertain, in the frightened and the weak because in all this his glory shines only more brightly like that bright metal on a sullen ground that Hal describes in Shakespeare's play.

Welcome God this morning and then wait and watch God unfold his promises in you, through you and all around you but be careful to watch for that unfolding in the least expected places. Hear John the baptist too call you into a waiting for something greater, something promised that will make all you have known before fade in comparison to such brightness.

As we close this meditation on this passage of scripture this morning I just want us to take one or two things into a minute or so of silence that we are going to sit in and I ask you to settle on one.

'How can this be?' Luke 1:26-38

FOR YOURSELF
• EITHER
  Ask God to show you just how far you have come – that the changes he has brought about in you mean you shine now with life much more brightly than you did before.
  Thank him for the transformation that has occurred.

• OR
  Ask God to be with you as you wait patiently for what will be delivered. Ask that you become more aware of the stirrings of his life within you and around you.

FOR OTHERS

• Bring to prayer some of those situations or people in whom you want God to bring his life. Ask that God increase in you the ability to wait patiently and place your trust in him.