Resources  for Christmas

The Enormity of Christmas

(Reflection 1)

It's almost too easy  for those of us who are Christians to say, "Christmas was when God came down in human form".  That is absolutely staggering!  Think about it.

Our church uses a public hall for its worship. It has a high ceiling and strung from the ceiling is a big net, which for parties they fill with balloons to be released at the appropriate time. Most of the time the net just hangs there empty.

In the middle of a service recently I found myself gazing at this net, imagining it being our solar system, filled with the planets and stars.  An incredibly big space - and God fills all of it - as the Psalmist wrote, "If I go up to the heavens you are there." (Psa 139:8)

Then in my imagination I scaled down our entire universe into one of the squares of the net and all the other squares represented other universes - and the net had no edges - and God still filled all of that space!

And this God whose boundaries are unlimited, somehow put himself, or should we say some of himself, into human form - in the form of a baby!

On the main page we made reference to ants. My boys gave me something called "An Antiquarium", a container for keeping ants in.  So here is this colony of ants in a container small enough for me to hold in my hand.

Suppose in some way this large human body could somehow be condensed into the body of an ant, still somehow retaining some awareness of being a human while in this ant body.  What incredible limitations I would be suffering. The only possible reason I could think of to do that, would be because I had such an urgent desire to communicate with these ants.

There's an interesting analogy by reversing the picture above.  Suppose we are the ants, and suppose it's possible for the ant to be as dramatically changed if it's taken out of the "Antiquarium" as the picture of the ant now becoming a human being with all of its incredible potential.  Is that what God does with us when we die and go to heaven?  (Read 1 Cor 15:35-57 with this picture in mind!)

The Glory of God

(Reflection 2)

The Bible gives us glimpses of God. One of the things it does is talk about the "glory of God" and means a literal brightness.  Now can we grasp something of this perhaps in the light of the Christmas story?

Imagine space - darkness with lights in it, the stars with their staggering brightness when you are close up - but when you are out in the vastness of space, there is just darkness.   Now this of course is just the material world, but the Bible speaks of a spiritual world, heaven, where God 'dwells'.

Now imagine pictures you may have seen of the light of a nuclear explosion, or in sci-fi films of a super nova or some other brilliant light explosion.   Imagine being out in deep space where mostly there is darkness, and God comes from the spiritual world into the material world.  Suddenly there is brilliant light - everywhere!  Yes, everywhere!    Nowhere is there darkness, everywhere there is light, because the glory of God is there.

Yes, although we talked above about God being everywhere in Creation, there is a difference between "his presence" meaning that "he is there" and "his manifest presence" meaning "he is tangibly there"   Lost? Don't worry, read on and it may become clearer.

Now Jesus indicated that when he was born in the form of a baby in Bethlehem, this was him who had existed throughout eternity coming into a human baby form (see John 6:38,41 etc. and John 17:5) and putting aside the glory he had had before (see also Phil 2:5-11).

Imagine (as inadequate as your imagination will be!) for a moment, all the glory that we described above, being funnelled down into one human form.  Yes it defies the imagination, our minds can't cope with that, but that's what happened.  Jesus was fully man and fully God!  Somehow he was still God but put aside this glory so as not to devastate us with it.   Instead he came in the most humble and gentle and unthreatening form possible - a baby. That is the wonder of Christmas.

The Census

(Story 1)

We perhaps miss some of the details of what went on in the things the Bible tells us. The fact was that Mary and Joseph had to be in Bethlehem to be counted. The following is a narrative we wrote to try to capture something of this in a modern way.

Rome Central Records. Can I help you? ..... Yes please hold and I'll put you through.

Middle Eastern Census, Gaius speaking, how can I help you?

Octavio, long time no see, how are you doing? … well what can I do for you? You're running an article for the Tribune? Right! So how can I help? Well I'm a bit busy at the moment….. well OK!

Well, I'm a census official and the Middle East is my area. I tell you what, I'll tell you about what's just been happening here in the last few weeks or so.

It was a quiet day, a quiet week and in fact it had been a quiet year, when suddenly it all changed just two weeks ago. Good old Augustus had been bragging about how many people he ruled over and somebody dared to suggest it couldn't be that many, so the word's gone out – count them all! Come on!

Hey don't tell him I spoke like that will you, he's a hard guy - all the Caesars tend be, and this one, the grand nephew of the famous Julius is no different.

Well, the empire's pretty big these days so it's going to be a big job. Fortunately my patch is only that motley bunch down around the Mediterranean. You gotta understand, in this business if you don't get it right you become lion's meat. So, you gotta take ‘em country by country. One of the most difficult are the Jews in Israel. My goodness!

There's a lot of coming and going down there – it's on the main highway trade route between Egypt and the north and they're always moving around that lot. Well I gave the governor down there a ring and told what we needed back here in Rome – he got the message. There's no messing with our guys on the ground – they've got to be like that, it's a tough job keeping all of these different races in order. No problem, he says, the local chief guys are on good terms with me – they have to be otherwise we squash ‘em! So what they're going to do is get everybody to enrol by their town.

Pardon? Well no, we're going to make them go back to their own home town where they were born. Why? Well these Jews, fortunately from our point of view, are pretty hot on maintaining their family trees, so get one lot all under the same roof, so to speak, and it's easy to check ‘em out. Let's just pull a file out at random and I'll tell you what I mean.     

OK, here's one – guy by the name of Joseph ben Jacob, living at the moment in Nazareth. Let's have a look – comes from the family of David – well that's what it says anyway – funny how everybody likes to trace themselves back to someone important isn't it! Well, David was born in Bethlehem so this guy is going to have to go there to report in.

Pardon? Upset their lives? Well yeah, but my life is being upset isn't it – go tell it to Augustus if you've got a problem. What? Hang on I'll check, let's have a look. Ooops, the guy is engaged to be married, so she'll have to go too. What's this, someone's scribbled a note in here – she's pregnant! Naughty girl and not even married yet. Well it's the same the world over isn't it. You what? You're joking, we don't make exceptions for anyone. Sorry the fact that he's engaged is his problem, and the fact that she's expecting is her problem. What's her name? Er, yes here it is... Mary. I'm sorry, it's just the way it is. Come on, this Joseph and Mary, they're not special, just numbers as far as I'm concerned, yeah they're not special.

Yeah, that's OK, good hearing from you too. See you when you're next in town. OK, Bye.

The Shepherds

(Story 2)

Again we wanted to try to grasp something of what might have happened, so wrote the following script.

The reader read this with a Welsh accent, trying to convey something of the Welshness that some of us know. The idea was to mix the idea of Welsh shepherds (that we know about) with the Bethlehem shepherds account.  We hope it conveys something to you.  (If you read this from outside Britain and don't know the beauty of Welsh hillsides or of the Welsh lilting accent, never mind, try to catch the sense anyway).

I was on the hillside, look you. It was a cold night and I knew my Dai had left his thick donkey jacket at home, stupid man! He's got a memory like a sieve has my Dai.

Anyway, it worried me that he'd catch a cold so I was taking his jacket out to him, you see. That's why I was out on the hillside. It was a very clear night with the moon shining bright, so I could see their outlines on the brow of the hill and they had a small fire going to keep them warm. There were about five of the lads there – my Dai, big Maurice, wild Billy and well, it doesn't matter really, they were out there as they usually were looking after the flocks, you see.

Well I was about a couple a hundred yards from them still, when suddenly the whole of the sky above them lit up and there's person thing... really big you know in the air above them. I was terrified and wanted to call out to warn them, which was silly really ‘cos they were quite aware of him. Well I say ‘him' but I don't know...

I just froze where I was and the boys were all flat on the ground, terrified you know. It may sound daft but, look you, big men in bright lights don't just suddenly appear in the sky above you and you don't just stand there saying, “Oh look a big man in a bright light in the sky above us!” You get scared, look you.

Then he... it... spoke, and he seemed to speak to my Dai; somehow he knew he was the chief shepherd, look you.

Anyway, he said, “Come on now boyo, don't be afraid, it's all right, I've just come to tell you some good news.”

Good news! I thought, oh yes, coming and scaring the living daylights out of good people minding their own business. Good News is it then?

He carried on, “Look lads, down in the next valley in the village of Bethlehem, God's saviour has just been born. This is the most wonderful time for the earth. Go down and see him and welcome him. You'll find him in the stable round the back of the Bethlehem Arms.”

Right, I thought, Bethlehem Arms is it that this Saviour is coming, posh is it? Not exactly! In fact it's hardly a pub, more like a watering hole for the likes of my Dai and his men. If he was anything, this “saviour”, he'd at least be born in one of the posh rooms at the Caesar's Head. Now that is a pub! Anyway, why is he being born in a stable of all places. This sounds daft to me.

Anyway before I can get up... what?... well all right I fell down in the grass... I said I was terrified didn't I! Anyway, as I said, before I can get up, there's hundreds, yes I mean hundreds of these bright shining men... things... in the sky above us.... all singing and I have to tell you that it was this singing that turned my heart round, well I mean... it was wonderful... I mean, due respect to Gwyn Lewis and his Rhonda choir... but this was out of this world. I just sat there and cried it was so beautiful... they were singing something about praising God because he was bringing peace to the earth.

And then they were gone... and so I sat there and cried some more because I hadn't wanted them to stop because it was so lovely, look you.

The next thing I'm aware of is pounding feet and shouting voices, so I jumped up and big Maurice nearly bowled me over as the bunch of them came roaring down the hill.

My Dai's voice came, “Gwenda, what are you doing here?”

“I came with your coat, you daft happeth,” I answered the voice.

And there we all were, yes me too, pounding down the path over the hill down into Bethlehem, down the slope above the Bethlehem Arms and, look you, there was this light shining out of the stable at the back there.

Wild Billy was whooping like the mad ‘un that he is.

“Shut up, Billy,” I whispered as loudly as I could, “it's the middle of the night, you idiot, the village will all be asleep!”

Wild Billy knows not to cross me when I'm angry, but nothing was going to stop him this night. They all came tumbling down the steep path together and ended up right in the doorway of the stable ahead of me... well of course, I can't run as fast as them, what do you expect.

And that was when it turned funny, look you. One minute they are this noisy bunch of wild shepherds roaring down the hillside like a bunch of the boys on a night out, and the next minute they are standing in the doorway with their mouths wide open with tears running down their faces and not a word being said.

I slithered down the last part of the slope and bumped into my Dai who didn't seem to even be aware that I was there. I looked in and there was this couple, and this lovely little baby.

Don't ask! I don't know! I told you, I don't know what is was about him. I mean new born babies are lovely anyway aren't they, but there was something about this one that took your breath away. I just stood there with the others, with tears pouring down my face as well... I don't know, tears of happiness I suppose... he was lovely... poor little lamb, so vulnerable, lying wrapped up on a food stall filled with straw. I wanted to go in there and pick him up and hold him, yet somehow that seemed like it would be an intrusion, so I just stood there and looked, and cried, with big Maurice towering over me dripping tears on me and Dai and the others as well, all bawling our eyes out... it was so lovely, look you... this little lamb lying there, the most beautiful baby I've ever seen.

And then the girl turned to us and smiled and said quietly, “Hullo” and we all cried some more.

It was a bit of a night really. I don't think I'll ever forget it, that night we went down to Bethlehem.