Context
For practical reasons (given that Christmas Day falls on a Tuesday when PostScript is often written), this PostScript is being written further ahead than usual. We live in a messy, complex and uncertain world. This has always been true but today, quite apart from the hugely uncertain state of Brexit, we hear as I write that the US President has (to much surprise even in his own party) declared victory in the war in Syria.
In the UK Gatwick Airport has just partially re-opened, after huge disruption to many people’s Christmas plans, caused it seems by one or more rogue drone pilots or ‘drone wolf’ as The Sun has dubbed him/them.
Reflection
The news often tells us of mess, complexity and uncertainty in today’s world. As we continue to mark the Christmas season, we might reflect on the mess, complexity and uncertainty in the world into which Jesus was born.
The risks for a mother and child in 1st century occupied Palestine were huge. And today Mary and Joseph’s journey would be impossible because of the separation wall which cuts off mainly Palestinian Bethlehem from Israeli Galilee. Frances Hoyland’s painting Nativity Polyptych in the Methodist Modern Art Collection shows the Holy Family against a backdrop of the different, but equally messy, complex and uncertain, world of the early 1960s. Incarnation is by definition messy and uncertain, a far remove from the cosy folk tale with a happy ending so often told in nativity plays.
It was a Jesus born into the messy, complex and uncertain world of what we now call the first century of the Christian Era who set his parents an unexpected challenge as he stayed behind in Jerusalem. This same Jesus asked questions, we are told (v46). According to Luke he also gave answers which ‘amazed’ (v 47) the teachers who engaged with this near teenage prodigy. Are we willing to ask, let alone seek to answer, the many questions which arise for people of faith in this messy, complex and uncertain world?
The angels proclaimed peace on earth to the shepherds, but human beings continue to create and mess and conflict. Wars are often fought to no clear conclusion as in Afghanistan and Syria, let alone in many places whose conflicts rarely reach our TV news or newspapers. For all the technological progress human beings have made over twenty centuries, it seems remarkably hard to track down rogue drone pilots. Into this complexity comes the Christ child who as a man will proclaim that God’s kingdom is already among us. How best can we embrace for ourselves, and tell others, what his coming means to us in this generation?
Preachers might reflect on what they did as twelve year olds and how that compares with the behaviour of the young Jesus. Perhaps I was fortunate, but at twelve I went off on overnight (and longer) cycle tours with a friend. Our parents knew which youth hostels we had booked but their willingness to let us go off alone might now be thought close to abandonment.
Prayer
A prayer of reflection for the season:
God of eternity,
as we continue to mark the Christmas season,
help us to understand the birth of the Christ child
into a messy, complex and uncertain world.
As we come to the end of one year and approach another,
help us to reflect positively on the mess, complexity
and uncertainty of this present age.
Help ask the questions which matter
and give us courage for the living of these days.
in his name and in the power of Holy Spirit
we ask this and all our prayers, spoken and unspoken.
Amen.
In your prayers of intercession, remember all who may not have been able to share the joy of the Christmas season among them those for whom Christmas brings bad memories, but also those who are victims of our messy world particularly those fleeing from injustice and persecution. These words from Milner-Wright’s classic bidding prayer for a Carol Service may also help:
Because this of all things would rejoice his heart, let us remember, in his name, the poor and helpless, the cold, the hungry and the oppressed; the sick and them that mourn, the lonely and the unloved. (Common Worship: Times and Seasons, p 88).
It is 14 years since the devastating Boxing Day tsunami which affected many around the Indian Ocean - and now it has happened again; but you may wish to remember those (still) suffering from these and other natural disasters. It is just over 30 years ago that Pan Am flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie just before Christmas; again you may wish to remember those still affected by that and other tragedies made by human beings.
Questions
- What questions did you have when you were twelve?
- Do you still have the same questions? And, if not, how different are they today?
- And might you now expect or receive different answers?
Many years ago having read part of the Jonah story I discovered a child who amazed his father because he knew all the key points of the story. What might we adults discover from the children in our midst if we gave them to chance to tell us? Might we be amazed as were those who met Jesus in the Temple?
All-age activity
Offer any 12 year olds (or those of a nearby age) to ask unscripted questions of one or more of your church leaders.
Young people
Today’s gospel story tells of Jesus asking questions of the religious leaders of his time. At the Greenbelt Festival Communion Service in 2016 in place of the sermon a group of children interviewed the Archbishop of Canterbury. Had you been one of those children what would you have wanted to ask him? Or what would you wish to ask or any other church leader willing to answer questions from young people?
Dudley Coates is a Local Preacher in the Yeovil and Blackmore Vale Methodist Circuit and a former Vice President of the Methodist Conference.
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