70^th Anniversary of the 43’ers     

St Nicholas, Harpenden    

20th July 2013                                                           

There are not many texts in the Bible that refer to bells and the few that do refer to little bells on the hem of the priest’s robe in the OT.  We could look at texts about proclaiming the good news as bell ringing is a form of public proclamation of the Good news a local church or cathedral has to offer to the world.  Now, it may seem an odd and harsh text to read at this special and memorable service to celebrate 70 years of the 43’ers.  However, when I read about the 43’ers from an article John Orme wrote, I thought of this verse, ‘Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart’.  I am not much interested in the parable that follows, though it is one of the great Lukan parables that say so much.  Rather, I am intrigued by the phrase, ‘pray always and not lose heart’. 

No one can ever know what it is like to live through war time.  It is one of those experiences that cannot be fully conveyed by description.  The reality is far more intense and layered than any written or verbal description can provide.

Wartime creates a new unnatural routine that becomes the new normal, where nothing is normal.  Think of those who lived in the cities, trying to get on with daily life, but there would be the sirens and the need to find shelter.  Remembering to do the black out.  The lack of foods.  Listening each day of the news of the war on the wireless. The suspicion of the foreigner.

And in the villages, there were the children who arrived to be kept safe.  The men subscripted to go and serve in another distant and bloody war.  The transformation of farm and industry to serve the wartime needs.  The fear that the idyllic pastoral peace would be broken by stray bombers or a surprise invasion.

          This new unnatural routine was compounded by the emotional unease.  The lovely and powerful slogan, keep calm and carry on, is so rich.  It conveys a cultural personality of stiff-upper lip Britain.  But it also captures the implicit truth, that not everyone feels calm and that sometimes it is difficult to carry on.  But that perseverance is what was needed.  Yet, each day in wartime, there was this underlying anxiety and worry that was always with you.

          British life takes for granted the sound of church bells: that blessed clang and melody that echoes around the city, town or village.  It is a symbol of our faith and a sound of our way of being.  It is a noise that intrudes yet brings comfort and assurance that all is well: prayers are being said, the sacraments are being offered, good news is being read.  But on 9^th June 1940 that all stopped.  If the bells were heard, it was not good news, but the terrible announcement that an invasion was underway.  The comforting clanging that marked our routine of community life became a looming apocalyptic portent of doom.  Thank God they never rang with in this way.

The Christian gospel is a gospel of hope.  It is good news.  It brings hope.  God is on the throne.  Good will eventually triumph.  There is the promise of life after death.  Love is the ultimate truth about God.  Justice and mercy will be established.  The poor and marginalised are welcomed.  Sinners are forgiven.  When church bells ring they declare this truth that it resides in this place where the tower stands tall and the bells swing sweetly.

Imagine then, the silent bells ringing out on 15 November 1942, not to warn of invasion, but of a major victory in North Africa.  Then on Christmas day that year, the bells rang again, reassuring a nation that God was incarnate, one with us, good news.  Finally, on Easter day, 1943, the bells sang across the land to say He is risen; invasion is no longer a threat; good is being established across the nations. God is on the throne.

The bells of 1943 become a parable of pray always and not lose heart.  After the bells were silenced, the void reinforced the sense that all was not well.  The threat of bells ringing only meant a terrible calamity was underway.  But when the bells did ring again, they rang as a prayer of thanksgiving of victory, of Christmas joy and of resurrection glory.  When the bells of 1943 returned, they rang that things were well; a brighter future was on its way.  Life was returning to the old normal.

Those who lived through wartime can truly say, we did not lose heart.  We kept calm and carried on.  We said our prayers behind black out curtains, in bomb shelters, on our knees in church, sitting in front of the wireless.  And when the moment came, we rang out our prayers in the ding-dong of cast iron and steel bells.  In wartime, we prayed and did not lose heart.

The ringing of church bells which returned to normal in 1943, at least normal in terms of frequency, are a parable of holding on, of keeping the faith.  To replace the many who were absent for war efforts, new boys and girls, fresh young men and women stepped into the circle or line to pull the ropes.  The bells continued to ring.  So when the Son of man comes, he will find faith on earth.

The bells are a parable of the relentless clanging that says, hear us O Lord.  They are the prayer of thanksgiving for justice being established, and for the ringing out the good news of the Gospel that is announced each Sunday.

The woman in the parable wore out the judge with her relentless bothering.  Our church bells ringing week upon week, Sundays, weddings, special events and the like are a form of bother, telling community and God we are still here.  We are praying and not losing heart.  Thank you 43’ers for your faithful duty and witness.  We celebrate you and give thanks to God.

The Church's Advertising Slogan: Love one another

Advertising slogans capture the imagination.  A good advertising slogan stays in your mind, it is catchy.  But more important, the slogan must somehow capture some essence about the product or communicate some idea about the product.  So when you think of say a car, you think...safety, Volvo, or Ford, 'Everything we do is driven by you'.  Or you think beer, Carlsberg, 'probably the best lager in the world' and now, ‘that calls for a Carlsberg’.

In many ways, the passage from John 13 is the advertising slogan for Christians: All people will know that you are my disciples if you have love one for another.  The love we have and demonstrate for each other as Christians is a giant billboard which the world around us reads and observes. Today we are particularly interested in that aspect of love demonstrated in the way Christians serve, the way Christians become as a church, the serving community which grows out the self-giving love of Christ.

This morning I want us to think about two ways we fulfil the words of Jesus in John 13 by become a serving community.

First of all our love and service to one another is a proclamation of Christ’s self-giving love.

The Christian teaching is that in Christ we have seen God's love in action and we have heard God's message of love proclaimed.  As Christians we focus our understanding of who God is on Jesus Christ, on his life and ministry.  In essence, we see in Christ an unconditional love, a self-sacrificing love that reaches out to all people regardless of race, religion, gender, social status or even their belief in God. 

Jesus came and sought out sinners, sought out those whom God was calling.  Jesus gave and gave, ministering healing and wholeness of life to all who would receive.  God even insured that Christ's death became a demonstration of God's love and forgiveness towards all, and the resurrection became the ultimate statement of God reaching out in love to all who would believe in his message.

Who is the God we proclaim?  God is love.  Through faith in Christ we have received and have been rooted in God's love.  Through faith in Christ we have experienced forgiveness, acceptance, healing, grace, mercy, and compassion. Through worship and sacrament we are reminded continually of God's love in Christ. Through our regular meeting together in worship and at Holy Communion we continue to experience God's self-giving love for us in the gifts of Christ's body and blood.

So out of our experience and understanding of God's love, we love and serve each other: as Jesus said, 'love one another, just as I have loved you'.  Our love and service for each other is a testimony, a revelation, even an advertisement of what we have experienced in God and know God to be.

When we love and serve each other in visible and tangible ways, we are demonstrating to a watching world, that we know something of the love of God in our hearts and souls.  Our experience of God's love motivates us to act it out, to advertise it, to reveal it.  By working at demonstrating our understanding and experience of God's love, we are proclaiming who God is to a world that still seeks God and does not know him. 

Secondly, our love and service toward each other also proclaims what kind of church or community we are.

 In a sense by acting out the love of God as a serving church or community we recommend ourselves or advertise ourselves to the community at large.

One of the gifts we as Christians offer to society is a sense of community, a sense of commitment to one another.  In Central and South America, the institutional church was failing to offer anything relevant to society.  Xtians there formed what are called base communities, groups of xtians dedicated to studying scripture and acting out the liberating truth they have experienced in Christ.  Through their community life they confronted the oppressive political and economic and religious structures of their society.  By developing a true sense of community, they proclaimed the authentic and life changing love of God.

In our own worship life, when we exchange the peace, we are demonstrating in a visible and tangible way our unity, harmony and LOVE for each other.  When we have disagreements about the life of our church we meet together in a loving and civilised manner and talk out our differences and try to come to an agreement (those who go off in anger and bitterness, who undermine the church by slanderous and negative talk are not demonstrating the love of God which they have so freely received).  When one of us is in need, members of the congregation reach out and care for us in tangible and practical ways, as well as praying for each other.

Christians are not meant to go it alone.  But individual, private Christianity is the mark of our times.  One of the failures of the traditional church is that it can lose its identity as a community.  One of the reasons for the success of the alternative church found in house church groups is that they often offer a genuine caring community.  In the USA presently there are a score of mega-churches, churches of over 1000 people, some even 5000 people or more.  This caters to the autonomy and individuality of American society, because you can attend a worship service with thousands of individuals and feel inspired by the numbers and the professional worship service, but you have no personal obligation to those people.  One can sneak in and out.

We have to guard against this.  For some people, the quiet service where they can sit alone and not be involved is enough.  People still like churches where they can 'get lost in the crowd'.  But if that is the only expression of one's faith, it can be an incomplete faith.

There are people who come regularly to church and who have been changed because they have experienced acceptance and encouragement.  They have experienced the love of God by the way others have loved and cared for them.  This is the true church in action.

If our local churches wish to continue to be a healing community, a caring Christian community, it must guard against being an institutional, individualised, impersonal church.  Each of us will have to allow the Holy Spirit, God's living presence in each one of us, to help us reach out to others, to help us allow ourselves to become involved in the life of others in this church.

Certainly one of the key ways we can do that is through small group meetings where there is space and time to get to know one another, to listen to one another and to minister to one another.  We can also make an effort to get to know people in church.  I know it is hard, but why not introduce yourself to someone you do not know during the coffee time after a service or in the queue as you go out so that in the future you can at least say hello.  That contact or introduction may lead to something more.  Building a Christian community in this church means each one of us will have to work at reaching out to others.

Jesus took off his garment, tied a towel and began to wash the disciples’ feet.  It was an act of humble service by their master.  It is an example for all of us to imitate in service to others.  The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many.  Christ has ministered to us meeting our deepest personal and spiritual needs.

By acting out our understanding and experience of the love of God as a serving community, we proclaim to the world an alternative way of being together.  By being a caring and serving community we are offering to the people of our community a safe place, a place where one does not have to suffer alone, a place where wholeness and healing can occur.

In conclusion, as a community of love and service towards each other, we proclaim or advertise who God is, a God of love. As we care and serve each other, we proclaim to an often lonely and needy world, that we are a loving community.  Jesus created the advertisement campaign for the church.  He said that the primary way we advertise who God is and what kind of church we are is by the way we love one another.

The Crucible of Easter

When I was at university in the USA, I worked as a night porter in a mortuary.  It was a great job.  It was dead quiet at night and I could get on with my studies.  I only had to answer the telephone and open up in case a body needed to be delivered after hours.  Well, it was strange sitting there in that little office with dead bodies in the next room.  Every little noise made me look up and wonder if somehow someone was not really dead.  I do not know where we get the idea that dead people might come back to life and start moving around.

          This Easter you and I face the reality of the risen Christ.  He who once was dead is now alive.  Death has failed.  Jesus is vindicated.  The Saviour lives. What are we to do?  How are we to respond?  If it is true that he is no longer dead, no longer in the tomb, then we are faced with a crucible of faith. When you encounter the glory of the risen Christ, how will you respond?

          First, let's reflect on this Easter story from Jesus' perspective.  The whole drama from Palm Sunday with the triumphal entry to the Last Supper, to the Garden of Gethsemane, to the arrest, trial, mockery, crucifixion, and death is a tale of unbelievable tragedy in which in the end a reversal of incredible proportions occurs, the resurrection.

          We see Jesus in this tragedy coming to terms with his fate, his impending death.  His life and ministry faced a gruesome end and he sensed it all.  In the Garden he faces for  the last time the hard choice of accepting his death.  At the beginning in the desert, there is the story of Satan tempting Jesus to take a short-cut to glory and fame without trotting the path of servitude.  Now, in Gethsemane, Jesus wrestles with a hard choice, whether to accept his Father's will.  He faces it and accepts the way of death. 'Not my will, but your will be done', Jesus prays.  He embarks on the way of the cross, trusting, believing, hoping.  This crucible of obedience becomes for him the means to triumph, vindication and exaltation. 

          As a result of making this hard decision, as a result of facing this crucible, his life and ministry is transformed through the cross and empty tomb to become a universal and cosmic ministry which extends to all, those dead and alive, those present and those in ages to come.  Out of Jesus' death comes the gift of resurrection life to all who believe. 

          But what about you and me?  Today, we celebrate the resurrection, the triumph of God's love and God's power.  In proclaiming this resurrection in our liturgical words and actions, we are faced with a crucible as well.  We are faced with the choice of the resurrection life, with the unbelievable truth that God has confronted all our sin and failure, confronted our rebellion and selfishness, confronted all our fears and enemies, even death, and triumphed.  Each Easter, we come face to face with the one who was dead, but now is alive. We come face to face with the glorious risen Christ.  We face the choice of responding in faith, acknowledging Christ as Lord or choosing to go our own way as if he is still in the tomb.  When you encounter the glory of the risen Christ, how will you respond?

          For many people, they stumble on the details.  Did Jesus literally rise from the dead?  Now I do not want to get side tracked about whether you have to believe in a literal rising of Jesus from the dead, or as the once Bishop of Durham said, a conjuring trick with bones.  However, such an understanding is not beyond the realm of God's power.  Whatever we think happened, we cannot sit in this service and carry on as if nothing happened.  And if something happened, then there is a hard choice for each of us in all this.

          Paul puts it another way, 'If you confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Christ from the dead, you will be saved'.  The Easter story is God's story.  It is a story of unconditional love, of God's love for us.  It is a story of God reaching out to us and demonstrating the power of a life of faith transcending even death.  The grave could not hold Jesus, the grave transfigured him, propelled his life of service to new heights.  The resurrection infused Jesus' life and ministry with power which broke open the tomb and unleashed spiritual power that still transforms people and circumstances today.

          When you encounter the glory of the risen Christ, how will you respond?  Our response becomes the hard decision for us, the crucible we face.  To believe in the resurrection means entering into a life of faith; it means identifying with God's action on our behalf; it means choosing God's way.

          For many that is exactly the problem, they want to keep control.  The life of a middle-class western European is quite comfortable, thank you very much.  All this talk of the resurrection is slightly beyond, a touch too mysterious, too spiritual.  The death and resurrection becomes a stumbling block.  People are willing to say, I believe in God, and I am willing to serve my neighbour...but let's not get carried away with all this supernatural, over the top, fanatical religion stuff.

          But that is exactly the point.  The resurrection is a demonstration of God going over the top, of God pulling out all the stops, of God reaching out to you and me and saying the life I offer is stronger than death. The life of faith is a life which transcends the mundane existence of the purely human perspective.  The resurrection presents to you and me in the strongest way possible the choice between the life of faith or the life lived my own way.  When confronted with the risen Christ, you cannot ignore it or pretend it did not happen.

          After all the services of holy week and all the services today, I am faced today with the awesome, unbelievable Easter story that Jesus is alive, that Jesus is risen.  If I say yes, he is risen indeed, if I believe and affirm the Easter reality, I know what it means.  It means, that in some sense my life is not my own.  It means I believe God has reached into my rather self-contained life and broken down the fences in which I have made myself comfortable.  It means I have opened myself to God’s power to transform my life and offer to me a new life.

          And how will you respond when faced with the risen Christ in all his glory?  Will you say, yes to the resurrection life?  Will you open your self to the new life that is in Christ?  Will you say with faith in your heart and soul, Alleluia, Christ is risen. 

FACING the CROSS...Thoughts for Holy Week

Where were the men?  Where were the men disciples at the cross?  John’s gospel tells us (as does parallel texts in Matthew and Mark): ‘standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene’. We know from the next verse in John’s Gospel that one male was there, the disciple whom Jesus loved.  But where are the rest?  At the arrest of Jesus we read, ‘then all the disciples forsook him and fled’.  Yes there was a young man who tried to follow him but when seized by the guards he too ran away.  Peter also tried to follow later but it led to his thrice denial.  Where are we as disciples?  Can we bear to face the cross which the others could not face?

        This holy week we journey from Palm Sunday to Good Friday to Easter.  What begins as celebration with waving palms and hosanna’s collapses into tragedy with crowds crying, ‘crucify him’, and emerges as a comedy, the great reversal, death undone.  Our theme this week is facing the cross.  As disciples we are being asked to not hide or turn away as we face the cross upon which Jesus hung.

        Crucifixion was a most brutal form of torture and execution.  It began with whipping, leather strips with metal pieces in them flogged the back not only stinging, but ripping the flesh.  It was followed by being forced to carry the cross beam to the place of execution outside the city walls.  Then one was placed on the cross.  The feet were nailed then the wrists were either pierced by nails or tied to the cross bean.  You were then hoisted up right, naked.  The key problem besides the pain from the whipping and feet and wrists was getting your breath.   Hanging in such a way meant you had to push up from your feet to force your chest up so you could get your breath.  And every time you pushed up from our feet the pain of the nail through them became worse.  Eventually you would suffocate, lungs filling with fluid.  A strong man could live for some time.  Hence the practice of breaking the leg bones to hurry along the slide to death.

        It was not only brutal, but a public spectacle.  Crowds would gather to watch.  There is in all of us a bit of voyeurism that wants to see the exhibition of gore and the mystery of suffering and death played out before us.  What is it like to die?  Let me watch and see.  Mocking and abuse hurled from the crowd was permitted.  Besides the pain and slow suffocation you endured the shame from the mob.

        The hanging on a cross, the pain and shame.  No wonder we as disciples turn away. In the events of the passion, at the cross, the majority of the disciples, especially the men, hid.  They could not face it, mostly probably because of fear that they too would be arrested as collaborators with this accused rabble-rouser.  But there was also probably great emotional turmoil: dejection and bewilderment at his arrest and crucifixion; confusion as to their future; doubt in their God because this Rabbi who they believed was their Messiah seems to have got it all gone terribly wrong.  And it was all too agonizing as the man they had come to follow and to love is now suffering in a most horrendous way.  It was all too much, better to hide away and wait for all to be over.

        But the women were there.  They are in the gospel exemplary disciples of loving and faithful devotion, not just at the cross but throughout Jesus’ life and ministry.  Perhaps it is more in a woman’s maternal nature to extend care to others besides her children and family, setting aside reasoned reflection to go the extra mile.  There the women stand, facing the cross, unable to do anything but be there, alongside, showing their love and devotion by not leaving Jesus alone in his hour of suffering.  It is out of unbridled loyalty they stand facing the cross.  They may not have understood all that was happening or the significance of it all, but they were there in faith and devotion.

        Then there are the crowds.  They too stand facing the cross.  For some their presence is more a warped desire for pleasure at watching this gruesome exhibition.  For others, it is indifference, a way to pass boredom because there is nothing else to do.  For others, there is a distorted sense of colluding with seeing justice done, watching the criminals getting their comeuppance.  

Matthew and Mark tell us that those who passed by mocked him because he could not save himself.  In and amongst the crowd were the religious leaders, the chief priests, scribes and elders.  As they stood facing the cross they too mocked Jesus. Also facing the cross were the soldiers, they divided the special coat someone had made for Jesus and they too ridiculed him, offering vinegar for his thirst.  We are told that those who were crucified with him also reviled him. In the face of the cross a crowd of persons respond with derision and ridicule.  They had no desire to understand.  They had made their mind up.  Perhaps where they were deluded was in the sense that they had won; that they were in control; that they were right in putting this ‘pretence’ to an end.

Where does that leave us?  Where do we stand? With whom do we stand?  Jesus on the cross is one of the most profound acts of God, powerful in its simplicity and in its deep complexity.  Who can full fathom all that was being transacted in that dark and mysterious event, accompanied by clouds, earthquake, and curtains ripping.

But Mark’s gospel makes it profoundly clear that one cannot understand who Jesus is unless you see him on the cross.  Mark’s gospel begins with a brief prologue that tells us that what we are about to read is good news about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God.  Mark’s gospel then uses a literary device in his story, what is known as the Messianic secret to reveal Jesus’ identity as Messiah and son of God.  In Mark’s gospel, whenever any human recognises Jesus for who he is Jesus tells them to tell no one.  In Mark’s gospel the demons and evil spirits know who he is and they are silenced.  The disciples constantly fail to understand.  At one point, Jesus asks them and Peter gets it half right.  He confesses that Jesus is the Messiah. And Jesus charged the disciples to tell no one.  Jesus then begins to teach them that he must suffer many things, be rejected by the Jewish authorities, be killed, and after three days rise again.  At this Peter rebukes Jesus, because Peter, a good Jew, knows that is not what is supposed to happen to a Messiah.

But events unfold as Jesus said.  There he is on the cross as he said he would be.  The male disciples are hiding; the women disciples stand facing from afar weeping; the crowds, the leaders and the soldiers mock.  But in Mark’s Gospel something profound happens as Jesus breathes his last.  Let me quote, ‘Now when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, "Truly this man was God's Son!"’  At the death of Christ, facing the Cross, the centurion, a gentile recognises Jesus for who he is.  In Mark’s Gospel, you can only know Jesus for who he truly is when you see him on the cross and discover that he is risen from the grave.

Facing the cross we see a new vision of God.  Isaiah saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up and sang, holy, holy, holy.  We see God nailed to a cross, abandoned, suffering, bleeding, crowned with thorns: the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.  Each Holy Week we return to the events of Christ’s passion and participate in them so that we can understand afresh and more deeply who God is.

The Lenten Journey      

It is Luke’s Gospel that highlights the Lenten journey.  In Luke 9:51 we have these words, ‘When the days drew near for Jesus to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem’.  Thus it begins, Jesus’ journey from Galilee to Jerusalem.  In Galilee Jesus had roamed the countryside proclaiming the good news and acting out God’s saving love.  For several years, Jesus brought the Kingdom of God to the people, casting out demons, healing the sick, and calling disciples to follow him.  But all that public display and witness is over.  Now he is on his way to his final destiny, from a ministry of healing and compassion to a ministry of suffering and death. 
           During this journey, Jesus turns his focus from the crowds to his disciples.  He teaches and admonishes them, preparing them for the passion events and for the time after his ascension.  Much of this they would not understand until they experienced that first Easter and he had ascended.  But the journey was important.  To fully understand they too had to travel from Galilee to Golgotha.
           Each Lent, we as 21^st century disciples repeat this journey.  We walk, as it were, with Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem.  We are the disciples who listen to him as he teaches us the hard truths we need to learn.  As we walk with Jesus along the way, he challenges us. 
           In the early church, the Christian faith was called ‘the Way’.  It is in the walking with Jesus and in the learning from Jesus that we are formed in our faith.  The Lenten journey is distinctive in that it takes us to the cross and ultimately to Easter glory.  For it is only by travelling to the cross that we can see Jesus lifted up.   In seeing him nailed to a cross, we are faced with God’s ultimate act of love for our redemption.  Being confronted by it all once again in all its horror and in all its glory, we are compelled to respond.   When the cross stands before us against the black sky, we are forced to decide if we can truly embrace this faith, to walk in this Way.
           This is a journey many of us have walked before.  In many ways it is a familiar journey, yet it is new each time.  As earthen, weak, and incomplete disciples, we need to make the journey each year.  In the repetition there is renewed commitment and new discovery.  Our busy, hectic lives crowd out our discipleship.  Our many commitments complicate our lives and distract us along the way.  So every now and again, we need to reorient our way of living, recapture our sense of purpose, and renew our true devotion. Lent and Holy Week is a time for refocusing our lives.  Each time we make this journey, we are given a new opportunity to discover what we did not see the last time. 
           So we press on in our Lenten journey walking on the way, looking ahead to our arrival in Jerusalem and the events of Holy week and that bright Easter morn. 

A Christmas thought

During Advent as we have prayed the Advent Collect, the words, ‘your Son Jesus Christ came to us in great humility’ has struck me. The way Jesus came to us as the incarnate Word of God, as the Son of God is not what we expect. Many Jews in the first century expected the Messiah to appear as a great ruler and liberator from the Romans coming in power and might. But when Jesus came to us he came in the most humble of circumstances.

First, he was born on the margins of society, the child of a poor rural teenage girl in Galilee. She was no princess or from a royal family or even from a priestly family. Galilee was the hinterland as God acted in and around Jerusalem.

Second, his birth was in a stable because there was no room in the Inn. God comes and dwells, not in a five star hotel or some palace, but in a smelly animal barn surrounded by animals instead of royal attendants or security guards. Even for a human of that time, this was very humble surroundings for the birth of a baby. And no fancy clothes or baby outfits, but simple strips of muslin cloth to wrap him in.

Third, the first attendants to come and celebrate his birth were Shepherds. They were distinctly working class, towards the bottom of the social ladder. They could not afford to bring gifts worthy of this guest from heaven’s courts. Yes, angels sang and heavenly messengers brought good news as the heavenly hosts could not contain themselves. They too wanted to see this remarkable thing: God in flesh, in a manger of hay, born to this lowly young woman.

Jesus came in great humility to be one of us, one with us. The circumstances of his birth reveal the kind of God we worship and serve. The ultimate manifestation of God to humanity in Jesus was unassuming, gentle, embracing the lot of the poor. It was the humility of one who comes to serve. Ponder a new the humble birth of our saviour.