Christmas Eve: Advent Reflection: The Revd Erna Stevenson

 

Well, the time is finally here.  It is Christmas Eve. Not as we expected, but it is here.  One of my early Christmas memories goes back to my childhood, when on one Christmas Eve I got to play the angel in our home Nativity play. I had my long white nightdress on and even had  the obligatory wings made out of twisted wire and covered with white sheets. I remember it especially, because this time I had actually, got some words to say: “Glory to God in the highest  heaven...” Up till then my only ‘stage appearance’ was in a school play, which was a non-speaking role. I was a rose tree stood at the side of the stage. The tree started off a perky, well-growing, flourishing plant and gradually, through the play it wilted and eventually died. You can imagine what a demanding role that was! It didn’t occur to me then that I was actually enacting a great metaphor of life. 

But back to the angel. Angels had a busy time in my childhood      Christmases even apart from our Nativity Play. According to our family    tradition they were the ones who brought the presents and put them      under the tree. They were also the ones, who – during Advent –   secretly deposited small amounts of change in the pantry so that we, the children, with no other means, could have some money for the presents we wanted to give. We called it angel-money.

The Angels have started even earlier this year as they have brought the    loveliest present to my family on 28^th November in the shape of a baby boy, called Marcell. He was born to one of my nephews and his wife and within a few hours of the arrival of this little bundle of joy, the good news and his pictures traveled thousands of miles to take the good news to faraway relatives.

           

The Angels were just as busy around the time of Jesus’ birth according to the biblical birth narratives. In Luke’s Gospelit is their announcement that sends  the shepherds to see and adore the new born child. There is something miraculous about every new birth at the best of times, and it was particularly so in Jesus’ time, when infant mortality rate was very high and a successful pregnancy was counted a double blessing. But even today it is not something people close to the event, would takefor granted. After nine months of joy and anxiety and careful nurturing by the mother’s body, the baby is finally ready to come out and start a new phase of life, which will be nothing like what has gone before. It is a joyful though traumatic experience to both mother and child.

We celebrate and rejoice and give thanks but do not know what the future may hold for the new baby. But celebrating Jesus’ birth we do know. Our joy holds together birth and cross and re-birth. It is beautifully expressed in Mark Greene’ poem used in the LICC Chistmas cards:

 

Christmas Promise.

 

                                                This baby, this God, my God, Mary's son,                                                                             Did not come as an artist's impression,                                                                               Oil on canvas, tempera on wood,
                                                but from the womb: bone, brain, heart, blood.
                                                Came to show that this life,
                                                Come what may, come what came to him...                                   

                                                A country life: brothers, sisters, festivals, friends,
                                                Hands calloused working wood and stone; and then
                                                Temptation, betrayal, slander, shame,
                                                Whip, nail, spittle, pain,
                                                All evil's weight, and breath-taking death... 

                                                This life, my life, any life could, with him,
                                                 be full, rich, free,
                                                Come what comes, as he intended it to be. 

                                                Christmas is a promise,
                                                The divine guarantee of this possibility:
                                                God with us day by day in our humanity,                                                                             Heaven-scented with the pledge of eternity.

 

A very Happy Christmas to All