The Christmas Collision

My wife Bonnie is preaching this week. Here are her thoughts on the theme for the week.

This Advent we have focussed attention on the theme of waiting. In the foyer we are greeted each day by the words: we are waiting; kei te taritari tātou. We hope these words have provoked a question:  what are we waiting for?

Today’s gospel is the story of Mary and Joseph’s transition from being a young betrothed couple to the parents of God’s son, Jesus. It is told from Joseph’s point of view. What might it have been like for Joseph to wait through Mary’s pregnancy? Try putting yourself in Joseph’s sandals and imagine what he might have gone through in the 7-8 months from when Mary was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit to the birth?

We know and love the Christmas story with all its colourful characters but Joseph had no idea how things would pan out. He didn’t even know what the child might look like – whose image would a child of the Holy Spirit carry? Would it bear any resemblance to Joseph’s family? We take Joseph and Mary’s acceptance of their situation as given and move quickly on to the birth of Jesus. Joseph and Mary had to live with their questions for months. They had a long wait.

Waiting is not a passive state. Joseph would not have stopped his normal life while he was waiting. Waiting, for people of faith is not a passive process. While we wait we work, we hope, we prepare, we share.

One of the carols the St George’s Singers presented at the Carol Service included the words: love came down to the world that night. Christmas is an expected event for us, but the event we wait for is not in discontinuity with the present or the past – it is a collision of a past event, something evident in the present and a future we hope for. Love in its fullest sense came to the world when Jesus came in person, love is in the world through God’s presence and our activity, and we are waiting for love to come again this Christmas.

Get ready for the collision.