[This is one in a series of devotional reflections prepared for Horley Baptist Church during December 2023]
In the more-established western denominations of the Church the period of approximately four weeks prior to Christmas is called ‘Advent’. Essentially, Advent means ‘coming’ and it is a time during which the Church’s adherents are encouraged to think about the coming of Jesus into the world. Many Churches organise special events, such as carol services, during this season. (more…)
[This is one in a series of devotional reflections prepared for Horley Baptist Church during November 2023]
Summer holidays, Halloween, Bonfire Night, Black Friday – what’s next on the advertising agencies’ calendar?
Ah, yes! Christmas is coming, as indeed it has for the past 2000 years. Every year those with responsibility for Christmas activities face the same question: “What can we do to make Christmas different this year?” Advertising agents and TV producers have been working on it for months; now window dressers, stationers, choir-masters, caterers and preachers are all looking for something to add a new slant on a story that we have all heard before.
Maybe it’s easier if we just leave Christ out of Christmas altogether.
?⛄????❄
This search for something new is not, itself, new. The apostle Paul encountered something similar in Greece in 49AD:[1]
Now all the Athenians and foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing more than hearing and articulating new ideas. Acts 17 v21 [BSB]
Are we tempted to join the Athenians and the other groups mentioned above in speculating about aspects of Christmas beyond those recorded in the Gospel accounts?
… Surely Mary did not walk all the way from Nazareth to Bethlehem. Maybe Joseph possessed a donkey – we often see one portrayed in the stable scene. And why didn’t they go back to Nazareth after the census?
… Did anyone else see the choir of angels who sang to the shepherds? Such a spectacular event would certainly have attracted the attention of other people who were out and about that evening. And who looked after the sheep whilst the shepherds went for a night on the town?
… Perhaps the Wise Men were descendents of the Jewish nobles exiled to Babylon and whose ancestors chose not to return with Ezra or Nehemiah. And did their gifts pay for the flight to Egypt?
?
As we have seen in Ecclesiastes, seeking for something new is futile:
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Ecclesiastes 1 v9 [NIVUK]
Surely we should not expend so much effort on seeking something new when the answer lies with something old.
Tell me the old, old story Of unseen things above,
Of Jesus and His glory, Of Jesus and His love.
Tell me the story simply, As to a little child;
For I am weak and weary, And helpless and defiled.Tell me the story slowly, That I may take it in,
That wonderful redemption, God’s remedy for sin.
Tell me the story often For I forget so soon!
The “early dew” of morning Has passed away at noon.
– Arabella Katherine Hankey (1866)[2]
†
References:
[1] timeline at Biblehub.com
[2] full text at Hymnary.org
Bible quotations: Unless otherwise specified, quotations are taken from the resources of Bible Gateway or Bible Hub, in accordance with the licencing conditions outlined on our Site Policies page.
Bible dates:
Where appropriate, the dates given for Biblical events are based on the Bible Timeline resource
and are subject to the constraints defined on the corresponding webpage.
Horley Baptist Church online[This is one in a series of devotional reflections prepared for Horley Baptist Church during December 2022]
Once in royal David’s city stood a lowly cattle shed,
where a mother laid her baby in a manger for his bed [1]
What sort of picture do these words invoke? Have years of familiarity with the Christmas story created a sanitised image of a delicate wooden cot lined with clean hay and surrounded by some well-behaved cattle?
There is a cattle shed alongside our garden; we are familiar with its distinctive characteristics. A cow can be likened to a food processor into which you feed green grass and from which you obtain white milk. There is a by-product to this process, brown in colour and malodorous to the senses. Even in modern times, ‘mucking-out’ is a regular activity for those who keep dairy cattle and it is fair to assume that first-century animals were similarly behaved.
Child in the manger, infant of Mary [2]
A manger is a food trough for livestock of various kinds. It is a functional item, probably rough hewn, certainly not a piece of fine furniture. Fodder would be dumped into it;, it might contain insects or dead mice, the animals would slobber over it. Shepherds might be used to such conditions; wealthy astrologers certainly not.
Both these Christmas carols were written by devout women with strong clerical connections. They were both prolific writers of devotional songs and poetry. Did they have some special inspiration or did they succumb to artistic licence? Isaiah certainly had some inspiration when he wrote:
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. Isaiah 54 v2-3 [NIVUK]
The Biblical accounts of the birth of Jesus are primarily those in the opening chapters of Matthew and Luke. Neither of those accounts mentions a ‘lowly cattle shed’ with ‘the oxen standing by’; furthermore, Matthew tells us that the unspecified number of wise men came some time later, after the family had moved into a house. Whatever the actual details, being born into such circumstances was just the first of many indignities that this baby would endure during his time on earth, and throughout the years since.
Child who inherits all our transgressions, all our demerits on Him fall.
But Christmas is not the end of the story.
And our eyes at last shall see him, through his own redeeming love,
for that child, so dear and gentle, is our Lord in heaven above,
and he leads his children on to the place where he is gone.
Is that child in the manger still an outcast and stranger or do you recognise him as Lord of all??
Resources:
[1] Cecil Frances Alexander, 1848
[2] Mary MacDonald & Lachlan McBean, 1888
Bible quotations: Unless otherwise specified, quotations are taken from the resources of Bible Gateway or Bible Hub, in accordance with the licencing conditions outlined on our Site Policies page.
Bible dates:
Where appropriate, the dates given for Biblical events are based on the Bible Timeline resource
and are subject to the constraints defined on the corresponding webpage.
Horley Baptist Church online[This is one in a series of devotional reflections prepared for Horley Baptist Church during December 2022]
At this time of the year the words that Phillips Brooks wrote in 1868 become part of our seasonal repertoire:
O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie!
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by
Does familiarity with these words mean that we lose some of their impact? Where is Bethlehem, what is its significance? Bethlehem is an administrative centre some 6 miles south of Jerusalem and dates from around 1340BC. A number of prophecies and contemporary reports give Bethlehem as the location for the birth of Jesus Christ.
Imagine if we could access the archives of one of the local newspapers in first century Israel, the Bethlehem Daily Star. As we leaf through the pages there would be some headlines that would cause us to pause and explore further.
In the obituaries section in 1903BC is a record of the death in childbirth of Rachel, the wife of Jacob. Her tomb became a local landmark; it was there that Saul learnt that his lost donkeys had been found.
In 1140BC a local reporter noted the return of a well-known local family. Some ten years earlier, Elimelek and his wife Naomi, with their two sons, had left Bethlehem to live in the country of Moab. Now Naomi returned, accompanied by her daughter-in-law Ruth, both widows. In due course Ruth married a prominent local landowner named Boaz. Soon, the Births, Marriages and Deaths section records the birth of a son to Boaz and Ruth, named Obed.
Obed’s grandson grew up as a young shepherd boy in the area around Bethlehem. In the pasturelands near the town he learned to care for his sheep and ward off their predators. Later, David the local shepherd boy became a musician in the royal court.
In 1024BC the archives record the visit of Samuel, the nation’s spiritual leader, to Bethlehem. Samuel anointed David to be the future king of Israel. However, his succession to the throne was not easy; he had to contend with family, friends and foes but no doubt his prior experience with sheep proved valuable.
In 6BC there was a public announcement that Caesar Augustus commanded all his subjects in the Roman Empire to return to their ancestral city for a census. Many families descended from David came to Bethlehem, to the point that there was not enough room to accommodate them all.
Around about the same time the archives record the scandalous story of a young woman, obviously pregnant yet claiming to still be a virgin – it aroused much scepticism and gossip. Other unusual events surrounded the eventual birth of her son; shepherds left their flocks in the countryside and came into town to see the baby, there was a strange resonance in the sky that some described as being like angels’ voices and then some wealthy foreigners turned up with a caravan of camels.
After 4BC the town receives no further mention in the Bible but the town still exists. Its principal economic focus is that of catering for visitors wanting the see the place of Christ’s birth. Surely a question of much greater importance is ‘where is he now?’
Now that we know a bit more about Bethlehem we can return to the words of the carol and sing them with more meaning:
O holy child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray,
cast out our sin and enter in, be born in us today.
We hear the Christmas angels the great glad tidings tell;
O come to us, abide with us, our Lord Immanuel!
Resources:
[1] www.biblegateway.com search ‘Bethlehem’
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethlehem
[3] https://biblehub.com/timeline/
Bible quotations: Unless otherwise specified, quotations are taken from the resources of Bible Gateway or Bible Hub, in accordance with the licencing conditions outlined on our Site Policies page.
Bible dates:
Where appropriate, the dates given for Biblical events are based on the Bible Timeline resource
and are subject to the constraints defined on the corresponding webpage.
Horley Baptist Church online[This is one in a series of devotional reflections prepared for Horley Baptist Church during December 2021]
“It’s over, now for a rest”. Another Christmas passes into history and there’s more than 360 shopping days before the next one, Was it a memorable celebration or eminently forgettable?
I recall a Christmas, over 50 years ago. Christmas lunch was baked beans on toast eaten whilst seated on a beach. It was one of those tropical beaches which travel brochures describe as idyllic, in a country where the primary celebration meal for Christmas was held on Christmas Eve. The main course featured eland steak grilled to look like zebra. Carols such as “In the bleak mid-winter” and “See amid the winter snow” did seem a little out of place in an area that had neither winter nor snow. It was Christmas, but not as we know it.
For those of us with birthdays in Christmas week it can sometimes seem that our special days get overlooked in the preparations for Christmas. Worse than that, we are expected to be thankful when receiving only one present to cover both occasions! Maybe of greater value is the lesson in humility and the management of expectations.
What is your experience of Christmas; how does that match up to your expectations? Does Christmas past invoke happy memories of family fellowship and healthy hilarity or was it subdued by empty seats around the table? Is it a case of gifts today and bills tomorrow? Perhaps it was enough that Christmas passed, just another day crossed off on the calendar.
The earliest mention of Christmas in Old English dates from 1038 although the feast itself was celebrated much earlier – some records place it at 200AD in Egypt. The determination of the date for Christmas Day is much later and to this day some Eastern Orthodox denominations celebrate Christmas Day on 6th January. In 1644 the English parliament banned the celebration of Christmas, insisting that it should be a normal working day.
Most dusty details from history get forgotten quickly, so what is it about Christmas that makes us continue to celebrate it? Is it just an opportunity to overspend and delay the consequences until next year? Perhaps it is the peer pressure – you can only say “humbug!” a limited number of times. Or could it be that there is actually something more in this story about a baby born in an obscure Jewish town some 2,000 years ago?
In many Christian traditions, the period immediately prior to Christmas is designated as ‘Advent’, a conveniently ambiguous term that can refer both to the birth of Jesus at Christmas and also his return as a conquering king. We put a lot of effort into celebrating his first coming; shouldn’t we be equally diligent about his return?
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Bible quotations: Unless otherwise specified, quotations are taken from the resources of Bible Gateway or Bible Hub, in accordance with the licencing conditions outlined on our Site Policies page.
Bible dates:
Where appropriate, the dates given for Biblical events are based on the Bible Timeline resource
and are subject to the constraints defined on the corresponding webpage.
Horley Baptist Church online[This is one in a series of devotional reflections prepared for Horley Baptist Church during December 2021]
The story is told of a young suitor and his fiancee who set off on a boat, taking with them some food, some cash and an additional financial contingency. Although they seemed to be an unlikely couple they enjoyed their evenings, singing romantic songs under the starlight. On the 366th day of their voyage they came to a country known for its exotic trees, where they purchased a ring and were married by a local dignitary.
At one point in the evolution of the British education system students were encouraged to contrast and compare two texts. The object of the exercise was to encourage the students to pay close attention to what was said, both similarly and differently, what was not said but implied and what assumptions could be made from what went without saying.
For our second travelling couple it would be seasonal to look at Mary and Joseph at the time of the birth of Jesus. The Biblical story is derived from the accounts provided by Matthew and Luke[1] but it has been embellished by two centuries of assumptions, conjectures and exploitation.
Were they an unlikely couple? Some traditions suggest that Joseph was somewhat older than Mary but both then and today such age differences are common. What was unusual in those days was that he accepted Mary’s account of her pregnancy and was willing to continue with the relationship despite the inevitable gossip and scandal.
They too did a lot of travelling, first from Nazareth to Bethlehem, then to Egypt and finally returning to Nazareth. Nazareth to Bethlehem is a distance of some 80 miles and would take 4 days if one could maintain a typical walking pace for 8 hours each day.
Once again, tradition can influence our thoughts. Did Mary ride a donkey whilst Joseph walked? The Bible gives us no details – is that because we do not need to know or is it an example of something that goes without saying? The original readers would have been familiar with the means of travel in those days so no further details were necessary. Of one thing we can be fairly certain – they did not go by boat.
It seems likely that the journey into Egypt would have been not less than 300 miles and the return to Nazareth would be somewhat longer. They now had the Wise Men’s gifts as a financial contingency, to ease the rigours of the journey and to sustain them during their sojourn in Egypt, a period of, probably, a little over one year. Once back in Nazareth, the travelling did not cease; every year the family went to Jerusalem for the Passover festival. Again, not an easy or cheap journey but Luke tells us that such journeys were undertaken in the company of friends and relatives; perhaps it was the same with the original summons for the census.
In case you didn’t recognise it, the first story is a retelling of “The Owl and the Pussy-cat”, a nonsense poem by Edward Lear. By contrast the Biblical account is far from being nonsense; it is the prelude to God’s means of salvation for those who believe. So, as you hear once again these familiar passages, don’t be distracted by the details of the journey but concentrate on the destination.
[1] Matthew 2 v13-15, v19-20, Luke 2 v4-5, v41-44.
Bible quotations: Unless otherwise specified, quotations are taken from the resources of Bible Gateway or Bible Hub, in accordance with the licencing conditions outlined on our Site Policies page.
Bible dates:
Where appropriate, the dates given for Biblical events are based on the Bible Timeline resource
and are subject to the constraints defined on the corresponding webpage.
Horley Baptist Church online