Beyond the Patio

Jesus’ Birth and Our Rebirth
Matthew 1:18-25

The Gospel reading today begins with these words:

“Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way”

Having celebrated the birth of Christ for many years and having read this passage many times, I have come to the conclusion that this story is not just about the way that the birth of Jesus  took place but the way our rebirth takes place and keeps taking place.  That’s the thing about the biblical story.  It may be about something that took place at one time but it is also about something that takes place at all times.

Think of the story.  It begins with Mary found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. This is the way our spiritual rebirth takes place. It is being overpowered by the Holy Spirit.  The story goes on to talk about the birth of this child being a fulfillment of a prophecy and that they shall name this child “Emmanuel”, meaning “God with us”. Our rebirth includes an awakening to God presence in our lives and in the world. It is finding the meaning of Emmanuel, “God with us.”

” The day of my spiritual awakening was the day I saw – and knew I saw – all things in God and God in all things”  ( Mechtild of Magdelburg)

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Jesus was born of the Spirit

Certainly, my spiritual rebirth has followed that pattern. At a point in my life I became intensely aware of the Spirit deep within me like a hidden Spring welling up inside bringing me new life. I found myself opening up to Spirit trying to move in the direction that it was leading me.

God communicates through a dream

If you follow Matthews version of the birth an angel appeared to Joseph in dream when he was having some difficulty accepting Mary’s pregnancy.

I have met God in dreams like the dream Joseph experienced when an angel appeared to him urging him not to be afraid but to take Mary as his wife.  In my life, it was a dream in which I felt a presence urging  me to take on a ministry that I eventually became involved with for the rest of my life.

Emmanuel – God with us

The journey continues and I continue to meet God everywhere in the world..  I realize the meaning of “Emmanuel” God with us.

I have met God in other people, sometimes when I went to minister to them and found myself ministered unto. I have me God in people being reconciled to one another after many years apart.  I have met God in a person on their death bed asking me to read Psalm 23 to them as they passed away. I have met God in people just knowing something of  their life and how they have dealt with life’s joys and sorrows

I have met God in nature. I have met God in my aloneness.  I have met God in silence.  I have met God in the midst of noisy frivolity, in laughter, joking, playfulness and light heartedness as well as in serious moments. I have met God in the arts and theatre. I am aware that God is everywhere in the world and everywhere in my life. 

Dealing with difficult people and tragic events

Jesus was to meet difficult situations even in his early life.  There was Herod wanting to kill him. When he found that he had been tricked by the wise men, he killed all the children who were two years old or younger in and around Bethlehem. What a tragivc event!

I have to admit that I have found it difficult seeing God in some people who seem to be more involved in evil enterprises than anything good.  There are some that I might refer to as enemies that I cannot love but I keep thinking God must be present in those situation.  I have to think if it is in helping me to deal with them.

It is difficult seeing God as present in any tragic events.  Last week there was a story in the news about a man losing his wife, step children and a 3 month old grandchild in a mudslide. How can you say God was in that? How was God present there?  I cannot say that God meant it to happen.  I don’t believe that God controls everything and makes thing happen to us  and moves us in certain directions like chessmen. These tragedies happen under there own steam like wind and rain. The only way that I can see God as present in these things is that even in the hardest and hair raising circumstances there is a possibility of new life and healing, which for me is the one of th meanings behind the word “salvation”. As Frederick Buechner say in his book Telling Secrets in commenting about his father’s suicide:

 I cannot believe that a God of love and mercy in any sense willed my father’s suicide; it was my father himself who willed it as the only way out available to him from a life that for various reasons he had come to find unbearable. God did not will what happened that early November morning in Essex Fells, New Jersey, but I believe that God was present in what happened. I cannot guess how he was present with my father-I can guess much better how utterly abandoned by God my father must have felt if he thought about God at all-but my faith as well as my prayer is that he was and continues to be present with him in ways beyond my guessing. I can speak with some assurance only of how God was present in that dark time for me in the sense that I was not destroyed by it but came out of it with scars that I bear to this day, to be sure, but also somehow the wiser and the stronger for it. Who knows how I might have turned out if my father had lived, but through the loss of him all those long years ago I think that I learned something about how even tragedy can be a means of grace that I might never have come to any other way. As I see it, in other words, God acts in history and in your and my brief histories not as the puppeteer who sets the scene and works the strings but rather as the great director who no matter what role fate casts us in conveys to us somehow from the wings, if we have our eyes, ears, hearts open and sometimes even if we don’t, how we can play those roles in a way to enrich and ennoble and hallow the whole vast drama of things including our own small but crucial parts in it.

(Frederick Buechner Telling Secrets, HarperOne 1991 p. 31-32) 

As I reflect on my Spiritual life, I have found that as time went on, I was led into a deeper sense of communion with God and with one another, almost to the point that I have experienced ONENESS with God, as God and humanity are ONE  in Jesus.

I don’t always feel at one with God but I celebrate those times that I do.  In reality I often feel separated from God, from other people and even within myself. I want to shout with Jesus “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me”. However, even then I know God from God’s absence – it may sound strange but I know God from missing God.  This darkness can go on for quite a long time until at some moment even the darkest of moments, my life is struck by Grace. Grace overcomes sin and reconciliation overcomes estrangement and I feel whole again, and I can only respond “Into your hands I commend my spirit” and we are one again. Then I know why they named the child Jesus which means Saviour.

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Here, I have concentrated  on Matthew’s birth narratives, however, it never ceases to amaze when I confront the story of Jesus Christ, how closely his birth, life, passion and death parallels the human experience. We can even  become aware of the experience of death and resurrection at every stage of our lives. The Gospels are about Jesus but they are also about us.

Matthew and Luke tells us of Jesus’ birth but it is also about our spiritual birth. We have much to celebrate as we enter the Christmas season.

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