A Christmas Meditation: Mary the mother of Jesus

A Christmas Meditation

Mary the mother of Jesus

We can easily become over-familiar with the Christmas story and forget how amazing it is.

Take Mary, for example. We don’t know how old she was when Jesus was born. All we know is that she was a young woman. In the culture of the Middle East at that time, people married very young. Mary was probably a teenager when the angel came to her, and she may have been as young as 14.

It’s not surprising that when the angel came to her and greeted her –  “Greetings, you who are highly favoured! The Lord is with you!” – that she was greatly troubled. But she was a feisty young woman and when the angel told her she was going to have a baby, instead of stunned silence, she said, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?”

Mary was relieved that Joseph went ahead and married her – there was huge shame about being an unmarried mother in those days. Joseph would have been within his rights to break off their betrothal when he found out that Mary was pregnant. But the Bible says that he was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace. While he was wondering what to do, an angel appeared to him in a dream and reassured him that the baby Mary was carrying had been conceived by the Holy Spirit and that he should not be afraid to marry her.

And then when Mary was obviously pregnant there was the trek to Bethlehem. The Bible tells us that the ruling Roman Emperor – Caesar Augustus – had decided to carry out a census of the whole Roman world. (That was probably to make it easier for his administrators to gather tax!) Everyone had to go to their home town and that meant that Joseph, who was descended from King David, had to go to Bethlehem – King David’s ancestral home. Now in all our nativity stories and plays, Mary rides on a donkey. It has to be said that the Bible makes no mention of a donkey. We have to hope, for Mary’s sake, that Joseph was wealthy enough to own a donkey.

Our nativity stories have Mary giving birth to Jesus in a stable because there was no room in any of the inns. And a superficial reading of the Bible suggests that is true. But in all probability they would have stayed with Joseph’s relatives. The word that traditionally is translated “inn” is better translated as “guest room”. Peasant houses in that part of the world were very simple (and still are today) – there would have been a large communal room, where the family cooked and where the animals were kept overnight. There would have been a smaller room, probably upstairs, where the family slept and, if they could afford it, there would also have been a small guest room. It seems that all of Joseph’s relatives had been overwhelmed with family members coming for the census and all their guest rooms were full. Joseph and Mary had to make do with sleeping in the main room along with all the animals, and it was here that Jesus was born, and so he was put in the manger – or animal feeding trough. We can think of it as Jesus entering the world in extreme poverty. But another way to look at it is that it is all very ordinary – it could have happened to any peasant family.

But the next thing that happened was far from ordinary. That same night a bunch of smelly shepherds turned up to see Jesus, gabbling some story about angels coming to them in the fields on the hills near Bethlehem and telling them that the Messiah – who had been eagerly awaited by the Jews for centuries – had just been born in Bethlehem. Mary wondered what to make of all this and she remembered all that had happened and often thought about it and tried to make sense of it all.

On the eighth day, when Jesus was circumcised, he was given the name Jesus. (Actually he wasn’t – the Jewish name he was given sound more like Yeshua. ‘Jesus’ is the Greek equivalent. Greek was the language that was widely spoken around the Mediterranean area; a bit like English is spoken around the world today.) Jesus – or Yeshua – means “he saves”, or Saviour, and it’s the name that the angel said that he should be called.

Now the Jewish law says that “every firstborn male is be consecrated to the Lord” and because Bethlehem is near Jerusalem, Mary and Joseph were able to take the baby Jesus and present him at the Temple. Because they were poor, and couldn’t afford a lamb or goat, they made an offering of a pair of doves.

There were two odd characters in the Temple. They were both old and they were both very godly, and God spoke to them. The first was a man called Simeon who lived in Jerusalem. God had told him that he wouldn’t die until he had seen the Messiah. When Mary and Joseph were at the Temple with Jesus, the Holy Spirt prompted Simeon to go to the Temple. When he saw Jesus, he knew that he was the Messiah, so he took the baby Jesus into his arms and said:

“Sovereign lord, as you have promised,
          you may now dismiss your servant in peace.
For my eyes have seen your salvation,
          which you have prepared in the sight of all nations:
a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
          and the glory of your people Israel.”

And then Simeon said to Mary: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that is spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too.”

The second was a woman called Anna. The Bible calls her a prophetess. We would probably call her a religious fanatic. She was 84 years old. She had been widowed after just 7 years of married life and she had devoted herself to prayer. She never left the Temple precincts, day or night, and she often fasted. She immediately recognised that Jesus was the Messiah and told everyone in the Temple who would listen.

There was another time when Jesus went to the temple.  Every year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the Festival of the Passover.  When he was twelve years old, they went up to the festival, as usual.  After the festival was over, while his parents were returning home, Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents didn’t know. They thought he was in the party that they had travelled with, so they went on for a day. Then they began looking for him among their relatives and friends. When they couldn’t find him, they went back to Jerusalem to look for him. After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding.  When his parents saw him, they were astonished. Mary said to him, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.”

“Why were you searching for me?” he asked. “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?”

Again, Mary wondered what to make of it all. She could see that Jesus was not an ordinary child, but she didn’t know what would happen later in his life.

Now at this point, we have to say that we don’t know what happened to Joseph. The Bible doesn’t mention him again after the incident in Jerusalem. We can only assume that he died – people often died young and sometimes older men married younger women and died some years before them. The Bible does tell us that Mary and Joseph had other children after Jesus: that Jesus had brothers and sisters.

What we do know is that Mary had to decide how to relate to Jesus as he started his ministry and healed people and taught large crowds.

Early on in Jesus’s ministry, Mary was invited along with Jesus and some of his disciples to a wedding. In fact in was the first recorded miracle that Jesus did, and Mary was involved.  The wine ran out and everyone was embarrassed. Mary knew that Jesus could do something about it but Jesus didn’t want to be bounced into starting to do miracles too soon. Nevertheless, Mary persisted. “Do whatever he tells you,” she said to the servants. Jesus told the servants to fill six massive jars with water and the water miraculously turned into wine – gallons and gallons of it. Very good wine at that. So much so that the master of ceremonies commented to the bridegroom that he had saved the best wine until the end.

On one occasion it seems that Mary and Jesus’s brothers had decided that Jesus had gone too far: that he was putting his health in danger because he was too busy to eat, or that he was letting his popularity go to his head. Either way, they came to take him home. But they couldn’t get inside the house where Jesus was teaching because of the crowd. They sent a message in to Jesus that they were outside waiting, but Jesus ignored them and carried on, so they went home empty-handed.

By the time that Jesus died on the cross, Mary had become one of his followers. We don’t know what happened to change her mind . But we do know that when Jesus died on the cross, Mary was there, with the other women who followed him, a short distance away, watching Jesus die. And we do know that Mary went with the other woman to the tomb where Jesus’s body had been laid, intending to put sweet-smelling spices on his body, only to find that the tomb was empty because Jesus had risen to life.

Mary had travelled a journey, even harder than the one from Nazareth to Bethlehem when she was pregnant. She had travelled the journey from being someone who pondered about all the things that she saw and heard to being someone who was a devoted follower of Jesus.

And that is the challenge that faces us today. We may ponder within us all that we have heard about Jesus. We may consider ourselves to be a spiritual person. But are we willing to make that transition, like Mary did, into someone who is fully devoted to Jesus and to following him wherever it takes us?

We Belong to the Land

We Belong to the Land:

the story of a Palestinian Israeli who lives for peace and reconciliation

 

by Elias Chacour and Mary E. Jensen

This is the story of Elias Chacour, a Melkite Catholic priest, and his ministry in the small Galilee village of Ibillin and beyond.

Reading this book, three things become very quickly apparent about Elias Chacour –

    1)   his passionate love for Jesus,

    2)   his love for the Palestinian people,

    3)   his desire to see the Jewish and
    Arab people reconciled.

Woven together through this book are the story of Elias Chacour’s life and the story of the Palestinian people. Elias Checour was born to a Palestinian Christian family in the village of Biram in Upper Galilee in 1939. Along with his whole village he experienced the tragedy of eviction by the Israeli authorities in 1948 and became a refugee in his own land. He and all his family members became citizens of Israel when the state was created.

In 1965, Father Chacour was ordained and appointed as priest of St. George Melkite Catholic Church in Ibillin. Father Chacour realised early on that his work in Ibillin would require more than routine priestly duties. He knew that the only way for Palestinian people to flourish was through education. Through his efforts and leadership, a pre-school, a village library and a secondary school were set up to serve the children of the village.

His vision was that through education, children and young adults of different faith traditions – Christian, Muslim, Jewish and Druze – should learn to live and work together in peace. He has traveled around the world with this message and, alongside the secondary school, a peace centre was built in Ibillin for international visitors to stay and join in this ministry.

This book is a reminder that there is an ancient Christian church in the Middle East. Although for many Christian Arabs their faith may be nominal and inherited, for many their faith is living and vibrant. The outward form may appear archaic and formal to those of us who are more used to a “modern” or informal expression of our faith. Nevertheless, for many their devotion to Jesus and understanding of his teaching is beyond question.

Jesus is the one

Jesus is The One.

He is the one who existed with God the Father from before the beginning of time.

He is the one whose human existence started not from the sperm of a human father, but by the activity of the Holy Spirit.

He is the one whose mother was a virgin when he was born.

He is the one who lived and experienced a real human life.

He is the one who lived a perfect human life without sin or failure.

He is the one who shows us exactly what God the Father is like.

He is the one whose teaching is perfect and without fault.

He is the one who paid the penalty of human sin.

He is the one who bore the pain of human suffering.

He is the one who overcame the power of human selfishness.

He is the one who conquered death.

He is the one who rose to life from the grave.

He is the one who returned triumphant to God the Father.

He is the one who poured out the Holy Spirit on his followers.

He is the one who now rules and reigns with God the Father.

He is the one who knows and understands what it is like to be human.

He is the one who prays for me constantly.

He is the one who pleads my cause with the Father.

Jesus is The One.

Deep Church Rising: Rediscovering the Roots of Christian Orthodoxy

Deep Church Rising: Rediscovering the Roots of Christian Orthodoxy

by Andrew G. Walker and Robin A. Parry

I found this to be a very thought-provoking and challenging book. Walker and Parry argue the case for what they call ‘deep church’. This is similar to what C. S. Lewis described as ‘mere’ Christianity. By this they mean the basic, historic Christian faith that has been believed and practised by Christians throughout the centuries. This includes a straightforward belief in Jesus as described in the Bible – that he was conceived through the activity of the Holy Spirit, his mother was a virgin before his birth, his birth was accompanied by highly unusual events, he performed miracles, he died for us so that we can be forgiven, he rose from the dead, and he will return at some point in the future and will judge all humankind. Along with this goes an acceptance of the Bible as being inspired by God and authoritative for life and salvation. This is the Christian faith set out in the historic Christian creeds.

Walker and Parry contrast this orthodox Christianity with the liberal questioning of the fundamentals of faith which has been common currency in the wider church for a century or two. They use the term “the third schism”. The first schism was the split between the Roman Catholic Church in the West and the Eastern Orthodox Church which occurred in the eleventh century. The second schism was the split between Roman Catholics and Protestants arising from the Reformation in the sixteenth century. The third schism, they say, is the divide between those who believe in the orthodox core of the Christian faith, as expressed in the historic creeds, and those who do not. They argue for unity among all those who hold to the orthodox core of the Christian faith, whether they be evangelical Protestants, traditional Anglicans, Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox. This means those who, as the (fairly) new Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby says of himself, “say the creed without crossing my fingers at any point.”

Walker and Parry examine the role that the church plays in interpreting the Bible. The slogan of the Reformation was “sola scriptura”. This means that each Christian is free before God to interpret the Bible as he (or she) sees fit. The result has been the fragmentation of the Protestant church so that there are now literally hundreds of Christian denominations and groups, each believing that their version of the truth is the right one. In contrast, both the Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodox Church maintain their unity because the Bible is interpreted in a particular way by those who are authorised by the Church to be teachers. We have to admit even within Evangelicalism the important role of the Bible teacher in giving an authoritative interpretation of scripture. Although in theory each believer is free to understand and interpret the Bible for themselves, and there are a wide variety of views about all sorts of things within the Evangelical world, nevertheless there is a boundary beyond which it is not acceptable to go. The question is, how do we determine what is acceptable deviation from the truth and what is not? And how do we decide who it is that determines? What has tended to happen is that when someone has been called to account by others for their deviant understandings of the Bible, they have gone off and started a new church.

The challenge to evangelicals is whether we are prepared to see as our allies those whom we have traditionally seen as our enemies – Anglo-Catholics, Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox. Where do we draw the ‘battle lines’? Which issues do we regard as fundamental and which are secondary? This boils down to the question, who do I count as a fellow Christian? Who is my brother and my sister?

A good place to look for an answer is in the Evangelical Alliance’s Evangelical Relationships Commitment –

1.       We welcome as Christian brothers and sisters all who experience the grace of new birth, bringing them to that fear and knowledge of God which is expressed in a life of obedience to His word.
2.       We recognise our Christian duty of trust and mutual encouragement to all who serve Christ as Lord, not least to those who conscientiously prefer not to be identified with the same churches, alliances or councils as ourselves.
3.       We respect the diversity of culture, experience and doctrinal understanding that God grants to His people, and acknowledge that some differences over issues not essential to salvation may well remain until the end of time.

It seems clear to me that this commitment means embracing as Christian brothers and sisters many who in the past we have regarded as being ‘beyond the pale’. Those people who we have dismissed as being ‘nominal Christians’, who we have thought of as at best ‘sub-standard’ Christians, or even as not true Christians at all.

The Apostle Paul writes warmly to the church at Corinth, commending them and thanking God for the evidence of God’s life working in and through them. Nevertheless, as we see from Paul’s letters, the church was riven by divisions, tolerated immorality, promoted social elitism at the Communion table, and even included those that doubted the truth of the resurrection. At no point does Paul question the reality of their life in Christ – although he does warn them that their faith is in vain if Christ was not raised from the dead! He regards them as brothers and sisters who need encouragement and correction. I suspect that if we saw such belief and behaviour in any of our churches, we would encourage – or compel – the people concerned to leave the church.

I will finish by quoting from Genesis 4, out of context, “Where is your brother?” The answer is probably in the local parish church, the black-majority Pentecostal church, the Roman Catholic church, the Methodist church, or even the Eastern Orthodox church.

Archbishop Justin Welby: Risk-taker and Reconciler

Archbishop Justin Welby:
Risk-taker and Reconciler

by Andrew Atherstone

I have really enjoyed reading this first biography of the (fairly) new Archbishop of Canterbury.

Partly because Justin Welby’s time at Cambridge – forty years ago – overlapped with mine and I could picture some of the scenes described. I don’t think I ever met Justin at Cambridge: our paths didn’t cross. He was at Trinity College and I was at Fitzwilliam College; he studied law and modern history and I studied sciences; he was a Charismatic Anglican and I was a Reformed Baptist. However, we were both involved in the Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union (CICCU) and at that time CICCU gathered about 400 people in the Cambridge Union debating chamber for the ‘Bible Reading’ on a Saturday evening. We must have both been seated in that large room on many Saturday evenings, along with other such notables as Nicky Gumbel who has become famous for the Alpha course and John Mumford who went on to start the Vineyard Church movement in the UK.

And partly because I love Justin’s emphasis on unity among all those who acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. Although Justin started out as a Charismatic Anglican, attending St Matthews Church in Cambridge and later serving as a lay-leader at Holy Trinity Brompton, he has embraced spirituality from other traditions and has worked for unity within the Church of England and the wider Anglican Communion. He now describes himself as an orthodox Christian who can “say the creed without crossing my fingers at any point.”

Justin has set himself three priorities for his time as Archbishop of Canterbury –

1.       Renewal of prayer and religious life

2.       Reconciliation

3.       Evangelism and witness

During a sermon at the New Wine conference in 2013, Justin Welby said, “We are in a time of revolution and we need another revolution in the Church. What it looks like, I do not know, but I want to be in it. What it feels like is Jesus-centred, fire-filled, peace-proclaiming, disciple-creating, and the Church word for this revolution is revival.”

I pray that God will use Justin Welby to bring revival both within and beyond the Church of England.