Christmas

There are paradoxes at Christmas 

We all know the generosity Paradox 

• Sometimes the least expensive gifts is the most valuable one. Anyone ever buy your children an expensive present and they ended up having more fun with the box that it came in than the gift itself.

Or what we could call the Chris Rea Paradox 

• The writer of the classic song “Driving Home for Christmas” was written while he and his wife Joan were stuck in a traffic jam somewhere between London and Middlesboro going nowhere. Chris died this week just a few days before Christmas at age 74.

Then, there's the whole family Paradox 

• For some families, those we love the most can sometimes be the hardest to spend time with. H hanging out with our relatives at Christmas can be relatively [pun intended] tricky.
  Christmas can be the time when we feel most loved but it's also the time that many of us feel most isolated.
  Maybe you are trying to build your own Christmas traditions, but there is pressure from parents to come home, you are yo-yoing between parents and in-laws or between grandchildren, nephews, nieces and elderly relatives or managing the complex arrangements of children whose parents now live in different homes, different cities or even different countries. Or maybe you are spending your first Christmas without your spouse, your child, or your house because of a forced relocation or downsizing.

While Christmas can be the most wonderful time of the year, it can also be the most difficult.

Joseph and Mary can identify with the paradoxes of the season:
the most wonderful time in their life - the birth of their firstborn son takes place in what is also the most unsettled period of their life 

Bethlehem where the Nativity takes place and which is remembered as a place of great joy and peace, turns out to be a temporary scary and rather hostile stopover.

We could call this the Bethlehem paradox. 

It was a place where connection and disconnection meet. Joseph and Mary did not live in Bethlehem. They were forced there by an edict from a dictator, the Roman emperor Caesar Augustus required everyone in the Empire to return to their ancestral home for a census for Taxation and Administrative purposes. And Joseph being a descendant of King David had to go to his ancestral Town of Bethlehem - there were no exceptions and no excuses. 

Can you imagine living in a country where you were suddenly forced to drop everything and go to the place where your great great grandfather was born or be imprisoned for sedition?

Bethlehem, for Mary and Joseph, represented everything that was hard about living in an occupied territory under a ruthless dictator. Add to that, the complication that Mary was pregnant and they can't travel quickly. So when they arrive in Bethlehem there is nowhere left for them to stay. They have to make use of a stable as their birthing unit. If they'd been Rich perhaps they could have bought their way into something better, but Jesus's first home is substandard accommodation. 

Bethlehem for Mary and Joseph is the place where their firstborn son is born. The place where the star stopped and the angels sang, but it's also the place where they can't find housing, where they stay with animals and will soon face the planes of an evil King who will try to kill their baby. 

It's a convergence of good and evil, of love and pain, of hope and distress. It's a place where they connect with God even when disconnected from all those they love.

This year in Bethlehem, many families are thinking along similar lines. The town is no longer safe, their homes and lives are under threat. Should they stay and hope that the conflict in their region dies down, or should they leave and become refugees. Where would they go? Many countries around them are indicating that they have no room left for refugees. 

Bethlehem, now as then, epitomizes what it's like to be displaced, far from home, anxious about the future. 

Maybe you feel like you're in your own Bethlehem, in some sort of limbo between the life you once had and the life you would like to have. Most of us know what it feels like to be displaced to some degree: perhaps it's so we can have empathy with refugees around the world, perhaps it's so we can connect with God. It's here in the middle of social political and personal turmoil that ordinary people encountered Jesus for the first time. 

A second aspect of the Bethlehem paradox is that Bethlehem is the place where hope and fear meet. From almost the beginning of time God promised that he would fix the broken world that we live in. Centuries came and went and still God's people held on to the hope that he would send someone to save them - a messiah. 

God dropped hints throughout history that were recorded in prophecies in the Old Testament that kept people's hopes alive. One of these hints was that the promised Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. When the Wise Men followed the star to find the new king they headed straight for King Herod's Palace because they assumed that the capital city was the most likely place for a new king to be born. King Herod was surprised by the news but his advisers weren't. They knew that ancient prophecy written hundreds of years before had identified Bethlehem as the place where God's chosen one would be born. So the wise men left the palace and happily continued their quest. But King Herod was livid. He had no intention of giving up any of his power to this new king. He reacts like other evil dictators react to perceive threat with unrestrained violence - he did not care that civilian children would become collateral damage. His position needed to be secured. So in the midst of one of the most terrifying periods of history, God sent the long awaited Messiah. 

Today there are military blockades on every route. Tourist shops that are usually packed at this time of the year are empty. People are asking the same question Mary and Joseph had to ask: "Should we stay in our homes and risk death or leave and become refugees? Where can we go to find sanctuary?"

Whatever difficult situations you find yourself in, it is not so difficult that God cannot bring hope.

A third aspect of the Bethlehem is that Bethlehem is the place where hostility and hospitality meet. 

Despite the hostility Mary and Joseph faced, they chose a path of incredible hospitality. They welcomed not only the Son of God into their lives, but local shepherds and migrating wise men to worship Jesus in their home. 

The story of Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem is the story of a place that had no room, and yet someone, an anonymous innkeeper made room anyway. 

It's the story of a family of poor and tired outsiders getting used to the rhythms of life with a new baby in temporary accommodation, who go out of their way to welcome an array of surprising guests. 

It's the story of God inviting himself into the lives of an ordinary Middle Eastern family with roots in the small town of Bethlehem. When Jesus was born in Bethlehem, it was an act of solidarity with all those who feel worthless displaced forgotten or mistreated, it was an act of hope for those who face the greatest fears.

The baby that was born in Bethlehem, who was forcibly displaced as a refugee to Egypt, and who ended up dying for the world in Jerusalem, would rise again from the dead, ultimately defeating oppression everywhere. 

He would sacrifice everything he had, his very life, so that he could welcome us home to God. 

Hospitality, hope and connection can be born in the most unlikely of places. No matter how far from home, from God we feel, God is closer than we think. 

He knows what it's like to be displaced, vulnerable, disconnected, afraid, even a refugee child. He was born and died to fix our broken world.  

And even today he invites you and me to trust him as he works out his good and perfect plan. He invites us to follow him into the mess of the world around us and bring hope there by showing compassion and Hospitality to everyone who needs it.