God with us
The Rev Richard Frazer highlights the people on the move in the Christmas story.
STUDY
Photo: iStock
ONE feature of my West Highland parish is that there are very few ways to drive in and out.
The mountains, seas and lochs that provide such a magnificent landscape also ensure that there are no alternatives to the one or two main roads for most journeys.
When a road is closed for any reason, it can feel like living on an island.
As a result, I cover the same roads often, at different times, in varying conditions and for all sorts of purposes. It may be the same route, but each trip feels different.
That’s not just a West Highland experience.
Commuting in to a city for work is different to travelling into that same city for a concert, a show or a night out. The feelings associated with driving into town for a shopping trip are not the same as driving the same road to visit a sick friend in hospital.
The Christmas story is full of people on the move, sometimes facing different journeys on the same route.
Mary goes from Galilee to Judea not once, but twice. On the first occasion, she travels to visit her cousin Elizabeth in the Judean hill country. (Luke 1.39-45, 56) It’s a joy-filled family visit, early in Mary’s pregnancy. The next time she travels the same road, she is on an involuntary and inconvenient journey from Nazareth in Galilee to Bethlehem in Judea. She goes because a Roman administration unconcerned by the needs of child-bearing women requires her to travel. That journey was not a joy but a burden. (Luke 2.1-7)
Yet without the bureaucratic demands of the tax system, and the difficult journey it imposed, Mary’s child would not have been born in Bethlehem, the city of David. Even the difficult, inconvenient journey was part of the plan.
Others are also on the move.
The shepherds come in from the hills to see the baby the angel has announced to them. They come in a hurry, for they have heard good news, and they saunter back celebrating because of what they have seen. (Luke 2.8-20)
The wise men travel from somewhere in the Middle East, convinced they are looking for a new king. Expecting a welcome as honoured guests, they announce themselves at the royal palace. With less confidence, they scurry away secretly on a back-road, having unwittingly angered the paranoid, psychotic and unpredictable ruler of Judea, with their talk of a new king. (Matthew 2.1-13)
There is a journey of celebration, with the trip in to the Temple in Jerusalem to present the firstborn child to the Lord. (Luke 2.22-24)
But there is also a journey of desperation. The visit of the wise men provokes Herod’s violent and genocidal backlash, so Joseph becomes a refugee and flees with his family to Egypt. (Matthew 2.13-18)
The same roads see so many different journeys.
It will be true this Christmas time as well.
You may travel the same road often, but every journey is new.
Your road may be familiar, but the circumstances may change.
It’s good to know we have a God who is present with us on all our journeys. That’s why God sends us a child who is Emmanuel, God with us.
The Rev Richard Baxter is minister at Fort William: Duncansburgh MacIntosh linked with Kilmonivaig.