Church News: December

Trinity Church –

the Spirit of Christmas

Have you ever paused to consider how the Christmas story includes the very sordid tale of an engaged young woman who, to all appearances, was unfaithful to her fiancé? We sing about hope and joy because we know how the story ends, but those living it in real time felt something far different. Heartache abounded. Joseph wondered who the father of this child truly was. Mary’s parents feared for her reputation and her future. And Mary? Mary did not walk through any of this untouched by pain. What a miserable, tangled mess. Poor Joseph. Poor Mary. And what a precarious, almost unthinkable situation for God to choose as the entry point into the world.

Perhaps this is exactly why we love this story so deeply. Because God is coming as a baby. God is becoming flesh and entering humanity. This story was never meant to be only miraculous and beautiful and awe-inspiring. It was never merely a night of angels singing or shepherds worshiping. It was never the story of a couple who serenely accepted this new thing without questions or fear.

No.

In this story of incarnation, we are given truth. The truth that life is often difficult and confusing, filled with heartbreak and uncertainty. The truth that our world is riddled with brokenness and messiness. Though no angel has come to interrupt our lives with such extraordinary news, each of us carries our own anxieties, our own fears. Every one of us knows frustration and grief and those heavy, unspoken things that keep us awake at night. And so this story is not only something we know – it’s a story that knows us.

In Matthew 1 there is a genealogy of characters. At first glance it reads like a list of heroes. But scratch the surface, and we find something far more complex. Abraham nearly sacrificed his own son. Jacob cheated his brother out of his birthright. David arranged a man’s death to cover a scandal. And then there are the women – Bathsheba, Rahab, Ruth – women whose stories, or at least the way they have been remembered, are filled with struggle, tragedy or suspicion.

Yet here is the astonishing thing: God was with every one of them. God worked through their lives even in the midst of fear, failure, and profound imperfection. Abraham’s son Isaac was spared. Rahab saved God’s people. Ruth became the ancestor of kings. And above all those stories, we have the Christmas story.

Through all of this, we learn that God comes into the lives of messy, complicated people. The Spirit moves through broken places to bring wholeness and new life. Always God comes – even when everything appears hopeless or chaotic.

So perhaps now, in a time filled with uncertainty and anxiety, we might hear the Christmas story anew. And hearing it, mvay we trust that God is here, always, in our stories and lives, bringing true peace to this world. And until then, may the promise hold us. Come, Lord Jesus, come.