Something that always encourages me as I return to the Gospel stories of Jesus’ birth year after year is that our Lord is born into the real world in which I live, where people, poor people like shepherds, have hard jobs that keep them at work through the night while the wealthy sleep, where governments make decisions that disrupt the lives of ordinary people with inadequate provision for the consequences – no room at the inn for some displaced by the census, where those who love power like Herod inflict violence on the powerless to secure themselves, where individuals, like Joseph, try to do the right thing in difficult and confusing circumstances.
And as I have been preparing for Sunday evening’s sermon I have been struck again by just how ordinary the people we meet at the beginning of Luke’s gospel, Zechariah and Elizabeth, John the Baptist’s parents, are, how they share so much in common with us.
Let me read the first three verses that follow Luke’s introduction.
Luke 1: 5 In the days of King Herod of Judea, there was a priest of Abijah’s division named Zechariah. His wife was from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. 6 Both were righteous in God’s sight, living without blame according to all the commands and requirements of the Lord. 7 But they had no children because Elizabeth could not conceive, and both of them were well along in years.
Zechariah and Elizabeth, faithful people, seeking to live by God’s instruction in the covenant.
But life had brought them disappointment, the longed for child never arriving, Elizabeth never being able to embrace the role of mother that was honoured in that community, and knowing the shame of that, what she calls in v, 25 her disgrace amongst the people.
They were a couple who had been socially stigmatised by the failure of their hopes.
And they endured this disappointment knowing they were aging, hope of fulfilment running away from them in this life, living conscious as the years went by of their mortality.
And their lives were being lived out under a less than ideal political regime, under the rule of Herod the Great who had brought external peace to Judaea at the cost of arbitrary political violence.
Ordinary lives, like the lives of all people since Adam’s fall and God’s judgment on Adam and Eve’s sin, lives which do not return their fulness but can disappoint, where social relationships can be a source of pain and grief, where power is maintained by violence, and all of us move through the years to certain death where all achievements and all hopes perish, lives like ours,
Which would undoubtedly been forgotten lives, lost forever in the great mass of humanity over the centuries, if their faithful God had not caught them up into His great purpose to save His people, answered their prayers by giving them a child, John.
The child who would grow up to be a great prophet, the forerunner of God’s Christ, the Lord Jesus.
And that is what I find so encouraging. That the living God includes ordinary people, people like you and I, in His great saving plan to have, in Revelation’s words, a people “from every tribe and language
and people and nation”, who would be to Him a Kingdom and priests to God and who will reign on earth,
A purpose and plan He will realise through the death of His Son [Revelation 5:9-10], the Son John’s ministry will prepare people for.
And it is not just Zechariah and Elizabeth’s inclusion in God’s great purpose that encourages me, but the way He includes them. They are not tools to achieve His plan, pawns to be sacrificed in some great strategy. They are included by their prayers being heard, their longing graciously satisfied, God meeting them in the reality of their individual lives and bringing them joy.
As Tom Wright wrote “The needs, hopes and fears of ordinary people are not forgotten in this story”, even though it is the story of God and His great faithfulness, might and wisdom in the Son being born into our race to save us, the realisation of a purpose that stretches from eternity to eternity. And those needs, hopes and fears are not forgotten as Wright says because of who Israel’s God, the Creator of all, is, “the God of lavish self giving love”, merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. [Exodus 34:6-7]
He is the God who catches you and I up into His great saving purpose through believing the gospel of His Son, the gospel which brings us the story of the birth of our Saviour which we celebrate year after year. And God does this by dealing with us as He dealt with Elizabeth and Zechariah and so many in the gospels – knowing our individual lives, and our longings and disappointments, and bringing us joy. That joy is the joy which is for all people as the angel said [Luke 2:10], the joy of having a Saviour who has overcome death and gives us eternal life, who is exalted over all human and spiritual powers and gives us lasting peace, who will erase all disappointed hopes when He makes all things new, and who, having all authority, is gentle and lowly and gives rest to our souls in our toil and burdens as we take His yoke upon us, live as His disciples by doing all He has taught us [Matthew 11:28-30].
Joy, hope, peace, rest – may they be yours this Christmas as you remember and praise our Saviour, born of the virgin, become a human child to make us God’s adopted children forever.
