Around Christmas we hear a lot about joy... joy to the world, spread the joy, joyful and triumphant, shouts of joy... Apparantly its a bit of a theme this time of year.
Why is this?
If you take a good look at the original Christmas story... look past the traditions and stereotypes and inflatble santas... and I have to honestly ask myself, what's joyful about Christmas?
The land of Israel was under the rule of a cruel tyrant king, who fed off jealousy and whose insecurities caused him to kill some of his own children and his wife because he feared they would try to take his throne. It was a politically unstable time and people would've been on edge.
Mary and Joesph found themsleves in the middle of a family scandal with rumours of adultery and betrayal and people wouldve been talking about them behind their backs, not good for someone who relies on word of mouth for his carpentary trade.
Then when Mary, who was most likely still a teenager, was heavily pregnant, they both had to travel to Jerusalem to take part in a census. Im sure the thought of walking for a week or so to an overcrowded city with people from all over the country and an air of political unrest was not the most joyful thing to think about for Joseph and his pregnant fiance. When they got there, every accomodation was full, so the tired couple were forced to stay in a barn out the back. The traditional pictures make this look like a cosy happy place where lambs cuddled up with Jesus... but if you look at history and culture, it was more likely a cave in the hillside, full of animal crap and bugs. I know not everyone feels they need to be in the hospital to give birth, but even for this tough Jewish girl there is a lot that could have gone wrong.
Again tradition serves us falsely in picturing the wise men in the manger with this little family... It would've taken an estimate of more than a year for the wise men to get there, long and hard journey through some tough country.
Here we hear from the corrupt king Herod again who heard about this baby that they were calling King of the Jews... Herod wasnt a full Jewish man from the line of David which was what all the other kings before
him had been.. so he lived in constant fear of his throne being overthrown. So his logical response to this new threat was to try and eliminate the competiton... so began a movement of terror in which he had all the baby boys in the area where Jesus was supposed to have been massacred. The soldiers would've gone house to house ripping the children from their parents arms and slaughtering them systematically so as not to miss any potential king. The population of that area is said to have been about 1000 at the time, so lets say about 20 families with baby boys under two years old. The community would've been broken, shattered by grief and anger but not being able to do anything for fear of being killed too. The bible talks about the sound of weeping being heard throughout the land, mothers who just lost their children pointlessly.
We can relate to this scale of grief in a way much closer to home this year after what happened last week in Connecticut.
Joesph has fled with his family after being warned in a dream by God... he took his wife and son and ran to Egypt. So now the holy family of God is living as refugees in a foreign land, running from Herod to protect their little boy from being murdered. Jospeh was a devout Jewish man believing in the One true God... now he's thrown into the Egyptian culture of thousands of gods that demand sacrifice and money and blood to appease them. They have no friends or family and are living in constant fear and most likely some poverty too by now.
Not the most joyful scene ever.
Instead Christmas seems to be surrounded by danger and fear and pain.
But amongst the overcrowded, fearful grief filled scene, covered in animal crap and a difficult birth, living as refugees under the rule of a cruel man... is the raw stark message that GOD HAS COME.
Christmas doesnt mean that things are okay now or that people wont hurt eachother or that pain and fear and loneliness and emptiness and grief will stop. But it is an ancient joy that was born thousands of years ago, a hope that this isnt everything, there is something bigger than us and He hasnt given up on us! God isnt fixing things from up in heaven but instead He came down into this mess and became like us, leading us back to His Dad.
The joy at Christmas time isnt fluffy or shiny or inflatable but instead it comes from a deep place, it's raw and messy and hard to understand but its better than anything.
