The series has to start with a perfectly logical beginning where we unwrap the Biblical narrative around the Christmas season.
The Christmas story tells us of an almost secretive process in which two women, Elizabeth who was old and barren, and Mary who never knew a man to conceive are given miraculous opportunities to become mothers. In this preparation there are special encounters with the Holy Spirit.
Then there is Anna in the temple, looked over by many , there for 84 years praying and fasting nursing a compelling hope along with her contemporary Simeon who too nurses the same hope.
Yet with all these goings on, it was business as usual with the priests, with the Roman soldiers who were now stewarding a managed imperial occupation. For the Scribes it was just another day with the scrolls of the Law, and for the Pharisees it was another day debating and counselling subjects in the Law.
Yet God now, in the Christmas narratives of Matthew and Luke details the weaving in secret the Hand of bringing the Saviour to the world. Why does God not enter the Palace, even when the wise men, Magi’s from the East, they knew academically where Jesus would be born, the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem as Zechariah points to. They were privy to the where but not the when.
It seems out of sheer divine determination that some come into this Divine Participation of major spiritual change. When we consider that God chooses Anna, over the many Levites that would have come into the Temple Sanctuary to do their service, yet Anna called from the heartbreak of losing her love in her husband who passed away she saw some kind of opportunity and responded with obedience to what she perceived to be a spiritual vocation to something never greater a change and a determining factor in the destiny of all men, how they respond to a Saviour in the need for Salvation of their souls and how they would subject themselves to the King who would come first as a Babe.
What sort of preparation would that afford? It would not fit within a system that elevated the Law, the Sabbath, above the need for a radical new birth into a Saviour! The system of the Law and the Priests would not be a place of change because it was self serving and self preserving!
It would not be in a palace of a King to serve the reign of emperors who would serve to be the vessel of being the persecutor of the Church and the channel by which the Roman cross be so much a stage for a major confrontation in every realm , and yet this political scenario of the King Herod who enjoyed more the comforts of this world than know and enjoy the spiritual preparation that was going on ,that when the Magi came speaking of the Appearance of a great star did Herod fear, his fear desiring to snuff out any contender for his throne and where murder grew in the heart to search for the 1 babe and kill off all His contemporaries! So there was no space for letting Herod’s palace to be part if not just a tiny indication of providence in pointing to Bethlehem.
Christmas is about who God allows to participate in, in the great reception of the Saviour with angelic glory. Those who come into the Presence of the Holy Spirit, moving and speaking by Him, are those who He has chosen. To those who say “Do with your handmaiden as you see fit” as the overshadowing Spirit of the Most High makes Mary the holiest life around in that generation as what is conceived is Holy and contrasts with the empty Holy of Holies which Herod embellished for 46 years tearing down that which was of divine design.
So we have set the scene in a sense to this Christmas series. For in each participant there is reflected Christ, the Son of God and Son of David. This series came very quietly into my heart because it seemed I was not writing, expounding here so much recently. Yet suddenly as I looked over the Christmas narrative I saw Christ in everyone who were privileged to engage in the preparation .
So what about the modern day. Is there still that secretive preparation? I sense that the same elements are present in Christianity where knowledge abounds and where great Church traditions, buildings , monastic orders , ministers of all kinds, yet in the Christmas message, the Church somehow caught up in the commercial synergy of the month of December, the lights , the television, the e-cards and physical cards, the shopping, all frenetic up to 24th night and then from 26th the wind down. In this which I describe the potential for us to be excluded from the Participation of Holy Spirit preparation of great eternal changes can be a real possibility.
The valuation of noise and activity can be the driving factor of God bypassing us from the objective of the Holy Spirit bringing a greater birthing which is to come .
As I have in other years seen Advent as prophetic of the Great Advent of the Coming King , I see this time a new facet of divine disclosure here; the preparation qualifies us for the participation!
Let us draw aside from the frenetic characteristics of the secular Christmas, stripped out the Saviour with Santa, the Star with celebrity, the present and not the Presence. What you value you spend time nurturing . Anna had her reward when she entered the Sanctuary when the Saviour came before priests oblivious to the Great Visitation. Yet for that Sanctuary it was a signal to the end, as it is for many today. Not all visitations of Jesus, in whatever form is for our work’s perpetuity, rather could and can be a sign of a great transition that we would never expect.
And Simeon whose own embrace of that Babe signified he could enter the rest of eternity knowing that what the Holy Spirit constantly prepared him in now was in full swing.
And here we conclude the first instalment of this spiritual journey . Christmas is at God’s invitation, and if we are chosen in the participation is because we engaged the preparation. That is the key.
Maranatha!
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