GOD LEAVES ALL THE POWER BEHIND

‘Caesar Augustus issued a decree for a census of the whole world to be taken.’ Imagine the scene: Caesar dressed in his white toga, strolling through the marble corridors of power, nibbling grapes and thinking what a clever idea this is, unaware or at least unconcerned what effect his edict might have on ordinary people hundreds of miles away. Maybe he wants to increase his tax revenues, maybe he wants to solidify his control over his vast and sprawling empire, or maybe he is just doing it ‘because he can’.

Meanwhile, on a cold hillside in Palestine, a group of shepherds are guarding their sheep. Here, Caesar’s rod doesn’t stretch. They will probably never hear of the census, let alone participate in it, because like many essential workers, to the powers that be they don’t even exist.

And then, caught up in the middle of all this are Mary and Joseph, forced to make an arduous journey during Mary’s pregnancy, just so they can be little more than statistics on Caesar’s spreadsheet.

Yet ultimately Caesar is not in charge – and for all his trappings of office and his machinery of government, something else is going on, something that even this powerful man cannot control – and that is God’s purpose and action – and here the difference is like between night and day.

For God, however, this is no power game, this is no exercise of control, this is no whim. Jesus’s birth in Bethlehem was the centrepiece of God’s careful, patient, loving plan to save his people, delivered so respectfully, to a young woman through the visit of an angel, with such regard at every step to her dignity, to her free choice, to her fears and anxieties.

We’re so used to powerful people having their own way, to money talking, to the loudest getting centre stage, that the idea that God would bypass all of that seems hard to imagine. It’s as if at Christmas, God is coming to visit us through the side door, while making sure to ring the doorbell first.

THE REALITY OF POWERLESSNESS

Over the last year, power and the lack of it seem to have become quite a theme. Despite it being a year of elections across Europe and the UK, a significant portion of the world’s population remains powerless. Whether it’s in the current conflict zones in Europe and the Middle East, in homes where there’s poverty and deprivation in our country, or in those who face the butt of our prejudice and intolerance, there are plenty of people whose lives are apparently of no consequence. To the powers that be, they are just statistics on a spreadsheet, or maybe they simply don’t exist.

To God, however, it’s not like that at all. Everything about what we celebrate tonight is about God coming down to earth. We sometimes use the phrase ‘down to earth’ to describe someone who identifies with us on our own level, without pretence, without airs and graces. Some people pretend to be down to earth, putting on a great show of being a ‘man (or woman) of the people’ – but this is not God’s way. God not only cares about the powerless, but God identifies with the powerless – and God not only identifies with the powerless but becomes one with them.

GOD’S GENTLE KNOCK

So, if this Christmas for whatever reason you or I are feeling powerless, or are feeling that so much is out of our control, that other people seem to make all the decisions; and you or I are struggling, like Mary and Joseph, just to make it to this point; or if one way or another, like those shepherds, you or I are feeling out in the cold – know that to God, you and I really, truly matter.

Or perhaps, hearing of this or that event happening in the world outside, we wonder what on earth we can do to help, wondering what difference our compassion or concern could possibly make, then know it is through the apparently insignificant and inconsequential that God has always done her greatest deeds.

God is not some Caesar, strutting in vast marble corridors, handing down edicts ‘just because he can’, but the one who, choosing to be born in a stable, leaves all power and glory behind, leaves all advantage and privilege behind, and ever so gently knocks on our door.