A YOUNG PEOPLE’S STORY

It’s obvious, but we can still miss it: the Christmas nativity is a young people’s story.

Not just because people of all ages, young too, filled our local village churches again this year, drawn by the magic of Christmas. The carols; the candle-lit setting; the chance to get close up to the knitted Nativity scene, wobbly shepherds and all, and spend a moment eyeball to woolly eyeball with baby Jesus and a lamb or
two. For young visitors, that is still special.

But because it’s a story where young people are good news. Mary: teenage, unsure, facing social disgrace at the turn of events. Paula Gooder can’t be alone in saying, ‘The mother in me rails at God for asking too much of a young girl.’ What faith and trust must it have taken for Mary to respond as she does: ‘Let it be with me according to your word’ (Luke 1:38)? And not just a simple once-for-all acceptance: when the shepherds bring word of the angels’ good news, Mary treasures and ponders those words and all they might come to mean. It takes time and deep reflection to absorb something so life-changing, for her and for us.

Jesus too. The miracle of incarnation isn’t only that God takes on our human nature, but that God chooses to be born a baby, with all the vulnerability and dependency infancy brings; to share our life that fully. Paula talks of the amazing truth that ‘God who shaped the universe into being’ is prepared to trust his whole wellbeing to this young girl with all the odds against her – ‘a ludicrously risky means of redeeming the world he loved so much.’

SHARING GOOD NEWS

And how about those angelically-captivated shepherds, bursting with good news to share, like excitable young people? Which they may well have been. Put aside the classic image of grizzled hill-farmers, we’re reminded by Paula (again!) that the role of shepherd often fell to the youngest male in the family. (As for the future king David – 1 Samuel 16.) Think instead of teenage boys ranging across dangerous wilderness in search of safe pasture for their flock. This adds a youthful and active as well as fiercely protective quality to the classic image of Lord as shepherd (Psalm 23). It reinforces that when these young shepherds run from angels to family and crib, and from there back to base, ‘glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen,’ they do it with a story to tell and an energy that won’t be denied. Can we get some of that, this Christmas?

But speedy communication can be two-edged – see the current national debate around young people, social media access and online community. (Blessing or curse – both?) It’s easy to imagine the Bethlehem nativity scene today would include a raised smartphone or two, and that word of the newborn baby Jesus would be all over Judaea quicker than those eager shepherds could run. Such a different world.

PAYING ATTENTION

That’s not how it was. The gospel tells that the wonder of God-with-us is received in real time and in person. What wisdom might that offer into the social media debate?
I think just this: be present to the wonder, the joy and truth of real experience. Don’t let the pocket tech or online group take its place. I was lucky enough a while back to be at Santiago cathedral for mass, and the immense floor-to-ceiling censer – the thing it takes eight skilfully-coordinated muscular blokes to operate – swung the whole width of the transept, as it does. The congregation was packed. And a forest of smartphones went up to capture the moment. No doubt it was swiftly relived across the globe. Yes, but was it lived in the first place? Be present. Jesus invites, compels, our attention: to him, to the life that he gifts us, to all of God’s people and creation. ‘Treasure’ and ‘ponder’ these things.

And then share. Share the good news with all the energy we can. Do it in a way that honours the experience and gives glory and praise to God. Use social media too (if safe). Young people’s instincts may not be wrong there. Think of those shepherds.