I know that this year has been an extremely challenging one for everyone. For the majority of the year, we’ve been living with the fear and anxiety over the international pandemic. We are painfully aware of all the things we couldn’t do as we would have liked to have done. We think of all the weddings and funerals we couldn’t be a part of, we think of all the family and friend catch ups we’ve had to miss. We cannot be with those we love at this time of year; families are separated by international travel bans, quarantines and border closures. We are used to doing pretty much as we like, living as we want to. We have always thought of ourselves as the masters of the world and it has been a hard lesson to learn that we are in fact at the mercy of a microscopic virus.
Our readings over Christmas may be separated by many centuries, but they were both written at times when people faced great stress and challenges. Our Isaiah reading comes from a time when Israel believed they faced imminent destruction from an invading army. Our gospel reading comes from a time when Israel was occupied by the Roman Army. And both these readings speak of what God has done to bring hope to the hopeless, light to those who live in dark times. Both readings show that God is not indifferent about affairs on earth, is uncaring about what happens to us. Both readings point to God’s actions in coming to us as Jesus to show us how life is meant to be; how life is going to be one day. In Jesus, we see a world where poverty, disease, oppression and marginalisation are no more. We are promised that because of what God has done in the past, our future will be different.
It may seem at times that there is no hope, that there is no plan to make things better. It can seem that things will never change as we are living in a cold and uncaring world. Even after the long-awaited vaccine arrives and this threat passes, we will still have poverty, illness, disease and oppression. We may fell that these things are simply the way the world is and always shall be. The Christmas story tells us otherwise. It reminds us of God who is love, who comes to us in our pain, in our misery, in our despair and anxiety to show us things will get better. It shows us that God can, and does, work through human history, to bring about God’s plans to make all things well. It states clearly that while we may think there’s nothing that can be done, God thinks otherwise and will move heaven and earth (literally) to change things for the better.