When Joy Overflows! In These Extra Ordinary Times!

When Joy overflows! In these extra ordinary times!

By my calculations its just five days to Christmas Day Morning and I’m trying to get a sense of the anticipation that might have been in the air some 2020 years ago.

First of all, I suppose that we ought to ask who it was who was anticipating? Who couldn’t wait for the first Christmas Day?

Certainly not the nation of Israel. The prophets of God appear, according to scripture, to have been silent for about 450 years! Actually I don’t believe that. I think it’s just that the prophecies made by the Prophets who literally, came after Malachi, who died about 442 BC, didn’t survive for inclusion in our canonised bible.

So lets assume that there weren't any prophets after Malachi.

What about King Herod Antipas? Was he breathless with anticipation? No I don’t think he was. To all intense and purposes he was a strong and wise king of Judea, albeit a violent and unbending one. He was whats known as a ‘Client King’, that is to say that he had been placed on the throne by The Romans and it was their garrison in Jerusalem that kept him on the there.

The kingdom of Judea prospered under Herod The Great and Herod Antipas, new cities were built, a new port was built and so was Masada the famous fortress on top of a mountain, but both kings feared for their thrones and their succession.

Anyone who was the slightest threat to King Herod Antipas could expect to be treated harshly. Many were just ‘disappeared’ and others were jailed, and few ever saw the light of day again!

So Herod had no great anticipation about the birth of the new king. In fact he appears to have known nothing about it except, when the three wise men, the magi, arrived unannounced at his Royal Court in Jerusalem, seeking the new king that the appearance of the star told them had been born.

He certainly wasn’t expecting the birth because he had to consult his own advisors and priests to discover the when, the where and the who.

And like the wise men, Herod had no idea of the true nature of the king who had been born but you can be sure that he saw the infant King Jesus as a threat to his own throne.

Then there is the Shepherds on the hillside, outside the village of Bethlehem. They are not anticipating anything. In fact they just are hoping for a quiet night free from predators and disturbances amongst their flocks.

The night in question, the first Christmas Eve, is just the same as any other night, perhaps a few more stars than normal. The sheep are in the fold, a shelter built of stone, or sometimes thorns, with a narrow opening across which at least one of the shepherds would have slept.

And of course there is Mary and Joseph who will have arrived at the stable, having been turned away from the Inn. We don’t know if Mary is in labour yet but she is certainly very close to her time.

There is every reason to assume that this labour, and this birth, would be as perfect as it is possible to be, because it is of God and not of man, but that is not to say that it would have been without pain. I don’t expect it would have been painless.

But what was going through their minds that night?

It’s been a long tiring journey, even riding on a donkey, from Nazareth to Bethlehem, the town of David. The 70 miles or so would have taken them at least 4 days. They were exhausted.

But the baby is coming. Nothing can stop a baby coming. 9 months to the day since Mary’s memorable conversation with The Angel Gabriel. The baby is coming, so I think there would be a fair degree of anticipation between Mary and Joseph.

So apart from the three wise men and apart from Mary and Joseph, almost no one is anticipating what is about to happen.

Mind you we are forgetting one important segment of the population, and that is The Heavenly Host.

They know the plan. They’ve actually been part of the plan almost from the very beginning. And when their Lord, literally, divides himself into three beings, Father, Son and Spirit, it’s a big occasion.

Actually a very, very big occasion!

So big in fact that the space between Heaven and earth collide, and the heavens are opened. Viewable from earth for the first time in recorded history.

Of course we have studied these events in several Advent Bible Studies and I often wondered why the heavens actually opened.

Why didn’t God ‘just’ send an angel to the Shepherds?