Thursday, December 24, 2020

Christmas letter 2020 - Part 1

Hi Diamo Family!

There is something very messy and unpredictable about babies. I get a certain nervous satisfaction about watching prospective first time parents plan for the impending birth of their first-born! They studiously take notes at the pre-natal classes; paint the room in sparkling clean colours; buy crisp white baby outfits and plan ahead as if their new tenant will synchronise their diary to seamlessly blend in! Yeah, that was me too all those years ago!

In fact babies and toddlers are messy! Everything from their eating habits through to the other end of the business is quite chaotic. They break the rules and shake up the tidy order of our lives! And yet in the midst of that chaos – they grow and develop; they learn to walk, speak and feed themselves. 

Amidst the sleepless nights and incessant nappy changes, parents experience life in its most exuberant. Nothing is impossible! The ‘why?’ and the ‘but why not?’ questions never end! The horizons of imagination are endlessly explored!

Some time around school age they get taught about rules – there are social conventions and there are ways of doing things that win favour. I remember on one occasion, when our oldest boy was in grade one, he noticed his little three year old brother energetically colouring in a picture. Little Josh was going for it! Bright streaks of crayon everywhere! On the picture outline, next to it and even on the other page and the table beneath! His older brother got very upset: “He’s doing it wrong daddy! Tell him he’s not doing it how you are supposed to! You’re supposed to colour inside the lines – You’re not supposed to colour outside the lines!”

I believe we need to be people who: “Colour outside the lines.” For all of us, 2020 has pushed us way out of our ‘lines’ —our comfort zones. This is now an opportunity to really break free to do things differently and courageously! What are those ‘lines’ we’ve learnt to colour within that fearfully constrain us? 

The very story of Christmas reminds that a baby was born. That baby was supposed to be the great king and deliverer of Israel and yet … he was born in a stable? Born out of wedlock? Wrapped in dirty rags? Become an asylum seeker? That’s one messy story! That was God colouring way outside the lines of good messiah-ship!

Of all the babies born, no child seemed to have poorer prospects than Jesus. Yet, paradoxically, while all those babies were expected, no child was more expected than Jesus.  

According to the Old Testament the Messiah's arrival was supposed to cause a stir and be a national event, but the arrival of Jesus didn’t! He came quietly with only Mary, Joseph and a few shepherds to look on. The Messiah was supposed to liberate the Jewish people from Roman occupation. Jesus didn't! He spoke to their hearts and liberated their spirits instead.

The Messiah was supposed to dazzle them with raw power and breathtaking majesty, but Jesus didn’t! Yes, He cured the sick, fed the hungry, delivered the demonised – but by and large these were the ones that no one really took very seriously. Rather than flattering the powerful, he reached out to the voiceless on the very fringes of the community.

The Messiah was supposed to preserve the Law given to Moses by God. Jesus spoke about the law of love instead. He turned Law on its head.

Adulterers forgiven, tax collectors and sinners welcomed; prodigal sons gathered in; and lepers embraced!  The Messiah was supposed to make life economically easier for them – to reduce taxes, increase employment, bring down inflation and so on. Jesus didn’t! 

He told the people to pay their taxes, to live simply and to help the poor. He overturned the tables of the money traders in the temple; He demanded that the rich young ruler sell all he had if he wished to follow. 

The Messiah was supposed to be a national hero and a huge success. Jesus wasn’t! By their standards he was a dismal failure, head of a rag tag collection of misfits, rejected as a criminal and died a humiliating death on a cross; both Roman and Jewish authorities agreeing in his  execution. 

The Gospel story is a picture of God colouring vigorously outside the lines! The picture doesn’t always look like we think it ought to. Listen to Isaiah’s words: “Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?  He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.  He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Is. 53:1- 3

God's presence and mission will unsettle and disturb us. Its sends us ‘outside the lines’ – to people outside our walls; to do things we’ve never done before; to take risks that may cost us everything. 

To do that we need once more to become children who can grasp the crayon. In Jesus words: ‘And he said: “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven...” Matt. 18:1- 5

Let’s be people courage and faith and creativity who ‘colour outside the lines’. Let us embrace the times we live in and go boldly out into 2021 open to God’s leading.

Don’t forget this wonderful benediction as we begin 2021 together: 

“... God can do anything, you know—far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us. Glory to God in the church! Glory to God in the Messiah, in Jesus! Glory down all the generations! Glory through all millennia! Oh, yes! Ephesians 3:20-21 (MSG)

May you know the grace and peace of God this Christmas!


Martin 

Part 2 - HERE