From the UCC Network: Devotional for 12/22 "The Season of Showing"

The Season of Showing

Excerpt from Luke 2: 1-11

“While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child.”

Reflection by Donna Schaper

God is starting to show.  Usually that doesn’t happen for at least three months, at the end of the first trimester, when the fetus is so small that it creates no bulges.  Then comes the bulge, the ballooning, the sense of no longer being one’s own person, the sense that something important is happening, within our own wombs. 

Advent is the season of the showing.  We light one candle to indicate the coming of a new kind of light.

Christianity is as strange a religion as any other.  Our core is the Holy Spirit having mysterious relations with the girl, Mary, all of which results in a child who is understood to be the salvation of the world.  Advent is the time when we get on the path of understanding how these things can be.  How come God comes down?  How come God gets small?  How come God, the eternal, becomes the temporal? 

As I said, Christianity is as strange a religion as any other.  At its core, power is vulnerability, heavenly is earthly, flesh involves spirit, divinity caresses the ordinary.  Our version of God is one that is very hard to understand in a world that is deeply concerned about whether the stores will sell a lot during the gift-buying season.  Our version has a quarrel with the world as we know it and sings its song in a different key, the key of incarnation, of spirit becoming flesh and dwelling among us.  Not above us, but among us.  Not outside us, but in us.  Not robed in kingly crimson, but in swaddling clothes in the manger next door.

During Advent we piece together the meaning of God’s starting to show us God’s path.  Pieces are all we get, given the messaging strategy of the divine.  A girl.  A manger.  A small town named Bethlehem.  Can you imagine launching your message in Topeka when New York is so close by?  Can you imagine launching your message in Bangladesh when Egypt is so close by?  These little questions are a piece of the mystery and magnificence of the Christian version of God. 

Prayer 

Why you have to be such a different kind of God, O God, I will never understand.  But with Mary, you have more than piqued my interest.  Thank-you. Amen.

About the Author Donna Schaper is the Senior Minister of Judson Memorial Church in New York City.  Her most recent book is Sacred Chow: a Guide to Holy Eating.

Daily Prayer

The Ancestors of Jesus the Messiah

¹ This is a record of the ancestors of Jesus the Messiah, a descendant of David and of Abraham:² Abraham was the father of Isaac. Isaac was the father of Jacob. Jacob was the father of Judah and his brothers.³ Judah was the father of Perez and Zerah (whose mother was Tamar). Perez was the father of Hezron. Hezron was the father of Ram. ⁴ Ram was the father of Amminadab. Amminadab was the father of Nahshon. Nahshon was the father of Salmon.⁵ Salmon was the father of Boaz (whose mother was Rahab). Boaz was the father of Obed (whose mother was Ruth). Obed was the father of Jesse.⁶ Jesse was the father of King David. David was the father of Solomon (whose mother was Bathsheba, the widow of Uriah).⁷ Solomon was the father of Rehoboam. Rehoboam was the father of Abijah. Abijah was the father of Asa. ⁸ Asa was the father of Jehoshaphat. Jehoshaphat was the father of Jehoram. Jehoram was the father of Uzziah.⁹ Uzziah was the father of Jotham. Jotham was the father of Ahaz. Ahaz was the father of Hezekiah.¹⁰ Hezekiah was the father of Manasseh. Manasseh was the father of Amon. Amon was the father of Josiah.¹¹ Josiah was the father of Jehoiachin and his brothers (born at the time of the exile to Babylon).¹² After the Babylonian exile: Jehoiachin was the father of Shealtiel. Shealtiel was the father of Zerubbabel.¹³ Zerubbabel was the father of Abiud. Abiud was the father of Eliakim. Eliakim was the father of Azor.¹⁴ Azor was the father of Zadok. Zadok was the father of Akim. Akim was the father of Eliud.¹⁵ Eliud was the father of Eleazar. Eleazar was the father of Matthan. Matthan was the father of Jacob.¹⁶ Jacob was the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary. Mary gave birth to Jesus, who is called the Messiah. ¹⁷ All those listed above include fourteen generations from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the Babylonian exile, and fourteen from the Babylonian exile to the Messiah.

Matt 1:1-17 (NLT)

As an amateur genealogist myself, I can appreciate the ancestral research and recording that that was penned to paper in this much ignored passage in Mathew. Attempting to get it all correct and in order, especially covering the number of generations as documented here, can become a frustrating, hair-pulling endeavor.

Even this detailed account is incomplete, though. For, figuratively speaking, this genealogy goes on and on. Not in some mysterious DaVinci Code puzzle sort of way, but in the fact that the ancestral descendants are, of course, many more than Matthew could have ever traced. The evidence of scripture shows that the familial seed of God’s people descends much further down through the generations – all the way to:

YOU

and

I

So you can add your name to the Christmas story; to the wonderment of that night. Your life, even now, is a continuing part of that holy drama; of angelic messages and comfort. Of poor laborers in dark fields, to whom the divine pronouncement came, and still comes today. Yes – a part of that ancestral legacy:

YOU

and

I

... bearing whatever gifts we have for the Christ-Child today (and our individual gifts/talents are many). And gazing in utter wonder, with eyes glazed over with tears at just the unbelievable joy of it all; of promises fulfilled and impossibilities overcome.

It’s a long and proud family history – this genealogy in Matthew – which comes down even to today, through and with ...

YOU

Rev. Michael Kirchhoff