Advent 3 - Marking Matthew

Every once in a while there comes a time when ancient wrongs are righted, and justice is finally done.

Friday December 4th, 2009 will go down as such a day.

One year ago the title of Belhelvie Church Quiz champions was cruelly snatched from the team known as the “Pumpkin Pears” by just half a point. But just over a week ago the record was set straight. A 13 point margin of victory, thanks in no small part to a ten point Christmas Carols round, and much trickier 5-point round on the Christmas story as it’s found in the gospels. Guess which team got 15/15 on those two?!

This is what we had to answer in that second question:

How many gospels have a nativity story? (Answer – 2)
Can you name them? (Matthew, Luke)
Which of those two tells the story of the shepherds (Luke)

Interesting isn’t it?! We think we know the Christmas story because we’ve heard it for years, but in actual fact, what we’re presented with at Christmastime is an amalgam of two nativity stories, laid over with a gloss of romanticism.

Don’t say it in front of the kids, but there’s no mention of a little donkey, or an innkeeper in either Matthew or Luke’s accounts. The stable’s by no means certain, and in all likelihood the wise men arrived a good few months after the baby was born.

Over the years, what’s happened is that the nativity-play version of the story has imprinted itself onto our minds and we accept it almost uncritically, forgetting to ask what the source material in Matthew and Luke really says.

That’s a good exercise for a snowy afternoon- sit down with a cup of coffee and read through the two different accounts of the nativity story. You’ll be surprised at what you find. And what you don’t find.

But the main thing you’ll discover is how different in tone the two accounts are.

Luke’s story is filled with joy and light and glory. It’s Luke who tells us about the delight surrounding Elizabeth’s pregnancy with John; he focuses on Mary’s feelings and her acceptance of this role she’s called to have. He recalls the song of joy she sang that’s known as the Magnificat.

Luke’s account is full of angels, who bring tidings of great joy to people who are wide awake. He has the word coming first to the shepherds who return to the fields rejoicing at what they found down in Bethlehem. He has Simeon and Anna, delighted to see the messiah with their own eyes in their old age. It’s all good.

Matthew’s gospel, by contrast, is much darker. The light is still there, but from the word go, it’s struggling against the darkness.

Matthew, perhaps as we’d expect for a Jewish writer of his day, focuses on the man in the story and spends a good deal of time on Joseph’s predicament.

It’s Matthew who tells us just how rocky things were between Mary and Joseph because of her pregnancy, and who raises the issue of divorce as a real possibility.

People see angels in Matthew too, but always in dreams, always in the darkness. There’s no mention of the shepherds or the angels – instead we have these strange mystics coming from the east, and getting things badly wrong at first by stirring up Jerusalem’s tyrant king.

They bring strange gifts more suited for a burial than a birth, and after they leave, Herod issues a decree that all the local boys aged 2 and under be slaughtered. Mary and Joseph have to flee and become refugees in Egypt until it’s finally safe to return and settle down in Nazareth.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying the two accounts contradict one another because I don’t think they do. We have to take them together. But they do reflect two very different perspectives on what was going on.

They’re both Biblical accounts. They both carry weight. But which one do you think has had a bigger influence on what we call the Christmas story? It's Luke, isn't it?

When did you last hear a carol about Joseph’s dilemma; or the poor mothers who were robbed of their sons because Mary brought hers to full term? Or the fact that the infant Jesus started out life as a refugee? Maybe not a bad beginning for someone who in later life claimed he had nowhere to lay his head.

We’re missing Matthew’s influence, aren’t we?

And because of that, we’re missing part of what Christmas is supposed to be about.

At this time of year, we’re sold a vision of what Christmas should be. It’s tinsel and lights and open fires; it’s families and presents and good food; it’s love and harmony and goodwill to all men. It’s a secularized version of Luke. Goodwill minus God.

But what if Christmas, for you, doesn’t look the way the media people say it should?

What if it’s a lonely time for you, because you’re by yourself. Or the absence of that special person is particularly hard to bear?

What if the family get-together in your house is less like a Marks and Spencer’s ad and more like a fist-fight in Albert Square?

What if this is the first Christmas after your marriage has broken down, and your kids are waking up on Christmas morning to hugs from just one parent?

What if it’s hard to get into the spirit because you’re ill and you just don’t have the energy for it?

What if you can’t afford the Christmas everyone tells you you should be having, because you’ve lost your job, or you know it’s under threat?

If that’s where you’re at, the Christmas we’re sold in the shops and on the telly doesn’t have much to say to you. In fact, it’s rather embarrassed to have you around.

But Matthew has something to say.

Matthew reminds us that in the darkness of our loneliness, our conflicts, our illness and our loss, hope can still come. And in time, and with faith, that hope can become a light that changes everything.

And how does it come?

If comes as we wait and watch attentively and don’t give up. When we realise that no situation we find ourselves in is God-less or God-forsaken. There is always hope. It’s just that sometimes in life we have to look harder to find it.

John the evangelist has no nativity story, but of Christ’s coming into the world he says this – “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has never put it out”. I wonder if he pinched that idea from Matthew, because that’s the tenor, not just of his nativity story, but of his whole gospel.


Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was the most popular American poet of his day, but at times, his life was scarred by tragedy. His first wife, Mary Potter, died after a miscarriage in 1835, and in 1861 his second wife, Frances Appleton, died from burns she sustained when her clothing caught fire.

That same year, the American Civil War broke out and two years into the conflict, Longfellow got the news he’d been dreading when his son was seriously injured in action.

He found it hard to write in the latter years of his life, And sitting down at his desk, one Christmas Day, he heard the church bells pealing out and their noise seemed to mock him in the grief he’d borne across the years.

He set himself to work, and penned these lines:

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old familiar carols play
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

And in despair I bowed my head
There is no peace on earth I said
For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep,
God is not dead, nor doth he sleep.
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail
With peace on earth, good will to men.


The hope that Christmas brings us isn’t a fool’s hope. A hope that tries to pretend things aren’t how they really are.

It’s the hope that looks realistically at our stories and says with Matthew – yes, there are problems, worries and concerns. But that’s not all there is.

For the everlasting light shines not only in the dark streets of Bethlehem, but the dark alleyways of our souls. And the darkness can never put it out.

Advent 2 - Putting a Face to the Name

Throughout the course of history some venues or stadia have become renowned as fearsome places to perform. The Coliseum in Rome; The Nou Camp or the Bernabeau in Spain. Old Trafford – home of Manchester United. Otherwise known as the Theatre of Muppets.

And the Glasgow Empire was a notoriously tough gig, especially if you were an English Comedian. They used to joke that it was a theatre where no turn was left unstoned.

But nothing, nothing compares to the bear-pit that is the secondary school assembly. It’s a place where even angels fear to tread. 200 teenagers there under sufferance, and you – the minister – are in the spotlight.

The writer and pastor J John talks about one Easter Assembly when he foolishly opened things up for questions and one lad said “all this religion stuff’s rubbish – you’ve never seen God, have you?” That would have thrown most of us, but to his credit, J John held his nerve and said “No – you’re quite right. I haven’t seen him. But I would have seen him if I’d been alive at the right time”.

I've always thought that was a good answer because it gets right to the heart of what Christians think was going on in that stable in Bethlehem. This wasn’t just the birth of a great person. This was God entering our world in human form. God putting a face to the name.

So if we’d been around at the time, we would have seen God – God with his face on. But I wonder if we’d have known it.

If Mary’d headed off to the Jerusalem Royal Infirmary instead of the stable, would we have been able to pick Jesus out from among the two dozen scrawny babes born that night? I doubt it. He didn’t have a halo. There was no Ready-Brek glow about him.

When he came to mend your rafters, or deliver that table and chairs he’d knocked together for you, would you have known straight away that this carpenter was the Son of God?

I don’t think so. Even his disciples found it hard to figure him out, and they spent almost every moment with him for a full three years. It was only after the resurrection that they really cottoned on.

There’s no guarantee we’d have been any different. Most people didn’t get it. Some got it badly wrong. The High Priest cursed him and slapped his face; Pilate looked him in the eye and still sent him to his death; the Roman guards toyed with him and thrashed him to within an inch of his life before crucifying him.

And all that shows is that it must have been easy to miss the God part of the man who was God.

But the thing is, some saw it.

Luke tells us the shepherds returned to their fields rejoicing because of what they’d seen and heard; Matthew says that when the wise men finally tracked him down, they knelt down in the muck in their fine robes and worshipped him.

So how come they saw? What’s the difference between them and the rest? Do they have God-tinted-glasses or something?

I think the difference is very simple – these were the folk who went looking.

They went looking for him. They all did – everyone in the story who finds God in Jesus, first goes looking for him. The shepherds left their flocks; the wise men left their homeland; Mary left her reputation; Joseph left his pride; the disciples left their nets; the first Christians left the security of their Jewish or pagan culture. They all left something behind and went looking for God.

And we might well ask, “Why doesn’t God make it easier for us? Why doesn’t he just appear instead of having us look for him?”

And I guess there’s two answers to that –

Firstly – I believe he did appear, in Jesus, but most of us didn’t recognise him, but secondly, let’s give God some credit for knowing what he’s doing here!

Isn’t it the case that everything worth having in life is something you have to go looking for?

You want to learn how to play guitar? You can’t do it without practice.
You want to enjoy the view from the mountain? You can’t do it from your sofa
You want to get fitter? You can’t do it without expending some energy.
You want to own something? Short of winning the lottery or turning to a life of crime, you have to work for it.

Is it the same kind of thing with the incarnation? Is God saying “I know what I’ll do. I’ll come in disguise – that’ll sort out the sheep from the goats. I’ll come in such a way as you have to look hard to find me. And then I’ll see who really wants to know me”.

So here’s something to chew over as we finish. Over the years I’ve heard lots of people say “I don’t think there’s a God. He’s never spoken to me, anyway.”

In the light of the Christmas story, maybe the right response is “.... so what have you done to go looking for him, then?”.