We opened the next door of our Advent calendar this morning, to be greeted by the smiling face of an angel. Angels in the Bible appear as divine messengers - conveying heavenly news to people on earth. Probably the most famous angelic visit of them all was that of the Angel Gabriel to Mary, bearing news of her divinely conceived pregnancy, that the church remember with joy in days from now.
I wonder how Mary or Joseph felt about her pregnancy with days to go? I can remember how I felt as we expected the birth of Matthew nearly 6 years ago now - a mixed bag of emotions - excitement, anticipation, uncertainty, doubt... I can remember wondering how it was all going to work out? Whether we had what it took to be the good parents that we hoped that we would be? Mary and Joseph must have felt similar things - even more keenly though perhaps as there were no travel systems, no car seats, Johnson's didn’t manufacture any baby products, infant mortality was far higher, and for Joseph to top it all off - the baby was not even his!
The birth of a child is, even in today's techno-friendly world, a miracle in every sense as any new parent or midwife will tell you. They are so perfect! The safe arrival of a child in the world is a truly remarkable event especially in the face of the way we seem constantly unable to live in and at peace with each other whether internationally, nationally or locally. A new baby gives hope and flies in the face of more dead in Chechnya or a torturous regime in Iraq. Many people, when holding a child in their arms for the first time are completely overawed by the whole experience - tears of joy and relief my be shed - even by dads.
But if Advent is just the spiritual part of the preparations for Christmas that many of us are rather franticly making right now buying enough presents to start a shop of our own, enough food to rival the local supermarkets and enough booze to turn the local offy as dry as the desert - and all this just to remember the birth of a baby, albeit a most remarkable one, then it seems to me what we have missed the point.
The word Advent means ‘coming’ and over the days of this season Christians begin to prepare themselves for a completely unique event. It is not the birth of a baby that the church celebrates in a matter of weeks, rather the beginning or coming of a new perspective on life because the baby to be born was different to all others and his arrival changed the course of human history for good.
The angel Gabriel told Mary that the baby to be born should be named Jesus which means saviour. He would be holy and called Son of God, he would be God’s appointed King forever and that his kingdom would cross boundaries of space and time. This baby later as an adult in word and action offered and still offers the whole world the possibility for permanent forgiveness and reconciliation between people, nations and God - to be transformed into people that love not lie, into a culture that gives and forgives, into a world at peace with itself and its maker.
Is this an all too utopian vision and hope when so many die at the hand of fellow humans each day? Is it too good to be true? The Christian faith says no - this is what that baby came to bring and to start. That baby is God himself in the flesh - here not to understand our world with it’s joys and pains like ET - but to start to make perfect the work he began at the moment of Creation.
Advent marks for a church a time of preparation to meet with God himself, the creator of the universe in the flesh and to celebrate not the 2003 birthday of Jesus - but the promise that God made the world when he made it, the promise that he made through the angel Gabriel that we and all creation can all be perfect - not just new babies.
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