HOW THE BABY JESUS SHIFTS OUR POSTURE AT COMMUNION - TOMORROW IN FITZROY: 9.12.22

I have been doing Christmas differently this year. I used all my discipline to curb my over enthusiasm at getting Jesus born. As, writer of hymns, books and sermons, John Bell says, “We have Jesus born before Mary has contractions.”

So, in Advent, we waited. We asked how Old Testament players and then how Zechariah and Mary waited. We made it to Christmas Day. Jesus was only born when he was supposed to be born. 

When the preacher leaves Jesus arrival to Christmas Day that demands more discipline through January, by the congregation as much as the preacher, as we keep the baby Jesus in the Sunday sermon long after any other recognition has been been put back in the loft!

Well, this particular preacher thinks there is so much spiritual wisdom and theological imagination for prophetic movement in the nativity scene that I am going to linger.

So, let us put a stripped CSI Investigation Area tape around the birth of Jesus and attempt to come to terms with the seismic shift in God’s interaction with humanity.

My friend Doug Gay, in his preparations for his sermon this weekend, was using Bruce Cockburn’s epic chorus to inspire him:

 

“Like a stone on the surface of a still river, 

driving the ripples on forever

Redemption rips through the surface of time

In the cry of a tiny babe”.

 

For me , I have been doing a lot of Surmising about the massiveness of this moment of Jesus birth. I am concluding that when Mary’s waters broke, a whole new spiritual world gushed in and have leaned a Waterboys lyric to best express it:

 

“That was the river

This is the sea”

 

Tomorrow morning (in Fitzroy and on Fitzroy TV at 11am), we will gather together for communion and enlighten the eyes of our souls to see that how we participate in this Jesus given sacrament is fundamentally different to how we would have related to God before the baby was born.