Smell is very important sense. Some
smells can take you right back to a particular place or person.
Cycling along in
Mallorca on narrow lanes beside villas hidden behind high hedges I started thinking abut
swimming lessons at primary school and the old town public baths - I
kept getting whiffs of ammonia smell – it was all the swimming
pools in the gardens we were passing…those smells took me back
Nativity tableau missing something –
smell... reality of being in a stable it was smelly – they don't have
scratch and smell Christmas cards thankfully!
Think of the animal smells
The noises the grunts and heavy
breathing
Then the birth messy noisy as that
often is.. and there would be the natural smells associated with
birth that are clinically sanitised these days so that people do not
notice them.
We come looking for glory and all we
see in the stable is ordinariness mess and smells
Where is the glory? The wonder the
magic?
Well the glory is there and is seen in
the ordinary as it always is
Wonder is seen in the eyes of the
mother of a new born as she looks at the new little person who was so
recently hidden inside her very self...
The special people who adorn the
nativity sets in their blue robes and crimson - well they are there
but much more ordinary than the great artists make them out to be in
the classical paintings - they were ordinary working people
Dirty smelly shepherds straight in from
their work still smelling of animals and wood smoke and not having
washed since coming down off the hills
There were kings or wise men whichever
they were – but they too would be dirty, smelly, having been on the
road for many months, they might have first century equivalents of
aftershave and deodorant but they would sill have an aroma of camels
about them!
They thus sum up the meaning of
incarnation the holy God the divine coming to earth and being with us
as humans – and it has to get down among the reality of the smells
and the mess in the midst of life if God really is part of life
rather than just pretending.
The incarnation God became flesh and
dwelt among us is only real when we can get round the amazing idea
that the one who made the heavens and the earth came to earth and
appeared in this very humble ordinary beginning.
If we think of the smells then we earth
the story in the real world.
This wasn’t what many people expected
and many people since have really struggled – look at the jewelled
and gilded cathedrals people have made to worship this birth. Its so
difficult for us to accept the ways of God who does big things in
unexpected places and with unexpected people. What is God doing in
you and me today? are we looking in the wrong places to see god at
work or should we just look close to home in the ordinary things and
places around us?
The word we use for all this is
incarnation. God becoming flesh and becoming one of us.
So Jesus came to a world of smell and
working people and ordinariness. This is a crucial theological fact
for me about the Christmas story. That Jesus is found in our lives
mixing in the ordinary events that we get involved in. There are
people who say keep religion out of politics but they are really
saying Jesus has no place here in this or that part of life.
Incarnation is about God, and thus the
church, his body, being alongside people when they are hurting most, as
many are doing right now. It is about being the voice of the
voiceless, the loyal and courageous opposition to wrong-headed ideas
and the equally loyal and courageous supporter for right-headed
ideas, wherever the ideas come from. It is about refusing to limit
work to those who come looking for spiritual help, because we know
that the God who was incarnate in Jesus went about inaugurating the
kingdom, which was and is a reality whether or not people acknowledge
it.
You can see people fighting against the
idea of incarnation when councils, despite all the mockery about
political correctness, still try to ban Christmas - and a vote for a
winterfest with no room for God no room for Jesus . . .
There was no room at the inn. The
incarnation shows that Jesus came anyway! The incarnation shows a
Jesus who will always come to be with us, bringing in himself the
fullness of God. The message of Christmas is that Incarnation
happened then and as a result Jesus cannot be kept out of life. And
wherever we go, in whatever dark and seemingly Godless corners of the
world He is with us! And that is something great to celebrate!
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