A Christmas Countdown – Day 23

Behind Day 23 of my Advent Calendar lies:

HIGHLY FLAVOURED GRAVY

Let’s face it, giving birth to a baby is not easy – things don’t always go as one expects and even the most conscientiously prepared birth plan may serve only to provide some amusement for the medical team that has just wheeled you down to theatre for a Caesarian section after you’ve had the great misfortune of suffering a failed forceps delivery.

And trust me on this one, yes that was a snigger you heard as the midwife left your room having supposedly just popped in to check whether your screams for an epidural mean that you’re no longer wanting to rely on the natural breathing techniques that you had hoped to mange the pain of your labour!

That said, some things on labour ward do have a funny side to them – I well remember the time my wife and I were left alone in a delivery room and we took it upon ourselves to try the gas and air. Oh how we laughed…

…and laughed…and laughed…and laughed!

But leaving all that aside for a moment, given how difficult it is to deliver a baby in the U.K. in the 21st century, think how much harder it must have been in first century Judea.

Because, boy did Mary have it tough.

First there was the small matter of her finding herself pregnant never having had sex before. I was going to say she was ‘unexpectedly pregnant’ but, of course, her pregnancy wasn’t unexpected at all, given that the angel Gabriel had told her that she would conceive a baby miraculously. And even though she had a fiancée who, after an angelic visit himself, was as faith-filled as she was, she no doubt had to suffer the jibes of those who were, perhaps understandably, less believing than they ought to have been that neither Joseph, nor some other fellow, had been responsible for Mary’s ever expanding girth.

And then there was the journey she had to take from Nazareth to Bethlehem. Some suggest that this would have taken her and Joseph at least four days but, irrespective of exactly how long it took, travelling whilst heavily pregnant couldn’t have been much fun for a women in her third trimester, nor indeed, for the donkey on which she would almost certainly have sat!

Consider then the lack of pain relief and the far from ideal conditions in which Mary would actually have given birth. We don’t know for sure where she laboured but, given that there was no room for her in the inn, and that her newborn child had to make do with a manger in which to lie down and sleep, I think we can safely say that, had it happened at Nonnatus House, Sister Julienne would not have been happy.

And that wasn’t the end of Mary’s problems either as, a few months later, together with Joseph and the infant, she had to flee to Egypt to escape Herod’s clumsy attempt to have her child killed by murdering all the children in the area who were less than two years of age.

So given how difficult it all was for Mary, it is somewhat surprising that she is described the way she was by Gabriel. Let me remind you of his first words to her:

‘Greetings, O favoured one, the Lord is with you!’, [Luke 1:28]

and, just in case Mary, or indeed we missed it, Gabriel reiterates the point with these words:

‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God.’ [Luke 1:30]

What then are we to make of the fact that the one who is supposedly so favoured by God is the one who has had such an unmistakably torrid time? Well many things I’m sure, but I’d like to suggest just two.

Firstly, those who become Christians should not expect a comfortable life. On the contrary, those who, like Mary, experience new life within them as a result of the Holy Spirit working in their lives, those who are born again into a new and living hope, should, also like Mary, expect what Jesus himself said we should expect – namely, ‘tribulation’[John 16:33], which is a fancy Bible word meaning great trouble or suffering.

Because, as is all to plain to Christians who do suffer, the health, wealth and prosperity gospel, so beloved by TV evangelists, is an abomination. Don’t be misled – anyone who promises you that if you become a Christian you will experience your ‘best life now’ is selling you a false gospel. We should not listen to such lies but rather to Jesus himself, who promises us quite the opposite when he says:

‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.’ [Matthew 16:24].

Jesus is telling it as it is. Being a Christian, he says, is tough, it may even cost us our lives, as all but one of the disciples would one day discover. But having called us to die, Jesus, with his very next words, assures us that it will all be worth it in the end. He says:

‘For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.’ [Matthew 16:25].

And so, whilst in this life Christians will be grieved by various trials, they can nonetheless be comforted by the fact that in losing their life they will find it and one day discover the imperishable, undefiled and unfading inheritance that is waiting for them in heaven [1 Peter 1:4-6]. As such they know that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that will one day be revealed to them. [Romans 8:18]

And secondly, the fact that Mary suffered despite her being greatly favoured by God, may help us to answer that age old question so often raised as an objection by those who cannot conceive of a God of love in a world characterised by so much pain and suffering. That question goes like this: ‘Why do bad things happen to good people?’

I believe that the answer, on occasions at least, is this: ‘So that good things can happen to bad people’. Because isn’t that the answer to why the worst possible thing happened to best possible person? Isn’t that why Jesus suffered and died on a cross?

Mary wasn’t perfect, but she was a faithful believer in God. She suffered so that God could marvellously take on flesh and become a baby boy. And then, having grown up, the God-man went to the cross and there he suffered too. Why? So that the sins of the whole world could be forgiven.

And so the worst possible thing happened to the best possible person, so the best possible thing could happen to the worst possible people. People like the apostle Paul, who described himself as the chief of sinners, people like me who know themselves to be no better, and, perhaps, people like you who, no more deserving than anyone else, can still experience the joy of being adopted into God’s family and know there the warm embrace of a loving Heavenly Father.

Suffering then is real – but it’s not without meaning. Nor is it without purpose. As John Piper powerfully points out, if, as you’re walking through a hospital, you pass a room wherein comes the sound of someone screaming in pain, how you feel about what you’re hearing depends on whether you’re on an oncology ward or on a labour ward.

And so, just as the pain of childbirth ultimately gives way to the joy of new life, so too the pain and suffering of our day to day lives will one day give way to the inexpressible joy that befits a child of God.

Because Jesus’ death, to which Mary was herself an eyewitness and which was surely more painful for her than anything else she’d previously experienced, changes everything. For what she saw as she wept at the foot of the cross was the very thing that would one day ensure that her every tear would be wiped away. [Revelation 21:4]

And not only hers.

Mary was indeed highly favoured – and we who know and trust the child she bore…well we are highly favoured too.

*****

Easy choice for today’s song. Gabriel’s message, sung here by the Genesis 16.

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Previously from ‘A Christmas Countdown’:

To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Part 22’, click here

To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Part 21’, click here

To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Part 20’, click here

To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Part 19’, click here

To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Part 18’, click here

To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Part 17’, click here

To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Part 16’, click here

To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Part 15, click here

To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Part 14’, click here

To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Part 13’, click here

To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Part 12’, click here

To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Part 11’, click here

To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Part 10’, click here

To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Part 9’, click here

To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Part 8’, click here

To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Part 7’, click here

To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Day 6’, click here

To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Day 5’, click here

To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Day 4’, click here

To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Day 3’, click here

To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Day 2’, click here

To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Day 1’, click here

To read ‘An Advent Calendar – Complete’, click here

Other related posts:

To read ‘T.S. Eliot, Jesus and the Paradox of the Christian Life’, click here

To read “Luther and the global pandemic – on becoming a theologian of the cross”, click here

To read “Suffering- A Personal View”, click here.

To read “Why do bad things happen to good people – a tentative suggestion”, click here