Advent 2 - Looking for comfort

Not a pretty picture

Wasn’t it great to see the kids up the front?

The story of the birth of Jesus really is a wonderful story to tell.

You know, we can complain a lot about the commercialisation of Christmas, and rightly so, but even in the secular world, the Jesus story isn’t completely lost. Although it might not be as prominent as it once was, we can occasionally find nativity scenes in shopping centres and other public places.

But when we do stumble across the a nativity scene, whether it be in a shopping centre or even on a Christmas card (which I must admit, does seem to be becoming increasingly rare), what I notice is how pretty the picture always is.

The hay looks so soft and cosy. Everything is clean and neat. The scenes always depict everybody and every animal being so orderly and calm.

But have you ever stopped to think what it must have actually been like. Remember, the birth took place where the animals live. Now maybe I’m wrong, but I suspect the place the animals lived wasn’t actually clean and neat. I suspect that it was far more likely to be smelly, dirty and quite chaotic.

I suspect that rather then having such a picture perfect manger full of clean hay at Mary’s disposal, she more likely needed to go to some effort to ensure that the little baby Jesus was placed on something at least vaguely being clean.

Remember

And remember, Mary has just gone through child birth, which despite the miracle that this is, it actually quite messy.

I’m going to hazzard a guess that by the time the shepherds came, Mary was probably exhausted.

As much as we love to romanticize the whole thing, it was darn hard work. Was it worth it? Absolutely! Was it a time of great joy? Undoubtedly!

Our dreams...

You know, we all have dreams and aspirations, and we have this tendency to romanticize them in a similar way. What I mean is that in our minds we get this picture perfect view of a future where we are financially stable, all our relationships are going well, in fact everything is just the way we want it.

There’s nothing wrong with these dreams, but I think sometimes this picture perfect view of our future actually distorts what we really want.

Just like Jesus wasn’t born just so we can have this picture perfect view of the nativity, our lives are not just so that we can get the house, career and family.

This mornin

A Christian hope

This morning, my plan isn’t to speak for long, but in the 10 or so minutes that I do speak, I want to offer a better picture, and briefly consider what it will look like to get there.

Psalm 85

I’m actually going to take this picture from that I read earlier.

You see, if you read the Psalms, what you quickly notice is that they weren’t written in some fanciful world were everything is just great. Rather they were living in the real world were things were tough and they weren’t afraid to say it.

You can see that in this Psalm from verse 5 - “will you be angry with us for ever? Will you prolong your anger through all generations?”

The author of this Psalm has been living through some tough times but yet this doesn’t stop him.

Peace - Shalom

What the author does do is to stop and listen to God (verse 8), and when he does his he finds a promise… It’s a promise of peace to his people.

Now I want to pause here a moment and think about this idea of peace, because it’s going to be central to what I want to say this morning.

You see, peace is one of those words that can be tossed around with little thought.

We wish for world peace. Maybe you even are wishing for peace within your family.

Now I looked in some dictionaries to find a definition of peace, and I got more or less what you would probably expect. Essentially, when we are wishing for peace we are wishing for the end of hostilities or some sort of state of tranquility.

But in this Psalm, and in many other places throughout the Bible, the word that is actually translated as peace is actually the word Shalom.

More than absence of turmoil

Now the word Shalom includes our understanding of peace, but it is much bigger than that. The definition of the word shalom is actually more about being made whole or complete.

So when in verse 8 of this Psalm it says that God “promises peace to his people” - it actually says his promises shalom to his people, or you could say, he promises to bring wholeness to his people, to make them complete.

What this means, is that the promise for peace to God’s people is not just that they will all get along and we won’t fight anymore, rather there is more purpose to it. It means that as we turn away from this hostility, rather then just some vague sense of serenity, we get the presence of something far greater.

Let’s take an example of two people fighting. When we think of peace being reached, we think of them as not saying nasty things about each other, or doing mean things to one another. If they were to have shalom, they would do far more than that, in fact they would start actively helping one another.

As Christians, our hope is not just for the absence of fighting, but when we see Jesus come we find a new sense of completeness. We become whole.

Finding shalom with God

Getting back to the Psalm, we get this beautiful thought from verse 10 which says: “Love and faithfulness meet together; righteousness and peace kiss each other. Faithfulness springs forth from the earth and righteousness looks down from heaven”.

We have love, faithfulness, righteousness, and from this we get shalom. I just love that imagery of righteousness and shalom kissing each other!

Well, this is the picture of what we are aiming for, this shalom.

But of course, as you all well know, we have not reached shalom yet. But the promise remains, and when God promises he always delivers.

But we now wait for the day when Jesus comes again when shalom will finally be achieved. Completeness will come, because Jesus will be with us.

Our troubled journey

But like what Mary and Joseph experienced in this lead up, it is not going to be easy.

In fact it is going to be hard.

The message I want you to take home this morning is that though it is going to be hard, we can find comfort in Jesus.

Ultimately our comfort is in knowing that shalom is going to come, but while shalom is not completely known now, we can know it in part.

This is one of the beautiful things about the nativity scene.

I mentioned before about how chaotic I thought the scene probably looked despite how it is normally depicted.

Yet one thing that’s for sure, is that right in the centre of it all, lay a perfect child.

Comfort in child birth

I remember this with the birth of my own children. For good reason I won’t go into detail now, but let’s just say the birthing procedure isn’t pretty. But when you hold that baby at the end, all you can think about is the love you have for that child.

For me, when I held each of my children for that very first time, nothing else mattered.

When we look to Jesus, we can begin to understand what shalom is, and though the world around us goes into overdrive with craziness, we begin to experience the comfort that comes from Jesus.

Invitation to find shalom

This morning, I want to say that if you haven’t ever experience the peace, the shalom that comes from Jesus, then maybe now is the time to look. Jesus is there and he is offering you something far better then anything the world can offer.

The world can offer temporary joys, but it’s not shalom. But in Jesus there is something beyond what this world can touch.

If you want to explore this further than come and see me afterwards, because it is worth it.

This morning, I want you to know what this shalom is, and know that Jesus wants to bring shalom into your life.

Let’s pray...