The word love is mentioned a lot in the Bible but let’s look instead at some characters from the Nativity story and see how love is displayed through them.
Beginning in Luke, we meet Zechariah, a priest from a hill village and his wife Elizabeth. Both of them were righteous before God, living blamelessly according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord (Luke 1:6 NRSV). Perhaps these characteristics were what enabled Zechariah to stand lovingly by Elizabeth in her barrenness when society would have encouraged a divorce.
In Matthew’s gospel we learn that Joseph was a righteous man and unwilling to expose (Mary) to public disgrace and he too, with a little supernatural influence, stuck by his woman.
Zechariah is remembered for being struck dumb and for his song of Zechariah, also called the Benedictus, a prophecy about the work John the Baptist and Jesus would undertake later in their lives. It finishes with: By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. (Luke 1: 78-79 NRSV) All those add up to love, I think.
Joseph has fewer lines written about him than Zechariah. Back in the late 1990s Tom Conti starred in a one-man show called Jesus My Boy. The poster for the drama read: In the hierarchy of families, the father is placed thus: 1st Mother; 2nd Son; 3rd Donkey; 4th Dad.
So what can we learn from Joseph’s lowly position? That God often uses ordinary people to accomplish his extraordinary plans; ordinary people like us, who can be channels for God’s love.
The angels announced the birth of the long-awaited Messiah to the simplest (and possibly the most outcast) of people – poor shepherds. The genealogy in Matthew’s gospel even mentions women in Jesus’s lineage! No-one is too lowly or culturally unacceptable to be loved by God and to reflect his love to others.
The central character of the Nativity story is, of course, baby Jesus. Matthew’s gospel records Isaiah’s prophesy:
Watch for this—a virgin will get pregnant and bear a son;
They will name him Immanuel (Hebrew for “God is with us). (1:23 The Message)
This is how God’s love is shown to us at this Christmastime: God came to live among us.
Let us pray:
Blessed art thou
O Christmas Christ,
that thy cradle was so low that shepherds,
poorest and simplest of earthly folk,
could yet kneel beside it
and look level-eyed into the face of God.
Bishop Robert Nelson Spencer (1877-1961)
Elaine Kinchin