Journey of Love

Over the past week all of us should have heard the Christmas story.  It is proclaimed in Luke 2, and you will hear it on Christmas Eve as we gather for our Candlelight Communion (come and go from 4-6pm and the candlelight service at 6pm).  You heard it at the Community Tree Lighting Service on December 1st and at our Christmas Musical last Sunday.  I hope you listened.

Verses 4-5 of the story says, "And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, unto the City of David, which is called Bethlehem (because he was of the house of David and the lineage of David): to be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child."

They went on a journey!  It was inconvenient.  I expect Mary would have liked to have her child in the comfort of family, friends and familiar surroundings.  But God-led journeys are often inconvenient and (no pun intended) taxing.  The journey was required by government regulations and the kicker it was all so they could receive a tax from the Romans.  Many people I know would have complained, balked, said they "are not under the law of the governmental authorities" and won't give up their freedom for such a pointless endeavor.  Mary and Joseph "went up."  And God and God's love was in the journey!

They went on a journey!  Many speculate on the route they travelled, but I believe they would have taken the shortest through Northern Israel, down to the south through Samaria.  Friends would have advised them to avoid the 'no count' Samaritans.  But if you follow the life of this family, the lineage of Jesus (Matthew, Chapter 1) and (later) the life of Jesus, you will not find Jesus avoiding Samaria and you will find some pretty interesting branches in the family tree of Jesus.  There is Rahab, the gentile prostitute.  There is Bathsheba, the gentile adulterer (David was also an adulterer).  The journey of love somehow seems to ignore status, race and religious background.  It seems God really does look at the heart of people.  I believe Jesus, in the womb of Mary, traveled past all of those vineyards that were part of 'the promised land,' past Jacobs well north of Jerusalem, past the valley of Armageddon (where the last battle will happen), past the opulent Herodium (a monument to Herod's kingdom) and on the little Bethlehem, called 'the house of bread.'  God's love sees the past, the present and the future and still makes a way for those who believe!

They went on a journey!  They made their way to a city that was destined (in prophecy) to be the place where God's ultimate promise unfolds in the birth, life and death of the Son of God and the Savior of the World.  The two travelers were nothing to those they passed.  They weren't important to those who rejected them in Bethlehem, sent them to a manger and consigned them to obscurity that we seem to invent for those we deem unimportant.  And there, in a stable, was born a child that would change the world!

Do you grasp the magnitude of the birth?  Do you, and your church, see that His call, His work and His plan/journey ... difficult, expensive, inconvenient, frustrating, unpopular ... is why we are here? ... to travel past the opulence of our society, to see and embrace the other oppressed people who we invite to join our journey, to recognize God's ownership of our stuff/church/mission and place our journey with Him first, to give up the popular, to submit to God's plan when it doesn't fit our politics, to love in spite of our feelings?  Does that little child change our world, or is it 'business as usual?' Are we on the journey with Jesus?  Good question!  Randy