Friday 20 December 2019

Psalm: Psalm 24

Background

Who do you think you are?

Who?.... Me? 

Extraordinary things sometimes happen to very ordinary people. And then we have to explain, or even explain them away.

Don’t let go of this passage but fast forward for, say, thirty or so years. It’s Passover time, near to Jerusalem. The air is dusty. Through the crowds a man drags a cross, stumbles sometimes. He seems worn out, already bloodied from a scourging. Eventually he falls once too often and the troops with him lose patience. Someone else is pressed into carrying the cross. And then that final, agonising, humiliating torture. And as he hangs there, convicted criminals to either side, a soldier looks up into those wandering, wondering eyes, which for a moment pause. Focus. Sharp as a pin. And at once the soldier knows. "Truly, this is the Son of God." 

Who is he to know? Faith they call it. Or revelation.

Later the explanations start coming. Learned men search the prophecies, read of a young women who would bear a child and give his name, "Immanuel" (Isaiah 7: 14).

Back now, re-wind, as they did, remembering. If this is God, this crucified Jesus, Son of God ... then he can have no human father. This was no normal birth. And Mary, young woman, surely she was a virgin? And a doctrine is formed that is to be set in stone. All because God had been seen in flesh, a human being. And how else can you explain that?

You see, no one heard the angel. No one was there with Mary. No real evidence.

But you couldn’t imagine God being born to an unmarried mother. Could you? Not an ordinary birth? But Jesus was human, wasn't he? It was all a bit of a scandal. And perhaps that's the point!

To Ponder:

• Some of our Bibles speak of "a virgin having a son", others "a young woman". How do we cope with scripture when a word might have two different translations?
• What does incarnation mean to us today? Is it just about the birth of Jesus?