I have just spent time with my family making arrangements for various Christmas activities and events - who needs to be where, when and with whom; a concert here, a service there, a lift required for one person or another. A logistical nightmare - it made my brain hurt. Think about your own arrangements for this time of year: lists of presents made; shopping trips planned; menus to be sorted, visitors to be made ready for. Christmas can sometimes make life very complicated, and it takes a lot of effort to get it all organised.
In Luke's gospel, the Christmas story (Luke 2.1-20) begins with an act of human organisation: the Roman census covering the whole Roman empire, called for by the Emperor Augustus and in the province of Syria under the control of Governor Quirinius. Implementing the census must have been a huge operation, as it required that each man (with his family) must return to the place of his birth in order to be counted. So Joseph, the carpenter from Nazareth, has to make the arduous journey to Bethlehem with the heavily pregnant Mary.
But God is not tied to our human organisations and structures, and Luke's story of Christmas also shows how God turns our human way of doing things upside down and uses them to his own ends - choosing a young unmarried woman, a quiet provincial town, a backroom stable, and lowly shepherds to play the significant roles in the coming of the Christ. While the Emperor orders his Empire, God orders his Kingdom in his own unexpected way. For those who see signs of God's order and way of doing things in the surprises of the Christmas story, the promise is one of peace on earth.
As I write this letter, the United Nations conference on climate change is just getting under way in Copenhagen. I hope that agreement can be reached and a common way forward mapped out. I also hope that as the nations of the world we live up to our responsibility to take care of the earth. But political treaties, economic solutions and environmental policies - the stuff of human organisation - important though they undoubtedly are, will only take us so far. It is even more important to ask about the underlying problems: What of greed, selfishness and human sinfulness, and the part these things play in causing damage to our environment? To solve these problems requires not a human reordering but a divine reordering of human hearts - only then will there be truly that peace for the earth of which the angels sang.
This Christmas may we be open to signs God's order in our lives, to see and hear with the eyes and ears of faith as we allow Christ to be born in our hearts and lives and in our world today.
Happy Christmas to you all.
Phil Drake