CHRISTMASS - UNDOING THE KNOTS

24^th and 25^th December 2012 : CHRISTMASS : Year C

11:30pm and 9:00am Kalamunda

Isaiah 9:2-7 : Psalm 96 : Titus 11-14 : Luke 2:1-20

Isaiah 62:1-12 : Psalm 97 : Titus 3:4-8a : Luke 2:1-10

Only last week I came across a painting from the German Baroque period, the title of which is translated as either Mary, the Untier of Knots, or Mary, the Undoer of Knots. The painting portrays Mary, gently hovering in the heavens, where cherubim attend her. In her left hand she holds a length of well-knotted string. One of the cherubim is feeding the knotted length to Mary, who with infinite patience works away at undoing each knot she comes to, while another cherub, to her right, receives the now-unknotted string from Mary.

Mary seems to be blessed – and cursed – with many roles. Yet all of them are ultimately blessings for humankind. Mary, the Undoer of Knots seems to be an exacting, painstaking role, akin in the demands of sheer patience to that of Sisyphus rolling his stone to the top of the mountain. Unlike Sisyphus, whose peculiar agony is to see the stone roll down infinitely, Mary does unknot those knots, her string does flow free and straight: her patience is never unrewarded.

This is just as well, because the business of conceiving, bearing and giving birth to the Messiah is a knotty one from the moment an angel pops up and delivers God’s invitation to participate in salvation history in a unique and extraordinary way.

Not least among the knots is God’s decision to choose a young woman from a country town, who gives birth in an obscure town in the midst of the flurry of a national census. The Messiah may eventually trace his descent to king David but Mary is hardly a Princess Royal and her surrounding are anything but palatial.

And the knots just keep on coming: God’s sends a batch of singing angels to announce the good news. To shepherds. These are not the heartwarming fellows we meet in our Christmass carols. In those times shepherds were dodgy types with the same social standing as the average bikie enjoys today. They’re in the fields, not just because they have sheep to look after, but because when shepherds are around, the townsfolk lock up their daughters, hide the silverware and cancel the local police officers’ leave.

Imagine Her Majesty issuing an invitation to have a gander at the Duchess of Cambridge’s yet-to-be-born baby, to the local chapter of the Hell’s Angels. If that happened, Kate would almost certainly have something to think about! Little wonder that when the shepherds scamper down to check out the baby, Jesus, Mary “treasure[s] all [their] words and ponder[s] them in her heart.”

But what is going on here? Well, God is turning the world upside down. The scene is set from the very beginning for the grown Jesus to wander his nation healing people who, like the shepherds, exist on the fringes of society. He’ll touch lepers, and not only consort with hated foreigners but actually praise them for possessing the kind of faith he expects of his own people, who instead display something that is at best lukewarm [no pun intended!], and can hardly be considered faith. Equally as bad, Jesus will speak with women as if they are fellow human beings, and treat them with respect, and consider them intelligent people who have at least as much to contribute to the work of the kingdom as any man.

All these people are the ones Luke the evangelist regards as “the Poor”, people who are the victims of a society that is more interested in seeking, gaining and managing power than being God’s people. Such a society is built on a foundation of violence, and the violence tears through the weakest, most vulnerable members of every human community leaving a legacy of pain, and damaged individuals.

Ultimately, the One whose birth we celebrate this day, will refuse to participate in the violence of his society and reject the violent assumptions that create the disharmony and misery he sets about healing during his own lifetime, in which he invites us to participate in our own.

This too is the meaning of salvation. Jesus is indeed the Saviour of the world. But not because he dies “in our place” – a bizarre concept that has little scriptural validation.

Jesus saves us from becoming victims of the power-hungry and from becoming power-seeking people ourselves. He does this by refusing and rejecting the game of power. By not fighting back even though he could easily have done so. He saves us by exposing exactly the kind of basis upon which our world, our Church, our parishes and congregations exercise power.

So it is no accident that Jesus comes to us in obscurity and from the margins. This is where God acts. These are the places Jesus will inhabit, standing with those whom the world rejects and casts out. This is where Jesus sends us: not to buy the latest issue of the magazines and papers micro-reporting every little twitch and tremble of the privileged – whom the Living God loves just as well as any person living on the edge of society – but to be with the rejected, to show them that the Living God caused a child to be born so that the despised could find hope and feel God’s love.

And that child is closer than any of us usually imagines. When you return home, look in a mirror. You will see that child, born this Christ Mass day, staring back at you.