There is an old Rabbinic story about a poor man who left the village of his birth, and set out to find the city of his dreams, where all was bright and perfect. After a day’s walk, he lay down to rest the night in a forest. Before going to sleep, he removed his shoes and placed them carefully in the path, pointing them in the direction of his journey toward the magical city. While he slept, a practical joker came along, and turned his shoes around so that they pointed in the direction of the village he had left behind.
The next morning when the traveler awoke, he put on his shoes, and headed down the path in the direction his shoes pointed. He walked all day, and at dusk, saw the city of his dreams in the distance. It looked strangely familiar and much smaller than he had imagined it would be. As he entered the village, so the story goes, he discovered a street very much like his own, knocked on the door of a house exactly like the one he had left, and was warmly received by the family inside — his family, of course. With that, the man lived happily ever after in the magical city of his dreams.
After our Christmas celebration, we feel that lives have been changed; after the joyous songs of Christmas that had uplifted us from our routine; after the candlelight Christmas Eve worship that made us teary-eyed remembering our growing-up days or the loved ones we missed; after listening once more to the story of a baby born in a manger and singing Silent Night, it would make us believe that 2013 would be a better year than the last.
With all the new discoveries and to all that was done last year, I would assume that there will be improvements of the past years in spite of natural and human-made calamities and tragedies we went through.
Thus, as we move on with another year, experience tells us that many times, even with our dream of being transported from the problems of the yesteryears to a Garden of Eden, the favor of God is likely to turn our shoes around, and send us back toward the familiar, with all its frustration and difficulties, challenges and joys.
However, we may not be blessed with an escape from the harsh realities of life, but surely, we are favored with a potential for a faith that can transform us in the midst of these realities.
In verse 39 of Luke chapter 2: “And when they had performed everything according to the law of the land, they returned into Galilee, to their own city, Nazareth.” Let’s face it, Nazareth wasn’t much of a place to go back to — a dusty, out-of-the way sort of place. “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” one of the disciples later asked when he first heard about Jesus.
The holy family’s going back to business-as-usual with all the great passages in Luke about the birth of Jesus, particularly in this second chapter, is not well-known or loved. After we have had angels singing, Mary singing, Elizabeth singing, everybody singing such strange, wonderful goings-on in Bethlehem — this account of the baby Jesus and his parents running into old Simeon at the temple where they had gone to offer two turtle doves in thanks for their new baby, then going back home to Nazareth, is a bit of a letdown.
On their way back to Nazareth, silently walking along the road, I expected Mary and Joseph wondering to themselves, What does all this mean? Will this go the way of other short-lived, momentary religious outbursts? In the midst of the everyday life back in Nazareth, will all of this joy, the promise of this child be engulfed and drowned by the ordinary? Will we come to a time when we look back wistfully and say, “Oh, to be back at Bethlehem!” Ah, yes, those were the days.
The heavenly hosts are gone. Their songs filling the air are heard no more. Now, Mary and Joseph have a son to raise, religious obligations to keep, and a long dusty trip back to Nazareth. What could be more ordinary and less inspiring than that?
I can imagine Mary joining the other women of the village washing clothes, or getting water at the village well, talking with the other ladies of the latest news in Nazareth. Joseph was back in his carpenter’s shop dealing with demanding clients. All in all, it was a typical, and an ordinary day back in Nazareth. Everyday life had resumed. Nothing, it seems, had changed. Everything was normal, routine, business-as- usual. There was work to be done, a child to be raised, an uncertain future to be prepared for.
But listen, as Mary works, she’s humming a tune. Haven’t we heard it before? It’s a Christmas carol. Is it something she had picked up from the angels? No, it’s an old, ancient song, but one given new meaning by the events of past days, a tune taught her by an old man she met when she and Joseph and the baby were at the temple. Listen to the song, intruding into the great resumption of our everydayness with its promise of grand divine intrusion: “Lord, now let your servant depart in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation…”
William H. Willimon, dean of the Chapel at Duke University, preached a sermon once with a marvelous title, The Great Resumption after the Grand Intrusion. His theme was about Mary and Joseph’s return to Nazareth.
As we go through another year, it is back to our work-a-day world beyond Christmas, remembering that the Christmas song is still ours. It is a song of faith that God is in our midst. “I love thee, Lord Jesus look down from the sky and stay by my side until morning is nigh.” “See within a manger laid Jesus, Lord of heaven and earth!” “Yet in the dark street shineth the everlasting Light; the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.”
Robert Louis Stevenson said, “When you enter God at the top of any page in the volume of life, the best is yet to be.” But, you see, it takes a measure of faith to write God’s name at the top of life’s next page, especially if the previous chapter has been sad–such as the flooding, the typhoons, the earthquake that we experienced.
No matter what the odds are against us, no matter how many battles we may have lost, God and we will win in the end. And even the heartbreaks that are spread somewhat randomly along our pathways will be transformed by a loving God. And sometimes even those heartbreaks can be used by God to serve his purpose.
Friends, God can do, with anyone of us, great things if we are open to God’s leading.
