Can you believe that the first month of the year is almost behind us now? Coaching was a main focus for us in Malaga, as we prepared for and then led this year's intensive workshop for trainees in life and leadership coaching. The trainees and staff came from 22 different nations, working with four different mission societies on three continents, and the week was a great success.
Unfortunately, I ended the workshop week with bronchitis, which put me out of circulation for these past seven days, but I'm beginning to turn the corner and feel better again now. Thankfully the coughing has almost stopped now, and I'm recovering just in time for a short trip to the Netherlands next week, where we'll be gathering as missionary leaders to pray and seek God's strategies for new developments over the coming decade in Europe.
After my Holland trip and a weekend back in Malaga, I'll be making an unexpected return trip to Scotland. A recent scan showed something questionable, and so I've been called back to the hospital for further tests. I'll return to Spain in mid-February, just in time for our women's retreat on the theme of successfully navigating transitions.
Spent Christmas only with immediate family this year. Here we are in our warm winter jumpers. I can't believe that this is now my eighth winter Christmas since coming back to Europe. Summer Christmases are no longer a recent memory.
Last week, my Advent readings were all about the cost of the call, and I reflected on the huge price that young Mary paid to be the mother of Jesus. My Bible reading this morning - in Luke chapter 1 verses 39 - 56 - shows the other side of the coin: Mary is overwhelmed and joyful at the incredible privilege of being chosen and used by God. She sees it as a blessing, not a burden, and she even begins to grasp that future generations will probably call her blessed, even if people in her present generation were going to judge her and believe her to be promiscuous. Her relative, Elizabeth, confirms this by saying to her, "Blessed are you among women," and young Mary begins to sing a spontaneous song of praise to the Lord.
In English, her words in vs 49 are translated as, "The Mighty One has done great things for me," but this morning I noticed that my Spanish Bible says, "El Todopoderoso ha hecho en mí grandes cosas" - the All-Powerful One has done great things in me.
And there's a definite difference here in meaning and implication. If the Lord has done great things for Mary, it might mean that people stop judging her for the pregnancy… but doing great things in her could mean that He gave her the strength and grace to rise above the shame. Doing great things for her might mean amazing provision - like a home, a husband and plenty of financial resources. Great things in her could mean giving her the ability to live in simplicity and with thankfulness, and even that she was willing to risk the possibility of living with extended family and raising her son as a single mum.
Great things for me could be evidenced by miraculous physical healing, while great things in me could be the grace and strength to live a fulfilled life in spite of physical limitations and pain. Great things for me could mean provision of a fancy car and a lovely house, while great things in me might be the evidence of a thankful spirit, even if having no home of my own, and needing to travel by bike or bus. Great things for me might be the provision of many and rich friendships around me, while great things in me could be the immeasurable privilege of discovering that God is enough and that you are never truly alone when you know Him.
Father, as one year draws to an end and a new year lies ahead, my prayer is that you would do great things IN me, and that this will always be more important to me than the things you do for me. None of us knows what lies ahead for us in 2015, but may I able to praise you at the end of next year by saying, The Powerful One has done great things in me. Holy is His name!
Another of my Advent readings this week was Matthew 16: 21 - 28, a passage that we perhaps more often associate with Easter than with Christmas. You don’t get much clearer than this. Jesus spoke to His disciples first of all about the price that He Himself would have to pay, and then expanded that to explain the cost of being one of His followers.
We know that it was a cost for Jesus, and not just something easy, because of His strong reaction when Peter tried to talk Him out of it: "Me pones en peligro de care ” he says in my Spanish translation - "You put me in danger of falling." In English, He calls Peter a “stumbling block.” The fact that Jesus saw the possibility of falling and failing is evidence that His calling represented a high cost and therefore a real temptation to avoid the suffering and pain. But He understood clearly (vs 23b) that avoiding the sacrifice would be man’s way, and embracing the cost would require seeing things from God’s perspective.
At this point, Jesus has only told His disciples that He is going to be killed. He hasn’t specifically mentioned that it will be by the cruel death of crucifixion. But crucifixion was a common enough concept in those days for the disciples to reel at the startling imagery of what Jesus said next: "Whoever wants to follow Me must deny themselves and pick up their cross." The disciples probably gave a gasp of shock and horror. Even if they didn’t yet suspect that this is how Jesus would die, they knew that a person carrying a cross had no life of their own any more, and was going to lose everything.
Who would do that? Who would deliberately volunteer for suffering and trauma? And yet, throughout history, there have been times when men have done something similar: they have volunteered to go to war, knowing that their time would no longer be their own and that they would be giving up their personal freedom. They volunteered with a higher purpose in sight, knowing that they might not come back alive.
But at least victory is a possibility in times of war: there’s always a possibility that the soldier will survive the battle. Not so with the person carrying a cross; when people saw that, they knew that the individual was headed to certain death. It must have sounded shocking and incomprehensible to these early disciples.
So Jesus needed to explain further, and help them see things in the light of eternity: what good would it do a person to save their own life and gain the whole world in the present time, if it means that he or she loses their soul, the eternal part of them? Very slowly, these first disciples began to realise that there would be a cost to their calling, perhaps a higher cost than they had already paid when deciding to leave behind their homes, families and livelihoods to follow Jesus. From that point onwards, they probably began to grapple with the idea, and perhaps to talk among themselves, about what it might really mean to “lose their lives for Jesus’ sake.”
When we hear the Christmas message, our hearts are filled with joy and thankfulness - and rightly so. But we sometimes miss sight of the great cost paid by Mary and Joseph, the later cost paid by Jesus and His early disciples, and the cost there could be to ourselves if we choose to respond to His call.
Yes, there’s a cost, but the wonder of the Christmas story reminds us that there is also the miraculous blessing of Emmanuel, God with us. No wonder a later disciple, a missionary called Paul, said that he was willing to pay absolutely any price (Philippians 3: 7 - 10) because nothing in this world can compare to the “surpassing greatness” of knowing Jesus in that very present, intimate way. The call has a cost, but the cost could never possibly compare with the amazing privilege of that call.
Jesus was no con artist; He never claimed that following Him would be a walk in the park. What His earthly parents experienced at the first Christmas (see Monday's two posts) and what Jesus Himself modelled for us - paying a cost in order to achieve a higher good - were living examples for us of the cost of discipleship.
Another of my Advent readings this week was in John 6: 60 - 71. Even with Jesus there in the flesh, some of the people who had been following Him began to drift away because His teaching offended them. “What you’re saying is hard to accept, “ they told Him. As a result, we read one of the saddest commentaries in the gospels (vs 66): “From this time, many of His disciples turned back and no longer followed Him.” Many of them probably just wandered away and went back to their own lives, doing their own thing and living for themselves. Perhaps some found someone or something else to give their allegiance to. And one went on to betray Jesus to the authorities and bring about His death.
There are also people today who turn back and drift away from following Jesus - perhaps because of something He did or said, or something that He didn’t do for them, or allowed to happen in their lives. Others turn away because they were hurt or offended by something another Christian said or did. A few, like Judas, go on to betray the Lord, perhaps speaking negatively and bitterly about Him. (Betrayal is a common reaction when someone has taken offence.) A larger number just drift away and live their own lives without allowing Jesus to be part of it.
Strangest and saddest, though, are perhaps the ones who stay in the church and continue to go through the motions, but in their hearts they’ve turned back from being radical disciples of Jesus. They no longer witness to friends about Him; they don’t express any love or praise towards Him; they don’t consciously seek His will in decision making; they don’t continue to deal with sin and selfishness; perhaps they don’t even bother to spend personal time with Him any more. They’re still going to church (perhaps because, like Peter in vs 68, they recognise, “Who else could we go to? Jesus has the words of eternal life.”) but on the inside they’ve decided, “What Jesus says is too hard,” and so they’re holding back from giving their all.
Lord, in this Advent season, I pray for every believer, every church-goer who falls into this category. I pray for those I know and those I don’t know. May this season be a time of revelation, a time when people see you as you really are and fall in love with you again. May it be a time when many draw closer and decide, with reckless abandon, to give you everything again.
Today is a public holiday here in Spain; it’s the day of “annunciation” or announcement - the day in the Advent calendar when people remember how the angel Gabriel came and made a shocking announcement to an adolescent girl, a Jewish teenager named Mary.
Last week, my Advent Bible reading was all about the hope and the freedom that the first Christmas made available to us. This week, my readings and meditation are about the cost of the call. I’ve reflected a lot in recent years on the well-known passage in Luke 1: 26 - 38, and on the incredible price this teenage girl paid when she agreed to be the mother of Jesus. (Click here to read this blog post from way back in December 2007.) Her willingness to embrace shame and loss of reputation; her courage to say, “Let it happen like God has said,” and her faith to believe, no matter how crazy the angel’s message sounded, that “nothing is impossible for God.”
This weekend, I was also reading Matthew 1: 18 - 25, which gives us some insight into the turmoil of the other teenager in the mix - a young man called Joseph. The events in this chapter of Matthew obviously happened after Luke’s account of the angel appearing to Mary, but we’ve no way of knowing how much later. Did Mary tell Joseph about the angel’s visit right away, or did she wait until she realised it had happened and she was already pregnant? Did Joseph have this dream the same day as hearing the devastating news, or did a few days go by?
Either way, there were some heartbreaking hours or days when the young couple thought their relationship was over, and Joseph began making plans to break the engagement as quietly and discreetly as possible. Did Mary already foresee this when she said yes to the pregnancy? Did she realise that the man she loved would probably break off the relationship and leave her to bring up the miracle child as a single mum?
And then came Joseph’s dream. Does it take more faith to believe a nameless angel in a dream than one you’ve seen with your physical eyes when you’re awake? Or did people in this culture at this point in history lay more store in dreams than many westerners do today? Was it the prophetic detail in the dream that convinced Joseph it was really a word from God? After the dream, this young man also agreed to pay the cost: to believe that his fiancée was still a virgin and to accept the stigma that would probably come to both of them with the pregnancy and the birth of the child.
What a huge cost! These teenagers were willing to lay their lives and their future on the line. In contrast, so many believers today are unwilling to pay the price of a little embarrassment that might come if they talk to their neighbours or friends about Jesus; unwilling to give up a little time on a regular basis to read their Bible and get to know God better...
God, please help me not to sidestep the cost of the call. Help me be the sort of person who is willing to pay any price to do your will.
Continue reading in the post below for further reflection on the cost of the Christmas call.
Mary and Joseph had already paid a high cost (during pregnancy) to be the earthly parents of Jesus. Little could they have foreseen that the birth itself would also be fraught with challenges: that a political leader would call for a census, forcing them to make a long journey, right at the time when Mary was due to give birth. How uncomfortable it must have been to be nine months pregnant, to be needing to go to the bathroom all the time, and to have to undertake this overland journey on the back of a donkey! Did that perhaps contribute to making them late, so that all the accommodation was full up by the time they arrived in Bethlehem?
Imagine how stressful it must have been to be there in the busy chaos of the town, knowing that you were supposed to give birth to the Son of God at any minute, and yet you could find nowhere to stay. What a pressure it must have been for this teenage husband: was there any sense of panic that Mary’s waters might break, right there in the dirty street?
Maybe it was because Mary was already having contractions that a concerned innkeeper let them bed down in the stable with his animals. Did he feel any compassion, or was it just another business transaction? Did he let them stay there for free... or did business take priority and he made some kind of charge for letting them take refuge in the dirty, smelly animal shed?
Was the stable cold and draughty - like so many of our Christmas carols that suggest a winter setting? Or was it hot, sweaty and stuffy, with flies and mosquitoes buzzing around? Was the baby swaddled in rags to protect him from the cold? Or to protect him from the mosquitoes? Or just to protect his soft baby skin from the prickly straw?
Did some woman from the inn come out to help with the delivery? Or did young Joseph have to rush around fetching water and being the midwife at the birth of this special baby? What a responsibility!
Amidst all this drama and difficulty, it was no doubt a relief that the birth went well and the newborn was healthy... but it must initially have been an added challenge when a bunch of strangers turned up, wanting to see the baby. Who were these excited and noisy shepherds, disturbing the sleep of mother and baby? What an encouragement it must have been, however, to hear these simple shepherds speak of what the angels had told them. Perhaps this was the first time in the whole year that anyone, other than Mary and Joseph themselves, had acknowledged the divine origin of this baby.
Perhaps things settled down again over the next week; perhaps Bethlehem emptied again after the census was over and everyone went back home again, freeing up a room for the little family to stay at the inn while waiting for mother and baby to recover from the delivery and be strong enough to make the trip home to Nazareth.
And so it happened that they were still in Bethlehem when the time came to present the baby in the temple, at eight days old. This is how they happened to meet a godly old man called Simeon and an elderly prophetess called Anna. God had given Simeon a promise that he wouldn’t die until he had seen the Messiah; perhaps that’s why the old man had chosen to live in Bethlehem (because of Micah’s prophecy.) Simeon would not have been around if the baby had been born and presented in Nazareth. But he was in Bethlehem, and the Holy Spirit prompted him to go to the temple at exactly the right moment.
The words of Simeon and Anna must have been further encouragement for the young couple that this child of theirs truly was who they knew and believed him to be. But the words were not all positive: while Mary and Joseph were still full of wonder at the things Simeon had said, the old man turned to the young mother and began to warn her of trouble and criticism that lay in the future for her son. “And,” concluded Simeon, “A sword will pierce your own soul too!”
What a shock for this teenage mum. She knew, of course, that there would still be challenges ahead, but she probably wondered about the meaning of the old man’s words. At this point in time, no one knew yet that the Saviour was going to be rejected and going to suffer a horrible, painful death. (Isaiah had prophesied about a suffering servant, but at this point in history most people were still expecting the coming Messiah to be a mighty Deliverer, perhaps a military hero.) And so the call would continue to have a high cost for young Mary. At the time when she had to watch her firstborn suffer a violent and traumatic death, she was a young widow, still only in her forties.
Yes, Christmas today is perceived to be all tinsel and glitter, but the true Christmas, the first Christmas, came at a much higher cost than all the partying and credit card debt. And I guess it’s the same with any “call” if we’re willing to step out and do what God asks of us: there will be countless blessings and encouragements along the way... but there will also always be a price to pay, a “cost” of some sort.
Are we... am I... willing like Mary to carry the cost involved in seeing God’s kingdom come to the world we live in?
