It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

I've always loved the story of the annunciation.  It's a great story, since it involves the Angel Gabriel speaking to Mary in a real place at a real time.  And Gabriel comes to Mary and announces to her that she is going to conceive and give birth to a son, and to call his name Jesus.

And the thing is, Mary just sort of seems to go with it.  Mary goes with the idea without freaking out, without being too palpably concerned, without having a real meltdown over it, as many of us would.

Or does she?

The thing is, the Bible records things much like Shakespeare does, in that a lot of stuff seems pretty placid on the surface.  But to get to the real reactions, you have to chip away a bit at the language that's there, and get a bit more to what the people were doing.

According to the scriptures, what does Mary do after she has the birth of Jesus foretold to her?  Well, she does what any unwed mother of the time would do, which is to skip off, and go and see her cousin for a few months.  Why would she do that?  Why do you think?

Never forget, Mary is a human being.  She doesn't live in stained glass, she doesn't live in a Christmas pantomime, and she doesn't live in a creche, frozen thick in time.

 She lives in a house, in a town, in a country.  Sort of like you do.  And like you, if you heard that you, who were about to get married, were suddenly found to be with child from someone who wasn't your fiance, then you might get out of town for a spell too.  To go and stay with your cousin for a while.  That's what we all might do.

You see, we get to thinking that we are different from all the other generations that came before us.  We get to feeling that the people from the past are in some way fundamentally different from the people of today. We get to feeling that the people of even fifty years ago were different from us, and that gets compounded by lyrics from popular songs that talk about Christmases from long long ago.  The one I looked into on Sunday was 'it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas,' in which the boys are asking for 'a pair of hop-along boots and a pistol that shoots.'  When was the last time any of the boys on your list asked for something even vaguely like that?  Try never.  The kids these days are all into iphones and ipads and all that tut, and they certainly have no time for hop-along boots. And even if you were to try to find them, where would you go? The five and ten?

And because of this, we feel as though we have changed, that we're different, and that the people of fifty, or a hundred, or even two thousand years ago, were fundamentally different than we are.  They were focused on the divinity and glory of God, and we are into Lady GaGa and reality TV, and we couldn't be more different.  But I made this point on Sunday, and I'm going to make it again, that the people of the time of Jesus weren't different from how we are.  They were the same as we are.  They had the same issues and cares that we do.  Don't believe me? Then check out the graffiti from Pompeii, the city that got destroyed by mount Vesuvius.  When Vesuvius blew its stack, it buried the city under volcanic ash, and killed its inhabitants, who left behind all their stuff, and all their graffiti.  If you read what the people of Pompeii seemed to care about, it's not what we would be expecting from the people of Jesus' time.  It's more like what we would write on bathroom walls.  Here's a brief smattering:

Satura was here, Sept. 3rd

On April 19th, I made bread.

Antiochus hung out here with his girlfriend Cithera.

Traveler, you go to Pompeii to eat, but to Nuceria to drink.  At Nuceria, the drinking is better.

Aufidius was here.  Goodbye.

Atimetus got me pregnant.

Epaphra, you are bald!

Epahpra is bad at ball games.

And so on.  All the junk that you and I find written on bathroom walls today, right?  And yes, in case you're wondering, there are plenty of graffiti from Pompeii along the lines of 'for a good time call ....' but without phone numbers, on account of there being no phones, and heck, not even tin cans or string.  But the people of the time of Christ were just as crude, just as harsh, just as unpleasant, just as gross as the rest of us in the here and now.  They're not better people who live in stained glass or in figurines, and who never curse, never swear, never talk about adult situations.  But they did all that stuff.  We know they did, because they told us.  They told us through their words left behind for us that we might remember who they are, and what they were all about.  And they were all about the same stupid stuff as the rest of us.

Why am I on about this?  Because I think it's important.  I think it's important to remember that the people of Christ's time were just like us.  Because people haven't

changed, not really.  We still care about the same nonsense.  It's worth remembering that we are the same as Mary and Joseph, the same as the disciples, people who eat too much, tell dirty jokes, gossip about our neighbors, and get into trouble.  This is exactly who we are, and what we do.  And it's funny, really, because if we know who we are, and we know who the people of Jesus' time were, then we can see why he came to their world, beacuse it is our world too.

The point that I was trying to make on Sunday, that I hope didn't get lost on anyone, was that we spend a lot of time thinking about these people as being essentially stained glass perfect, when in reality, the people of Christ's time were the same as we are, which is why we, as humans needed Christ.  We have a way of thinking about Jesus, in that we need to insulate him from the world, or perhaps that he would insulate himself from the world, deigning only to be in churhes or holy shrines.  We have a way of thinking about things involving the sacred as being worlds apart from the day to day, but the purpose of the incarnation is that these things weren't worlds apart.  In the incarnation of Christ, the holy came down into this world, to take on our flesh and live amongst us.  The good people of Pompeii, they had the same cares, thoughts, desires and motivation as we do.  They weren't driven by altruism or charity or thoughts of holiness; it was a place where people thought about drinking,

sex, playing games, spending time with friends, baking bread, all that.  The only thing shocking about that is that we have forgotten, or have thought that the people of that time were in some way different.  But to quote Yoda from Star Wars: 'No different.  Only different in your mind.'

Jesus didn't come into a world like this one on Christmas, he came into this world.  This world with its people, its people concerned with drinking and parties, thinking about how they might enjoy themselves, bake bread, spend times with their girlfriends, all that.  He came into this world to make its inhabitants holy, to sanctify them with his blood.  His entry into the world was an entry into this world, not because it was holy, but because it needed to be made holy.  He came to Mary not because she was perfect, but because she needed to be forgiven.  If you are insisting that Jesus required to come to a pre perfected vessel, then you have missed the purpose behind his arrival. He didn't come to the righteous, but to the unrighteous.  While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.  His world, and all the people in it, was just as scummy as ours, which you need to know.  Just like Christ died for all the people of Pompeii, in all their squalor and humanity, he died for us too.

This is why Christmas came to begin with, so instead of being bothered by the sin of the people of the past, be thankful that it was forgiven.  And instead of being bothered by your own sin, or pretending you don't have it, confess it to Christ, because that's why he came in the first place.