The Christmas Miracle – From Exile to Return
December 28, 2014 | Anita Retzlaff

[The angel said to the shepherds] “Do not be afraid for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy.  For to you is born this day in the city of David a saviour which is [Messiah] the Lord.” In the miraculous gift of a tiny baby the Lord God of Hosts brings to the earth yet another sign of promise and hope.  We are celebrating the arrival of this good news; a whole-hearted and redemptive way to live together in communities of faith. Jesus’ arrival was the ultimate of God’s promised ways of staying in touch with us, guiding us into true and loving relationships. Love is God's way.

As we have journeyed through the stories of Israel’s tribes and kings in the last weeks alongside advent and Christmas we arrive at 2 Chronicles today; a re-telling of the books of Samuel and Kings which include the reign of Solomon and then all the kings that came after him.  The intent of the Chroniclers' interpretation is to encourage God’s people after terrible travail and isolation. Those who remain in captivity in Babylon are dispirited and disconnected from their roots. And so the story is told of how the golden years of Solomon were once accomplished.

The story of Solomon and David before him begins with such hope and promise.  The temple is built under the watchful guidance of Solomon; the house of God is beautiful and adorned with precious metals, jewels and trimmings.  Within that astonishing edifice is enacted the most faithful and thoughtful worship that has been known in Israel for generations.  The gift of great wisdom is granted Solomon by God. Everything is in good order and well administered. Hear Solomon’s prayer to God in chapter 6:

“O LORD, God of Israel, there is no God like you, in heaven or on earth, keeping covenant in steadfast love with your servants who walk before you with all their heart—you who have kept for your servant, my father David, what you promised to him.  Indeed you promised with your mouth and this day have fulfilled with your hand. Therefore, O LORD, God of Israel, keep for your servant, my father David, that which you promised him, saying, “There shall never fail you a successor before me to sit on the throne of Israel, if only your children keep to their way, to walk in my law as you have walked before me.”  Therefore, O LORD, God of Israel, let your word be confirmed, which you promised to your servant David.

Well, the rest of the story of the kings is a story of rapid descent into depravity and self-centered violence that ends with the destruction of that gorgeous temple and the  people shipped off into exile in Babylon.  The kings do not remain faithful and forget God's ways. All that has been hoped for seems gone forever, lost, forgotten.  Promises made between king and LORD are utterly disregarded. God-given hope seems dead. And so we as Christ's followers can relate to that disappointment as the story of Jesus unfolds. For Jesus born as a baby -  pure promise - is also one day to be rejected and silenced. But that is not the end of these stories, God's stories, and the reason why we continue to celebrate the birth of hope in the midst of troubling times.

Stephanie will be leaving in a month to work in an area of conflict where it must seem at times that God's ways are lost and forgotten: where great troubles exist today between two branches of God's people.

*Stephanie*

We have, in our scripture this morning, a fairly vivid description of destruction and exile.  The picture is bleak and looks utterly hopeless: that sense of being cut off from beauty and possibility and life itself. After years of moral decay among the kings God appears to have left, pitched a tent elsewhere, moved on.  What remains is chaos and enmity, destruction and death.  God's people turn on each other grasping for power and fame.  How do human beings get themselves into these horrible predicaments and how ever will they step back from the brink? 

*Stephanie*   (video is part of this section)

The Word of God does not remain silent forever. In a rapid and startling turn of events the exile is suddenly over.  God, through the actions of King Cyrus of Persia, allows the people to go home.  Just like that, their servitude and confinement is done. Edna Froese, in one of her advent adult education reflections, imagines what it might be like
for refugees in our current time around the world to be allowed to return home.

Imagine a refugee camp filled with displaced people who have survived endless bombings and ethnic brutality.  They have seen family members slaughtered, children blown to bits, daughters abducted by enemy militia.  They have nothing, their only possessions the blankets given to them by an NGO and meagre food rations delivered by a UN truck.  Health care is minimal.  Physical discomfort is unending but still less than the pain of loss.  Everything is gone.  Then imagine trucks driving through the camp with megaphones blaring: "You can all go home now.  Your streets are safe, your houses are being rebuilt, irrigation systems repaired, schools built.  You can go home now and rebuild your communities and your government."  If only we could say that to the millions of refugees from Syria, from Iraq, from African countries, from...
      [Edna Froese, Advent 3, Renewed Covenant: Justice is now, 2014]

We live in hope: the promises of God echoing throughout the centuries and millennia.  Walk in God's ways and God will be present to you.  Become peacemakers and ambassadors of love for that is God's intent through all time.

*Stephanie*

God awaits our return.  It is through the birth of a baby that hope is born, rekindled and lived.  We are partners with God, friends of the earth and people of peace.  There are many places of unrest around the world, grinding poverty, few choices.  Jesus has given a vision for the way to live well together.  It is not necessarily the easiest way - to live without violence; in fact it seems that nonviolence runs against the grain of human nature. Yet that is God's way and the way of the Incarnation, the One born in Bethlehem.  I would like to close with a poem written by Judyth Hill; a simple, hope-filled attitude and a way of living into our calling as followers of Jesus and makers of peace on earth.

Wage Peace 
by Judyth Hill

Wage peace with your breath.
Breathe in firemen and rubble,
breathe out whole buildings
and flocks of redwing blackbirds.

Breathe in terrorists and breathe out sleeping children
and freshly mown fields.
Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.
Breathe in the fallen
and breathe out lifelong friendships intact.

Wage peace with your listening:
hearing sirens, pray loud.
Remember your tools:
flower seeds, clothes pins, clean rivers. 

Make soup.
Play music, learn the word for thank you in three languages.
Learn to knit, and make a hat.
Think of chaos as dancing raspberries,
imagine grief as the outbreath of beauty
or the gesture of fish.
Swim for the other side.
Wage peace.

Never has the world seemed so fresh and precious.
Have a cup of tea and rejoice.
Act as if armistice has already arrived.
Don't wait another minute.