We have now reached the end of our Advent journey. The crib is ready to receive the Christ child. The candles on the Advent wreath guided us on our way. Today we lit the last of the candles. While the candles guided us, the scriptures provided us with a commentary on that journey. The scriptures introduced us to the characters who prepared their world for that first Christmas. Outstanding among these characters are Isaiah, the OT prophet, John the Baptist, God's messenger Gabriel, Joseph the carpenter, and of course above all, Mary herself and her cousin Elizabeth.
In that famous visitation scene from Luke's gospel, Mary and her cousin Elizabeth celebrate what God has already done for them and what he is about to do, through them, for the world. That same scene has been repeated every day when women trade their intimacies and rejoice in each other's support and companionship. Here two women rejoice in their great fortune and share a laugh at their unconventional predicament: a virgin and a barren woman will soon give birth.
The virgin and the barren woman are at the heart of the mystery and the innocence. The all powerful God came among us as an innocent baby. The normal values of the world are reversed. The one who is now powerless becomes the centre of attention. He has honoured his promise: 'He has cast the mighty from their thrones and exhalted the lowly.' At this time of year, we too strive to follow that way. We try to reverse the normal values of our world. For this one season in the year at least, we strive to translate the dream into reality. Generosity will replace selfishness. Innocent wonder will replace the sneer of cynicism. At this time of year we strive to make a reality that dream of the prophet Isaiah: "The wolf shall dwell with the lamb and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; the calf and the lion shall lie down together and a little child shall lead them." This is a kingdom where innocence reigns. And the little child presides over all.
The surely sums up what we try to do at this time of the year: to establish innocent children at the centre of our world; to let them lead us into their world of wonder and innocence. Because it is only through following their star can we recover some of the wonder and joy that was that first Bethlehem. We have tried to give liturgical shape to that conviction in this Church here this morning: We have invited the little children to lead us through the Liturgy of God's Word, to coax us closer towards the wonder of Bethlehem. And how wonderfully well thay have done so. Too often our liturgies are stale, stolid, and stodgy. Religion has been cursed by Victorian respectability. It often appears that there are cobwebs on our prayers. Our liturgies fail utterly to convey the excitement and the exuberence of our generous God. It takes little children like these to knock those cobwebs off our prayers and our liturgies, to refresh our lives, to put a smile back on our serious religious faces. That is precisely what God tried to do for humanity through the incarnation: to refresh us and to put the smile back on our faces.
So as we approach, literally, the eve of Christmas, let us open our eyes anew to the blessings God has given us, to the joy that he is offering us, and obove all, to the blessings that little children have brought into all of our lives, be they our own children, our grandchildren, our nephews, our nieces, whatever. Regardless of their relationship to us, they are all carbon copies of the baby at Bethlehem, and, as such, they have taught us a lot, and they still have much to teach us.
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