After Christmas reflection six: Returning

Apparently today is a bank holiday. It’s a funny old day. What do you do with it? The sun is shining here in North Yorkshire. Many people are making the most of a last day of holiday. The car parks at Fountains Abbey are already full. The cats are watching me sort Christmas debris from on high as empty tubs of cheese footballs and peanuts are thrown in the recycling. Other people are beginning to face the fact we return to normal tomorrow. I’ve got people I need to visit or ring, funeral addresses to write and plan dates to the end of May to sort before Friday. I can’t think about what we might do with Easter and Pentecost and indeed marking the coronation yet! No wonder Janus had two heads, one looking backwards and the other forwards. We’ve no idea what day it is still and the reality of January might be a shock.

How do we return? Well today let’s find some inspiration from the shepherds.

Luke chapter 2 simply tells us that they ‘returned’, presumably to their fields and to their sheep. They went back to where they had previously been, but glorifying and praising God. We don’t know exactly how their lives were changed in the days and weeks and months and years that followed. But, more generally, we do know quite a lot about how hearing and seeing Jesus can change people.

The Book of Acts describes the early church in a wonderfully powerful way, and right near the beginning the same pair of words, ‘heard and seen’, is used to describe a moment when Peter and John were brought before the authorities, and were warned not to speak or teach any more about Jesus. But Peter and John reply: ‘We cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard.’ (Acts 4.20)

If truth be told, it won’t be long until what we did at Christmas or what we watched or ate will be history  and we’ll have forgotten it all.

But for Peter and John, and no doubt for the shepherds too, the impact of what they had seen and heard never left them: ‘We cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard.’

None of us quite know what 2023 will bring, both for us individually and for the world more generally. After the Christmas celebrations we’re about to ‘return’ to our ordinary lives, just as the shepherds returned from the manger.

But the shepherds gave glory and praise to God for all that they had heard and seen, and we must be doing the same. The joy of our faith in Jesus must bubble up from within us, and we too must be people who cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard, whatever we’re returning to.

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‘The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.’

Ponder today as you sort stuff or enjoy a last day off for a while or you look at your diary or to do list with exasperation, how will you return? Has meeting the Christ child made any difference to you? 

Now how are we going to mark the Coronation and where will I be planned for Pentecost? !!!!