Christmas Message

December 23, 2024

A Christmas Message for wherever you find yourself geographically or otherwise this season.

***

It’s been a strange few weeks in the run up to Christmas back in the UK. After almost a decade in the States, all the usual habits and plans for Christmas don’t work here. Cornbread dressing doesn’t really exist, peppermint bark is hard (but not impossible) to come by and if you’re friends with me on Facebook, you already know about the coffee cake dilemma there is on this small island (cf. before/after photos of my first DIY attempt). On the upside, mince pies, mulled wine and other British Christmas delights have been fun to rediscover.

One habit I’ve had through December is to read through some of Luke’s gospel. Sometimes I read the whole thing (it helpfully has 24 chapters to mark each day of Advent), other times I read smaller sections. Sometimes English, sometimes in the Greek. Either way, I find great value in coming back to the basics of the gospel: the story of Jesus, from his birth to his death to his resurrection. The story doesn’t change, regardless of which side of the Atlantic I’m on.

I had a student come and talk to me about an essay she’s writing on Hagar in the book of Genesis. She noted the remarkable similarity between Hagar’s encounter with God and Mary’s (Genesis 16:11 and Luke 1:31, if you want to look for yourself).

But others are quite striking too.

I was held by the comparison between the angel’s appearance to Zechariah versus that of Mary. I’ve often heard comparison sermons between these two figures and the discrepancy between how they responded to the divine message they were receiving (i.e. Mary had faith, Zechariah didn’t). But what really struck me this time was the geographical location of their respective stories: Zechariah was a priest in the temple, Mary was a betrothed young girl in Nazareth.

What difference does that make?

Well let me set you a scene…

In the very presence of God, Zechariah wants to 'figure it out'

Zechariah was a priest. He was trained in the Torah. We’re told he and Elizabeth were righteous and blameless before God, keeping all of God’s commandments. He knew the rules and rituals around temple worship. His section was on duty and he was chosen by lot to go into the holy of holies and offer incense. This was a morning and evening daily practice for the temple clergy (cf. Exodus 30:7-8). With about 8,000 priests in Jerusalem, that Zechariah was chosen would have been a pretty significant moment in his ministerial life. He would be the one to go into to the sanctuary of the Lord, the place of the ark of the covenant, where God himself said he would meet his people (cf. Ex 30:6).

In short: it was a pretty big deal. [The Mishnah Tamid describes what the practice likely involved: m. Tamid 5:3-6:2]

And in the execution of this duty, Zechariah encounters an angel of the Lord. He’s troubled. Terrified. The angel tells him his prayers have been answered and his wife is going to bear a child, despite being barren and post-menopausal.

And he asks how can he know this is really going to happen?

I don’t know about you, but if I was standing in the very place God had promised to reside and be present with his people, I’d hope my response would be a little more faithful. Here’s Zechariah in God’s throne room, questioning how something can be possible.

All that experience. All that knowledge. All that religious practice. But when push comes to shove, Zechariah is slow to catch on. Even when in presence of God himself. If not here, where would be good enough? The shepherds on the hillside might have more reason to question whether what they were seeing was a phantasm.

But Zechariah? In the Temple? Before the altar of God?

It strikes me that this just reveals the dramatic difference there is between the seen and known things of religion and an active and mature faith in God. If religious practice and habits we employ aren’t matched by a growing intimacy and walk with God, we can miss the obvious. Even when we’re the most obvious place in the world for them to happen We get too caught up in the details. We get caught up in the doctrinal weeds. We want to understand and “figure it out” more than we want to believe and receive the gift of faith on offer.

But faith isn’t about figuring it out. It’s about living it out.

In the back-end of nowhere, Mary’s ready to 'live it out.'

By contrast, Mary is in young virgin engaged to be married who is from Nazareth. Nazareth would have been a small village of about 200, maybe an hour’s walk from the much larger Sepphoris. It isn’t mentioned in the Old Testament. It wouldn’t have been well-known. Luke indicates this in 1:26 when says “In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth.”

Now no-one needs to introduce Dallas, Austin or Houston by saying “in a city in Texas called…” Everyone knows where they are. But how about Port Lavaca? Or Van Horn? They need a little more context. A little more introduction.

In Gabriel’s second appearance in Luke, he shows up in a very different place. From the holy of holies to the middle of nowhere. From the centre of religious worship to a unknown town.

I remember Stephen and I driving around Nottingham where we lived when we were first married. We drove through a very ordinary suburb. Not the kind of England you see on Morse or Endeavour or Christmas movies like A Very British Christmas (yes, we’ve just watched it). There are no cobblestone roads, historic pubs or fields of bleating sheep where we were. These were pretty generic homes in a pretty generic neighbourhood. People walking their kids to school. Waiting for a bus. Dealing with a flat tyre. Nothing to see of note.

Stephen turned to me and explained that since living in the UK, he’d realized this was far more the real England than the stuff you see on TV. And he was right. Nowhere-ville.

Maybe Nazareth was like that. Nowhereville, in Galilee.

It is here that Mary receives Gabriel’s message. A place you wouldn’t expect a divine visitation. And certainly not to a teenage girl about to be married. Mary hears she’s to conceive and bear a son.

And Mary, unlike Zechariah, believes. “How will this be?” she asks. She’s confused like Zechariah was, but she believes. And you know the rest of the story.

Where are you this Christmas?

There’s a lot of room for reflection here. I invite you to think about them for yourself. Where do you find yourself in this story?

There are lots of ways we could connect these two places. We could think about the two boys promised: one the last OT prophet in John, who would call for religious change and repentance in anticipating of the second, not a prophet but a promised one, God in the flesh, coming to dwell with his people not in the religious establishment but in the middle of nowhere and nobodies.

We could talk about those of us with long histories of serving in church, whether as clergy, vestry/PCC members, lay leaders, outreach workers or children’s pastors. How we so pre-occupied with the business of God we doubt the power of God when it is revealed. We could contrast that with those who encounter God in nowhere places, in their dreams and on the streets, that would challenge religious sensibilities and propriety.

But I want to leave you instead with this: God worked with them both. He had patience for Zechariah’s figuring it out alongside Mary’s readiness. He revealed himself in the Temple and in Nazareth. Perhaps the message isn’t only in the contrast but in what they share and they embody: God’s levelling purposes at work in the world. Zechariah’s doubt left him mute for months. God confounded his expectations and then shut him up. Zechariah was disciplined, humbled. Brought low. Mary was raised up from nowhere. Honoured. Now heralded as a figure of faith.

God works with us. Correcting. Disciplining. Humbling. Raising up the lowly. Bringing honour where the world might see shame.

My hope is that wherever you find yourself this Christmas, that you encounter something of this God. The God who brings down and builds up. The God who doesn’t rule in the way the religious elite ruled (then or now). The God who works in the hidden and the unseen and the insignificant. Let yourself be brought low by it all if you need to.

Be humbled by the scandal of the nativity where you’ve got caught up in religious practice.

Be open and receptive to the promise of a present God, even if you think you’re not qualified.

And be ready not to 'figure it out,' but to 'live it out.'

Merry Christmas!

******

Photo by Rick Oldland on Unsplash

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The Wisdom of "100%" (or the Lack of It)

By Suse McBay • March 17, 2026

Are you 100% sure about that? Last December, Stephen and I headed for Prague for a few days. We were looking forward to Christmas markets, mulled wine, and shopping. Because we had booked a really early flight, we decided to stay in an airport hotel the night before. We hadn’t banked on one thing though: how to get from the bus station at Heathrow to the hotel. We could see our destination towering ahead of us as we exited the coach, but there was no reliable way to get there on foot. Much like Houston, navigating the surface roads of Heathrow is much easier for those in a car. So, we asked for directions from one of the airport staff. She pointed us over to two elevators, sat right next to each other. One had a line of at least twenty people. The other one had none. Those at the front of the queue hadn’t even pressed the button. That seemed strange and indicated that perhaps the people in line didn’t know what they were doing—or weren’t used to London airports. But why was one line so long and the other non-existent? The signs above weren’t exactly clear, but here were two lifts side-by-side, surely they went to the same place? Towards the back of the line was a middle-aged man, surrounded by luggage and family, who realised what we were trying to puzzle out. “Nah, you can’t use it. The other lift doesn’t go down. Doesn’t go to the same place,” he told us. We looked at him quizzically. “Are you sure?” we asked. “ One hundred percent , mate. One hundred percent.” The certainty with which he declared his answer was persuasive. He crowed like he was the CEO of the airport. That lift would not go where the other one was going. He repeated himself again. 100%. Only, he was wrong. We risked looking like fools. We walked to the vacant elevator, hit the button, and—lo and behold!—an elevator appeared that went to the exact same location as the other. The middle-aged man surrounded by luggage was 100%... in the wrong. Utterly and completely. *** Words, words, words, but no wisdom I don’t personally know the man who so-confidently revealed his wrongness. I’ve no idea whether his bluster was out of character from his usual self. But in the moment of our encounter, he acted every bit the ‘fool’ we find in Book of Proverbs: "A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing personal opinion." (Proverbs 18:2) There is much wisdom in Proverbs 17:28: Even fools who keep silent are considered wise; when they close their lips, they are deemed intelligent. It seems to me that we live in a world saturated with words, whether written or spoken. There’s an ever-growing number of websites, social media platforms, podcasts, and so on. Even more so now with AI. Yet for all this verbal abundance, there does not seem to be any more wisdom than there used to be. I would argue with AI, there seems to be less (or perhaps it’s simply exposing our foolishness). Part of me wonders about the virtue of writing a blog, when these are so often half-thoughts, explorations, and ideas: am I just adding to the plethora of opinions that exist on the blogosphere? Last year, I was teaching on how to plan and lead funerals with our final year ordinands. I spoke with confidence about what works and what doesn’t. What the role of the cleric is, how to work with the grieving family, how to craft the sermon, what to do afterwards etc. It felt good to be able to give real, lived experience having worked in a church for a decade. But it was only during the Q&A when I realized something. I realized my confidence was borne of a very specific context: I ministered in a large, Episcopal church in Houston, Texas. Not a small parish church, somewhere remote in England. Did the wisdom and experience I bring still have value in the Church of England, where the Church is an established one? Where those who minister do among many people who don’t dare to cross the threshold of a religious building except in such moments of life and death? Now I happen to think it does; but only with some qualification. For what I realized in that moment is that it’s not quite as readily transferable as I’d assumed. Church cultures are different. Expectations are different. How people respond and react to their local vicar is different! What works in one scenario doesn’t necessarily work in another. Consider Proverbs 26:4-5: 4 Do not answer fools according to their folly, or you will be a fool yourself. 5 Answer fools according to their folly, or they will be wise in their own eyes. Proverbs 26 has a seeming contradiction that speaks to the importance of context. In the situation where you’re faced with someone spouting foolishness, what should you do? Speak or not speak? Engage or not engage? The modern equivalent to v.4 might be to say to yourself “not my monkeys, not my circus” and walk away. But what about the times when it is your circus? When they are your monkeys? What about when to walk away is to leave someone blind to their mistakes and doomed to make more? What if responding might feasibly help someone see beyond their own blinkers and make a different choice? Sometimes v.4 might be the path of wisdom. Other times it’s v.5. But it’s not always apparent which is which. Overconfidence is not just dangerous for making us look like fools or giving bad advice. If we stay in our certitude, we miss the heart of the issue revealed in these two verses: we need wisdom. So where do we find it? *** Does ‘wisdom come with age’? I’ve heard it said that ‘wisdom comes with age’. Ironically enough, this line was used when I was in something of a disagreement with someone much older than me. But claiming moral high ground or superior understanding on the basis of some unalterable characteristic that you have but I don’t, is more indicative of pride than wisdom. If age does come with wisdom, there would be no conflict or disagreement within the human species as we age. If age is the sole arbiter, we should collectively do better as the wrinkles and grey hairs multiply. Yet that’s not what happens. Wisdom, sadly, is not inevitable. It can come with age because of one very simple reality: the more time you’ve had on the planet means you’ve had more opportunity to become wise. Now whether or not you’ve taken those opportunities is quite a different thing! *** Wisdom: a gift that needs seeking Proverbs has an interestingly balanced view of wisdom. It is (1) something that requires active seeking, yet also (2) something which only God can give. Proverbs 2:1-4 talks about the need to exert effort in acquisition of wisdom. It’s not something that just lands on our laps: it asks you to be open to learning and sitting with what you receive (v.1), deliberate and intentional in putting your body in a space to grow in it (v.2), and vocal in your search for it (v.3). In other words: humble, open, and hungry. This passage concludes by likening it to searching for silver or hidden treasure (v.4). Think about that for a moment: do you search for wisdom in the same way you seek out growth in income or asset? From a human wisdom point of view, seeking financial gain for our security and future as we age (and our children grow and go off to college etc) makes good sense. But what if we were to seek wisdom with the very same fervour? What if wisdom had the same significance for our spiritual security and future? What if it is important to our growth in the Christian life and readiness for what may come our way? It’s a gift that needs seeking. But Proverbs tells us it is also a gift that is given. Verse 6 reveals “ the LORD gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding .” Our seeking is not the whole picture. Longing for wisdom does not mean we get it. Wisdom is God’s domain not ours. Proverbs 8 illustrates that God’s Wisdom is not something to acquire or harvest. It is not a commodity to be doled out. It is not a consumer good. Wisdom was present when God made the world. Wisdom is a part of God’s self that chooses when to be imparted and when not to be (compare 1:28; 8:17; 9:5, 16) The very fabric of our material world is infused with the mystery of Wisdom. Insight and understanding comes from God and helps us to navigate the complexity of our lives, but this gift is just a glimpse of a much greater reality of the divine Wisdom which exists eternally. This, perhaps, brings us back to where I started. True wisdom is never found in loud proclamations of “one hundred percent!”. Why? Because the one who is wise recognises they have a lot to learn. They know that new information can shift and reframe yesterday’s certainty. Maybe the first step is to stop claiming absolute certainty—to stop the all-or-nothing thinking. Maybe we start with recognising what Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 13: we only see in part, know in part, understand in part. And from there, we begin actively seeking that gift which only God—from His Wisdom—can give. Wisdom has built her house, she has hewn her seven pillars. 2 She has slaughtered her animals, she has mixed her wine, she has also set her table. 3 She has sent out her servant-girls, she calls from the highest places in the town, 4 "You that are simple, turn in here!" To those without sense she says, 5 "Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. 6 Lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight." Proverbs 9:1-6 ****** Photo © Copyright Derek Harper and licensed for reuse under a cc-by-sa/2.0 Creative Commons Licence.

When God Goes Quiet

By Suse McBay • February 13, 2026

What do we do on days when God seems entirely absent? Some thoughts about where I see that in my life today and, looking back, recognising how much has changed.