Just like us

Another from Helen

I am always impressed by the work of Sunday school teachers. They not only spend time with children but they answer the most difficult questions of all about God.  One Sunday school teacher on a Sunday just like this straight after Christmas decided to continue the theme and ask the children to draw a picture concerning Christmas. She saw lots of pictures of mangers, shepherds some wise men and then a picture of an aeroplane. She was a little perplexed and so asked why a child had drawn a plane. The answer was, ‘this is a picture of the flight into Egypt.’ Obviously a child who had paid attention to the gospel reading this morning which tells of a traumatic and dramatic escape to Egypt for Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus.

When I was training to be a priest I worked in the princess of Wales hospital as an assistant Chaplain. The lead chaplain felt that it would be good for me to go to the maternity ward in case there was something which may be of embarrassment to a male chaplain. I happily did this, but one thing I noticed was that parents of new borns are not too keen to be moved quickly. I can almost imagine Marys face when Joseph said,’we’re off to another country, we are going to find where we are going by night, (and of course there was no sat nav) and our lovely baby boy might be in danger if we don’t hurry.’ Talk about traumatic.

Mary had already been through a lot, she knew and so did Joseph that this was no ordinary baby, no ordinary child. Mary was used to visitations by angels and so was Joseph. However, it must have been an incredibly traumatic and dramatic time. We often picture the birth of Jesus as peaceful and perfect with no difficulties and no distress, but at the end of the day it was not normal. Everything about the situation was unusual.

Yet in the epistle reading we were reminded that God became just like us, so that we would understand the love God has for us. We were reminded that God became flesh and blood just like us and not only that but we are automatically part of the family of God. That is incredible, the creator of the Universe, our Saviour was just like us.

I heard a story once which perhaps helps us to think about God becoming just like us.

The story is about a man who loved ants – the creepy crawlies.

Now, I don’t really understand this, although one of my nephews used to have a worm world…. in fact Ian and I being responsible adults bought it for him one Christmas. I found it a bit strange, his mother my sister-in-law was not that happy with knowing there were lots of worms in her house. Ants would have been even worse though !

Anyway back to the story there was a man who had a lot of ants at the bottom of his garden. And for some bizarre reason he liked to go and see these ants.  He would take a magnifying class and sit watching these ants for as long as he could before they ran away. In fact he liked the ants so much he loved them.

The man was a trifle worried that the ants would not realise how much he loved them.  So, he got lots of cakes, and anything with lots of sugar on and put them at the bottom of his garden.  Well, the ants obviously fed up well on this amount of sugar, and the man enjoyed watching them scurrying around very quickly with their huge sugar rushes.

The man realised though that the ants still did not know about him and his love for them.  So, he put down bags and bags of sugar.  This of course brought out lots of ants for a time, however the man still did not think the ants knew how much he loved them.  So, as he was a special and magical man, he became an ant himself and lived amongst the other ants telling them about this lovely man who loved them so much, he gave them great gifts and now was one of them.

Some of the ants believed him, some didn’t but the man knew that He had given them good gifts and showed them love.

You may have already made the connection, but in case you haven’t the man who became an ant represents God, and the ants represent us.

God who loved us so much that He became just like us so we would understand His love and seek to be more like Him.

God created us so that we could share His life but we didn’t notice that and so He had to come and share our life by being just like us.

The thing is though, God isn’t quite just like us. God put us first always, He endured pain and suffering for us.

I would love to say that I always think of others before myself but that would be a lie. In the reading from the gospel of Matthew, Herod was threatened, He was scared and rather than trying to work out a way to make sure that he kept all his power he used force and resorted to the most horrific of ways to ensure that he maintained his position.

The way of Jesus was to suffer and the way of Herod was to seek to get all that he could even if it meant treading on lots of others along the way.

God became like us, He felt the same feelings that we do, He was truly God and truly human but He suffered and sought a world of peace through suffering and not through force.

The ways that we can think of God becoming just like us, God who understands our traumatic and dramatic times is by seeking to behave like He did so that people will look at us and see Jesus.

In our collect we asked that in the same way that Jesus shared in our humanity so we should share in His divinity. This isabout us asking to be more like Jesus, that we will choose the way that seeks love and peace by putting others first.

May we be people who show the love of God in our lives by seeking to be ever more like Him. AMEN