Meeting of the Parliament
Meeting date: Tuesday, November 26, 2013
Official Report
776KB pdf
Time for Reflection
Good afternoon. The first item of business is time for reflection. Our time for reflection leader today is the Rev Moira McDonald, minister of Corstorphine Old Parish Church.
The Rev Moira McDonald (Minister, Corstorphine Old Parish Church, Edinburgh)
This coming Sunday is the beginning of the season of advent in the Christian church—a time of preparation for the coming of the Christ child at Christmas. It is a time when we meet again the familiar characters of Christmas and hear their stories—stories that lead them, and us, towards an outhouse in Bethlehem, to gather round a manger and gaze on the baby it contains.
We meet Elizabeth and Zechariah, a couple who are now beyond child-bearing age and yet are told that they will have a son and name him John—Zechariah chooses not to believe that promise but, much to Elizabeth’s delight, is proved wrong.
We meet that son, John, now grown up—an odd man who spends time in the wilderness eating locusts and telling those who would listen that they should prepare a way for the Lord.
We meet a young woman called Mary, and then her fiancé, Joseph, who are told that they, too, will become parents to a special child, despite the natural impossibility of what the angel is promising them.
On Christmas day, we meet the shepherds, the most ordinary of men, called to be the first visitors to the stable, who are followed 12 days later in the church calendar—but possibly several years later in the actual calendar—by the men from the east, following a star and bearing gifts for the king. Sadly for all school nativity plays, there is no biblical mention of an innkeeper, painted as an enterprising sort of man who kindly suggests that Mary and Joseph use the stable round the back of his inn.
That non-existent innkeeper does what all the others did—look for solutions. Where others could have said, “No thanks,” to what they were being asked to do and walked away, our cast of Christmas characters, after a moment or two of questioning and careful consideration, respond positively to the trust that is being placed in them and the gift that is being given to them, ridiculous, outrageous, dangerous and impossible though it sounds.
They are people whose faith and belief did not just comfort them and keep them safe but spurred them on to recognise and celebrate God in ordinary places and everyday people—people whose stories invite us to walk with them on a journey of hope, of joy, of peace. Enjoy the walk.