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Five years ago on Christmas Eve, I was preaching at midnight mass in St Paul's Cathedral in Dundee. It was a large congregation of regular and irregular members to whom I addressed the rhetorical question:
I wonder who among us was once a shepherd?

There was a look of puzzlement on the faces of those who had gathered. Dundee, a city famed for jam, jute and journalism, does not enjoy a reputation for animal husbandry, and most sheep within the urban precincts appear lifeless and segmented in butcher's shops.

So then I asked:
I wonder who among us was once a wise man?

...and there was a gradual dawning of clarity as to what I was gettimg at. This became transparent
in an outburst of laughter when I asked who had once been the hind legs of the donkey.

For many people, their introduction to the Christmas story will have been through taking part as a child in a school or church nativity play – an annual event where few of the audience hear everything that is said, but everybody remembers the mistakes. Maybe this explains the origin of the phrase, 'Christmas is a time for the children.'

The irony of it all is that there are no children with leading roles in the Christmas story. Jesus was not born in a kindergarden surrounded by infants wearing their father's dressing gown or their mother's tea towels.

Most of the main players are old – Elizabeth, Zechariah, Simeon and Anna have their elderly status clearly underscored in the Bible. The Shepherds would not be toddlers; and the wise men wouldn't be wise unless they were old. In these days wisdom did not come through attaining a Ph.D in your mid-twenties.

The Christmas story is, rather, about God expecting older people to enable a new and surprising thing to happen.

I saw this truth alive and well last week when I visited a Roman Catholic church hall which has become the welcome centre for Syrian refugees. Most of the those helping out were retired, none had experience of relating to Arabic speaking Moslems before. But like the people in the nativity story they felt somehow summoned to welcome and enable a new thing to happen.

So if you once were a shepherd or an angel or even the hind legs of the donkey, don't let Christmas simply be a time for regression therapy.....particularly when now as always, God is looking for older people to be the midwives of the new things that need to happen.

First broadcast 24 December 2015

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