Saturday, December 07, 2013

The Nativity According to Chocolate

An updated version of a talk I posted a few years back, in case anyone is a bit stuck for Christmas talks. It all depends on which of the chocolates/sweets you can get hold of, or which ones people will recognise, there's probably 3-4 too many here anyway.

Apologies in advance for the presence of a couple of Nestle products in the list, I'm sure it works just as well without them. I usually introduce it by talking about chocolate advent calendars, and that even if chocolate and sweets took over Christmas entirely, God's story would still be hidden in there. Then if you've got all the chocolates laid out in the right order, the script almost looks after itself:

A long time ago, God made the Galaxy,
Beautiful, rich, wonderful
And filled it with people, people he made, people he loved, people like you and me, people who were all special to him.
But the people decided they didn’t want to be in God’s Club, they wanted to have their own, without God. That’s a bit like trying to sing with no tune. And everything started to go wrong
Really really Rocky.
Suffering, pain, loneliness, bullying, violence, death
Because we’d chosen our way instead of God’s way
Everything just got really Haribo (horrible)
So to give them a Boost
God promised that things would change.
One day a special person would come and start to put things right.

Many years later, a young woman was FRIGHTENED OUT OF HER WITS
When an angel suddenly turned up
The Angel wondered if he Malteser fear (‘might ease her’) Don’t be scared he said, You’re going to have a son, the Son of God, call him Jesus
A name that means he’ll save people, he’ll make them friends with God again.
And though Joseph, her fiancĂ©e, was a bit confused, he was a good egg, you couldn’t hope to meet a Kinder man, so he decided to look after Mary, and God’s baby.

So the story goes that Mary and Joseph travelled to Bethlehem
(Mary was heavily pregnant, and Joseph wondered if she’d Flake out on the journey)
Joseph tried to find a place werther could have the baby.
The innkeeper didn’t have any rooms, but he was able to Lindor manger and some straw.
In those days, people often lived in a house with a split floor, animals on the lower level, people on the next, so maybe the innkeeper let them into his home. We don’t know what sort of animals were there, whether there was a Kit Kat, but by morning there was Jesus Nestleing in his mothers arms.

All sorts of strange visitors started to turn up.
Up on the hillside, the kind of place where banditS nicker sheep or two, there were shepherds watching over the flock at night.

they were looking up at the Milky Way, when a strange light appeared in the sky.
The light got nearer and nearer, brighter and brighter
then suddenly what they thought was a star burst into song
a choir of heavenly minstrels praising God in Celebration

the angels said go and see God’s promised saviour
Tell everyone, don’t Wispa, shout it out, God is here.
So straight as an Aero they headed for Bethlehem to find Jesus.
And they were there in a Jaffa

Further away, some wise men were also looking at the sky: the planets Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, and they decided to tracker 'n object that had appeared in the sky  and started moving in a strange way.
In the ancient world, all the planets stood for something: Jupiter was the ‘king star’, and at the time of the birth of Jesus, Jupiter appeared in the night sky very close to Saturn, which represented Israel. If you were reading the sky you’d see ‘new king in Israel’.

So the kings packed up their bounty – presents for the new king
And came to see Jesus. They didn’t find him at king Herods palace,
But those wise men were smarties, they didn’t give up
And when they found Jesus they brought out their Kingsize gifts, no Twix, just treats:
Gold for a king, incense for worship, myrrh for death.

And here’s the Crunch ie
The baby Jesus is the Son of God, sent by God into the world
He is Divine, in human wrapping.
God’s gift to you: but you can only taste how good the gift is if you unwrap it.


I hope you do choose to unwrap the gift, choose Jesus, but in the end, it’s your selection.

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