Christmas Day 2004 |
The massacre of the innocents, especially the children of Africa, by the horsemen of the Apocalypse, hunger, disease and war; fear in our streets about what extreme individuals might do armed with the latest in destructive technology; a decree gone out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should carry identity cards; and all the while astronomers scouring the heavens with the question “is there anybody there?”
It is remarkably like the first Christmas when so many of the characters in the story were “sore afraid”.
Fear is horribly disabling. Although it can alert us to the presence of danger, it can also dam up the expression of our human creativity, can frustrate the conception of the new world which God intends. Fear can poison our minds. If you go looking for enemies you will certainly find them in abundance. Herod was troubled and all Jerusalem with him.
God enters the scene not with oppressive power, demanding compulsory alleluias but in the baby of Bethlehem. In the power of the child to draw all eyes and to contain our hope for the future, Mary’s child invites us to emerge from our fear. Becoming a part of this story fills our lives with the hymn which begins St John’s gospel. “The light shineth in the darkness and the darkness comprehended it not.”
Fear of what is coming on the world is immobilising. Those who have a great deal to live with are often more fear-full than those who are poor. Those who study current trends and project them into the future are often with good reason gloomy. Our own Astronomer Royal has written a book about the human race in the 21st century entitled “Our Final Century” - worryingly without a question mark.
To some extent this is the product of the indigestion of the rich. Poor people and not least our brothers and sisters in our companion Church of Mozambique are often more hopeful. The Holy Child comes with infinite promise for those who are open enough and empty enough to receive him. As we look upon him and his mother Mary with the mind in the heart, as we contemplate the mystery of this new spring, this birth, this godsend we make room for wonder and we cry out with the poet Dean of St Paul’s, John Donne, that there is “Immensity cloysterd in thy deare wombe.”
God’s way of healing the world is quiet and un-constraining and works through those who are small enough and empty enough to receive him. As we become part of this story we learn that the very first step in becoming a human being is to refuse to be a little god. “Have this mind in you”, says St Paul, “which was also in Christ Jesus who being in the form of God made himself of no reputation and took upon him the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of man.” Jesus Christ is the human face of God. The way to participate in the life of God is to be like him.
But all the time we want to be godlike in a different way and to associate with the movers and shakers of the world. “He was in the world and the world was made by him and the world knew him not. He came unto his own and his own received him not.”
The past century has seen a savage persecution of faith. More Christians were martyred for their faith in the 20th century than in any century since the first Christmas. They died as victims to ideologies which aspired to edit God out of human life and to engineer a utopia in a laboratory atop a vast graveyard. While the persecutions of Hitler and Stalin were savage and have provoked a strong reaction, elsewhere the process has been more subtle and sustained.
The attempts to edit out the Christian resonances from our own culture, comic if they were not so serious, and even to purge Christ from Christmas are part of the subtle persecution. These efforts are certainly not supported by any of the other communities of faith. They wonder how we can genuinely respect them if we show so little respect to our own religious traditions. Here in London on the underground we are regularly warned to “mind the gap”. It is a good message as long as we realise that G A P stands for Great Amnesia Project in which we are being invited to forget the Christ story which lies at the heart of our civilisation.
After the unprecedented assault they faced in the 20th century from the isms, communism, colonialism, consumerism and fascism, some communities of faith are in trauma. But this morning we rejoice that in the midst of the darkness, savage and subtle, God visits us. Eyes are turned away scouring the heavens through telescopes asking “is there anybody there?, other eyes are turned into ourselves through microscopes. But we are here to thank God that his Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.
Anyone who hears this story and does not merely hear it but hears and becomes a bearer of the story and a participant in the action and event of the living and powerful Word of God, a person like that, is transformed. In this story we are not offered a description of how the world is and a tracing of some of the recurring pasterns of human existence, we are invited to behold his glory and to become part of the movement of glory which transforms this world.
The Christmas story is not merely to be heard with the ears and lodged in the mind, it is a living seed which brings fresh hope to birth in the spiritual heart. We are called to be bearers of this story and signs of hope in the world. As many as received him to them gave he power to become the children of God, even to them that believe on his name which were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man but of God.
This morning in place of fear, God offers hope; in place of force He offers suffering love, in place of darkness He offers the light of glory and in place of a dead and empty universe, He communicates and becomes the Word made flesh and dwelling in our midst. Thanks be to God.
