I
wonder which you prefer – travelling or arriving? Hope or
fulfillment?Christmas Eve or Christmas Day?
I’m
very much a Christmas Eve person. I love this blend of candles and
stars, of gentle music sounding across the years, connecting me with
the long-gone celebrations of my childhood (when, it seemed to me,
Christmas really only began on Christmas Eve so that all that fervour
of expectant longing was crammed into one day, and one holy
night)..The thrill of being old enough to stay up for Midnight
Mass...Of going out into the darkness knowing it was finally
Christmas Day
Alright.
That suggests that maybe I just love both.
I’m
a Christmas junkie – and there is nowhere I’d rather be tonight
than right here at this moment.
But
I wonder if there’s anything to learn from how we feel about those
two states of being.
IS
travelling hopefully always better than arriving?
I’m
sure it didn’t feel that way for Mary, on that dark night in a
crowded city.
She
will have longed to arrive – and for her baby to arrive too.
And
I wonder, too, how it felt to God then.
The
moment of Christ’s birth, the
climax of history... the fulfillment of the plan which
St John unfolds for us
In
the beginning was the Word
God
waiting for
the right moment
to become flesh and step into human
history
to transform it by his presence forever.
It
was a messy place to be, that
world God loved.
It
still is.
A
place of violence, poverty and oppression.
A
place where cold rejection is part of the deal, both for exiles in an
unfriendly world and still, each day, for God’s
Son
“He
came to his own and his own people would not receive him”
A
hostile landscape
A
place where despite all our best intentions, we won’t manage the
“perfect” Christmas…
I’m
struck by how many clergy are battling with huge issues in the lives
of their families, or
facing serious illness in
this week of all weeks when they were planning to share in joyous
Christmas worship...and I know too many families where an empty chair
at the Christmas table will leave this season overshadowed by grief.
Perfection
just doesn’t happen because
we live in a real world that is light years away from that offered by
the media – or even by our Christmas carols.
“Away
in a manger” we sing – and in four words consign the Christ-child
to a place of stained-glass unreality, safely at arms’ length from
our own everyday experience. This baby is not even allowed to cry!
Nothing must spoil the photo-shopped illusion of the moment.
Small
wonder, if that’s what we offer, that people struggle to make a
connection between that baby and their own mundane, often messy,
lives.
Truthfully,
if all we have to offer as a faith is
those moments, it is unsurprising that many
people
feel they can do quite nicely without it, thank you.
So,
let me direct you to another carol (one we’ve sung tonight?) which
sees things a bit differently.
“Oh
holy child of Bethlehem, descend on us we pray
Cast
out our sin and enter in BE BORN IN US TODAY”
In
the first century of the church, a theologian named Irenaeas
put the
same message
very well
“He
became what we are, to make us what he is”
God
became one of us, the Word made flesh in
our broken grieving word,
so that we can
see what God’s
life
of perfect love is
like, and seeing it, join in.
HERE
is
the destination to which tonight’s
hopeful
travelling must
bring us . Here
and nowhere else..
“We
have seen his glory” - and, glimpsing that,
are transformed
into a new
humanity.
“children
born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of
man, but of God.”
Imagine
that made good in our lives.
The
light of God’s love shining in even the saddest, darkest places.
Imagine
Jesus born in us, and living among us daily.
Imagine
a community transformed...and little by little, reaching out to
change the world.
In
a few minutes he will come to us in the Sacrament of bread and
wine,- a gift that is part of the process of transformation as we
pray
“O
come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel”
May
the light of his presence shine in and through us, this Christmas and
always.
Be fair - Away in a Manger is pretty gruesome, but that last line: "fit us for heaven, to live with thee there!" - that, after all, is what it's all about, really!
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