Christmas Morning in Southwell Minster 2017
Christmas Morning in Southwell Minster 2017
Isaiah 9v2-7 and Luke 2v1-20
The angel said to the shepherds, ‘Do not be afraid, for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all the people.”
What kind of joy are we meant to experience at Christmas? Nearly every seasonal greeting we extend or receive suggests that the surest way to enter into the Feast which is Christmas is to be joyful, happy or merry. It is some relief that the familiar carols help to clarify the grounds for our joy and steer us away from the pressure to pretend all is well.
The joy of the angels had nothing to do with the size of the turkey, the content of Christmas stockings, or the number of people around the meal table.
First century Palestine contained all the barely supressed tensions and fears that are experienced in that region today. Joseph is compelled to take his heavily pregnant young wife to an overcrowded town that was his ancestral home, but there are no longer any relatives left to take them in.
A census was an instrument of oppression for the purpose of assessing taxes, and let’s be clear: no one found that they got a rebate; land and property was seized without right to appeal, and people were displaced simply to demoralize them into submission.
This young couple are moving like tiny pawns at the whim of a world power whose prime weapon was to diminish the dignity of their enemies by exerting unrivalled supremacy.
Yet most Roman Emperors were deeply insecure; their fortunes could be as perilous as a Premiership Football manager. Citizens of the Republic of Rome had unparalleled rights in the ancient world. So if the person you’d put on a pedestal didn’t meet your expectations you’d find someone else who could promise to make Rome Great Again.
But the story we remember and celebrate today is not the glory of Rome or any other aspiring empire before or since, it’s the story of a poor couple from Nazareth giving birth to a child in Bethlehem. Joy to the world! In spite of the heavy-handed politics of power the gracious-hand of God is at work writing a different story. That Caesar Augustus thought he was in control was a delusion. The accidental events of history become acts of divine destiny: a new ruler was to come out of Bethlehem and only a governmental decree puts the parents in the right place.
A king had been born, coming in under the radar, defying the human distortion of power and prestige. The cries of a baby coming from a feeding trough in the backstreets of Bethlehem are the source of our world’s greatest joy. And his rule will be utterly different:
“…the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”
Joy to the world the Lord has come, let earth receive her King! You see, we should celebrate Christmas with the greatest joy because we can be citizens of a kingdom that is defined not by boundaries and borders, or passports that are blue or maroon.
Whatever we may feel about Brexit the sense of our national identity should not be dependent on the size of our economy or the extent of our military, of trade deals and trade-offs, or even on our sporting ambitions at the crease. Of course these things matter to varying extents, but our standing as a nation should arise from a more noble vision: to display the values of a society that has been continually reformed over the centuries on the bedrock of Christendom.
We value a freedom that does not overthrow mutual responsibility and care for the poor. And we value a tolerance that does not create its own tyranny in a rancorous pursuit to eliminate disagreement or dissent.
True respect grows in a climate where we are not overly defended, but where we can engage with the tangle and mess that is the real world all around us, and if we’re truly honest is also the reality within us. We see our need for a Saviour.
Jesus came to remove every wall of hostility and destructive boundaries separating us from one another and from God. True joy comes from a deeply settled sense of love and belonging that we find in families and friendships, and can exist between communities and nations. It’s also where the greatest joy and pain will be found.
So our world in 2018 needs a robust theology of sin and redemption, forgiveness and restoration. Christendom alone holds the story that unites these themes, not as an exclusive possession but as a gift. Let’s have confidence in this gift which is not ourselves but Christ Jesus our Lord.
This shouldn’t narrow in any way our vision of life but compel us to face outwards to the beauty and brokenness all around. The grace and truth of Christ is expressed in welcome to the stranger, kindness to the poor, justice for the oppressed, love for our enemies, and hospitality to our neighbour in need, from the oldest to the very youngest.
And I want to pay special tribute today to the 55,000 families across the UK who will be sharing their Christmas with children they are fostering, including over 10k spending their first Christmas in care. Yet we’re still 6000 short of the number required to make room for every child in need of a secure and safe home in which to be loved and nurtured.
It was the stirring of Christian reformers in the 19th and early 20th Centuries that laid the foundations for a revolution in welfare: with people like Dr Barnardo and Nottingham’s own Catherine and William Booth.
The personal faith and values that inspired their courageous actions are not universally applauded today, and neither are they consistently displayed by every nation thought to be Christian. But they are the way of Christ and those who seek to follow him across the world.
Christendom unites people across boundaries of race, culture, gender and generation, where belonging to Christ and his kingdom transforms your commitment to all human flourishing. When I speak to young people across our diocese I hear a new passion being awakened and it fills me with great hope for the church and society. So I close with the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer writing from his prison cell at Christmas in 1943:
“Joy to the world! Anyone for whom this sound is foreign, or who hears in it nothing but weak enthusiasm, has not yet really heard the gospel....All over the world today people are asking: Where is the path to joy? The church of Christ answers loudly: Jesus is our joy. Joy to the world!”
On this basis alone we may wish one another a very Happy and Joyous Christmas! Amen.
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