Sermon Christmas Eve 2014
Bath Abbey
Monty the Penguin vs the Baby Jesus. ‘It’s no contest really in the battle for hearts, minds and wallets this Christmas,’ writes Simon Kelner in the Independent. He goes on, ‘it’s not a wholly facetious comparison as both are being used to sell us something this Christmas. Monty is the ubiquitous star of the John Lewis TV advert – never knowingly unsentimental – while a giggling baby Jesus appears on our screens to promote the spiritual rather than the material aspect of Christmas in the church’s campaign which has the simple but striking message, Christmas starts with the power of love.’
In comparison to many others, the number of people who follow me on Twitter is modest and the number of people I follow is even more modest but I remain a convert because every now and then I experience a tweet as pure gift – ‘its time to allow the possibility of Christmas again,’ Simon Parke tweeted a couple of weeks ago, ‘I see the lights in the windows and hear quiet angels call, I rise and follow the star.’
The possibility of Christmas – Is it Monty the penguin or Baby Jesus? If that is the question, then the problem for me is that neither really provide the answer. Yes, of course, the real Christmas story begins with a baby and as it unfolds it is unsurprisingly accompanied by a little bit of razzmatazz and a sprinkling of fairy dust – the star, the angels and the celestial choir – recognised ways for the authors of the bible to say, ‘God is in all of this.’ But the story is not like Monty the Penguin, cuddly and cute – the Christmas story of the baby Jesus has about it more than a whiff of scandal.
God comes into human history completely helpless, as a new born, and was laid in a feeding trough. Consider in what splendour God might have come, but instead God slipped unobtrusively into a small province far from the seat of earthly power, born to a young couple, unwed or only recently married. No elaborate preparations were made for the birth. God was born on the road. The crib was a feeding trough, and those who came to visit were the outcast shepherds, not the powerful and well to do Kings. By coming into human history in this way, God identified with the powerless, the oppressed, the poor and the homeless.
So the possibility of Christmas is that the love expressed in the birth of this vulnerable child can offer hope to a broken world. The vision that Isaiah puts before us epitomises that hope. His vision is stark and poignant and deeply challenging for our own times where violence continues to walk the streets of Syria, Northern Iraq and Ukraine and where terror is etched in blood in the classrooms of Peshawar in Pakistan and in Gumsuri village in Northern Nigeria. ‘All the boots of the tramping warriors and all the garments rolled in blood shall be burned as fuel for the fire’, proclaims the prophet. ‘ For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders and he is named, wonderful counsellor, mighty God, everlasting father, prince of peace.
The birth of the Christ child opens up the possibility of a new world order under God’s just and gentle rule. The possibility of Christmas is that in this child, and more particularly in the man he grew up to be, there is the power of God to bring light into our darkness and there is the promise that God has not forgotten us or abandoned us to the brokenness that we have created. There is a place even for the shepherds, so often despised and forgotten; there is hope for those who are oppressed by poverty, loneliness, grief and mental illness, who so often feel excluded; and dignity is restored to the least, the last and the lost in our communities and in our world
I see the lights in the windows and hear quiet angels call; I rise and follow the star because I still believe in the possibility of Christmas and in God’s invitation on this wonder filled night to you and to me to share in that miracle of love, born on that cold, dark night which has the capacity to change lives and change communities. The Christmas story which begins with the baby Jesus is not like Monty the penguin, never knowingly unsentimental; it is not, nor should it be a safe, comfortable story through which we escape from reality; it is rather a story of truth and hope, where the faithfulness of God breaks into the ordinary and where we are invited to consider how God continues to intervene in the day to day stuff of our communities and our world through acts of kindness, love and justice, and through life changing moments of forgiveness, hope and reconciliation.
God who comes to us in the time of dearth and in the time of feasting,
in the time of anxiety and in the time of opportunity,
in the hour of loss, and in the hour of generosity,
in the day of chaos, and in the day of renewal,
God who comes to us in the day of powerlessness, and in the day we witness to a grace and love that is not our own –
be revealed to us NOW as light and hope and truth
that whatever the future brings, your love may transform, your peace may grow,
your joy inspire and your trust in us and in the world be known at last by all people
So may your Christmas be a very happy and peace filled one, but may it also last beyond these few days of celebration. Monty the penguin has probably had his day in the sun, but this old, old story of the baby Jesus which has drawn us here tonight has the potential to go on giving to us and to our broken world. It invites us to stop for a moment and reflect again on what it might mean for God’s love, so real and so tangible in the beauty and vulnerability of this child, to warm our hearts, so that we become more loving, more forgiving, more patient and more hopeful than before, for the truth is that if we can let in the light just a little in our lives, others will catch something of its warmth and brightness and their lives will be changed too.
It’s time to allow the possibility of Christmas again. I see the lights in the windows and hear quiet angels call. I rise and follow the star!
+Peter Taunton