Sermons
Midnight Mass 2013
Revd Kate Tuckett
John 1:1-14
There’s a certain kind of Christmas snobbery of which every year I seem to fall more foul. It’s the sort that, having ventured into Centre Court one Saturday afternoon in mid-December can’t quite cope with the whole experience and so goes round proclaiming in a scrooge-like manner that it’s so consumerist. So crass. So unnecessary. Promising that next year one will do it differently and somehow more appropriately and better, while all the time getting as sucked into the commercial frenzy as ever.
But I’m not sure that cynicism any more of a helpful response to Christmas than consumerism. Giving gifts; sending cards; cheesy music; Secret Santas; Christmas jumpers and decorations; office parties where you really wish you hadn’t had that final glass of wine and said that horribly embarrassing thing to the head of sales; that terrible mincemeat dish no one’s quite got the heart to say that they really don’t like -- none of these are bad things in themselves. Indeed many of them may be very good things.
‘So here it is Merry Christmas. Everybody’s having fun.’ Festivities and parties and generosity in the bleak mid-winter are things to be celebrated. Fun is undoubtedly a good thing. Except that I’m not sure that as humans we have unlimited capacities for fun. Just as we can only consume so much rich food and drink before we start to feel sick, so we reach our limits with fun.
And what does Christmas say to those who are not having fun? As we are whipped up into a frenzy of merriment, it seems that happiness is compulsory until we put away the decorations and the life gets back to normal. But when love has gone cold, or the security of the job we’ve done for the last 30 years has disappeared, or the doctor’s face says it all, then the instruction to be happy may be very hard to bear.
For all of us, I suspect, in some way the anticipation and romance and magic of how we are told Christmas should be does not always measure up to how it really is. And as we gather here in a candle-lit church, and listen to ancient readings of hope and promise, I suspect that for one reason or another, we are all here because we long for something different, something more, for a deeper magic.
The story of what happened at Christmas is a very commonplace one. It’s a story of a baby born, as thousands were born that day and thousands will be born today and tomorrow. Yet somehow in the story of that birth comes a little flickering light in a lot of darkness. It’s a story so far from centre stage that we have to search diligently to find it. It’s a story of word made flesh, of God being born. But God overturns everything we have been waiting for. God doesn’t arrive in clouds of glory, but rather in ways that were unrecognised and insignificant. Look in the wrong places and we never know that it happened. Yet the stories tell us that those who stumble across the right place find more than they ever imagined.
The problem with the artificial glare of the commercial Christmas is not necessarily that we eat too much or spend too much money, but that we miss the light. Blink and we miss it entirely. Light is not something that see in itself. We only see the things that it lights up – a reflection, a darkened room, a smile on a lined face that we can see has known too much pain. We need the darkness to see the light.
And clearing space from all the bright and noisy and glittery things that bombard us in December but throughout the year is a discipline and may be an uncomfortable discipline. The darkness of cosy crib scenes on our Christmas cards, of a good night’s sleep when we’re exhausted, of lovers holding hands is a friendly, welcome, romantic kind of darkness. But this is not a darkness where we need light to come. There’s another kind of darkness that is a fearful darkness, a darkness where things happen to us beyond our control, and a darkness we sometimes lead ourselves into, darkness where we look back and wish we could reverse what we’ve done, darkness where we have to confront the bad choices we’ve made, when we hurt ourselves and one another and have to live with the consequences of our actions.
Throughout Advent we’ve heard the language of wilderness and still it is in the darkness, this place on the edge, this liminal, threshold space, far away from all the action that we can hear and see Christ. If we can step away from the bright lights of Centre Court, and find and name and darkness, if we can enter right into the depths of our own humanity then we may find that we may meet Christ, and be known and loved and transformed.
And if we can go to this place where we can see the light probably won’t be a lot of fun and we might not feel very much happiness. It’s likely to take patience and not a lot may immediately happen when we get there. But Christmas speaks to not of happiness but of joy. Christmas does not say to us ‘don’t worry, be happy.’ The constant refrain is ‘fear not, rejoice.’
It’s sometimes helpful for us to remember that the Bible wasn’t written in English. Just as we have two words for happiness and joy, so does the Greek. Happiness, in Greek, is akin to the freedom from material worries enjoyed by the rich, but it comes and goes along with our circumstances. Joy is what ancient writers saw as ‘the good mood of the soul’. Joy finds its fulfilment in God, and its opposite is not sorrow, but fear. Fear not, rejoice. We hear this spoken by the angel to a terrified Mary, overwhelmed by the enormity of what will be asked of her. We hear it spoken to bewildered shepherds minding their own business and their flocks by night. We may hear it whispered to us as we enter into wherever our darkness is. Do not fear, rejoice.
This story that we do not have to be governed by fear, of love born among us is in itself astonishingly good news. But I believe that it tells us more than this – it tells us that we are capable of giving love and of relieving others from fear. Because this story of God born among us puts an end to notions of a distant kind of God, something outside of us, but places God firmly in our midst, every human face becoming an icon and sacrament of Christ. In our humanity we all have the capacity to be Christ-like.
The word become flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth. This is what incarnation, of God in human form, is. So can I see God in you? And will I allow you to see God in me?
Will I respect you as made in the image of God and not as the image of myself and of what you can do for me? Will I beware of the temptation to manipulate you so that I batter you with my demands or force my expectations upon you, or influence you so that you feel bound to act in a way that you know you will please me? Will I accept you as you really are, in your humanity? Will I be content to stand alongside you in your littleness and your weakness and your darkness? And more difficult still, am I willing to step into the darkness, to a place where I may know the light, to allow myself to be beloved there and allow myself to be Christ to you?
Can we live as if the story were really true?
Christ is born, Emmanuel, God with us. But the story does not finish here. The very last words of Jesus upon his ascension, according to Matthew’s gospel are these: ‘I will be with you always.’ God is with us. God has no power but the power of human love, as fleeting as a smile, as transitory as a kind word, as fragile as a baby. And so as we contemplate the manger scene, whether this time will be ecstatically happy or devastatingly sad, in one sense that doesn’t give or take anything from the promise of Christmas -- that it is in our humanity, in the round of our daily, ordinary lives with all their joys and all their pain, that we are made to give and receive love. This ancient story is waiting to be discovered and re-discovered and when we do this, something of glory may be born, and every day is Christmas.
A poem by U A Fanthorpe:
BC:AD
This was the moment when Before
Turned into After, and the future's
Uninvented timekeepers presented arms.
This was the moment when nothing
Happened. Only dull peace
Sprawled boringly over the earth.
This was the moment when even energetic Romans
Could find nothing better to do
Than counting heads in remote provinces.
And this was the moment
When a few farm workers and three
Members of an obscure Persian sect
Walked haphazard by starlight straight
Into the kingdom of heaven.
Notes:
This sermon uses material from the following resources:
Dennis, T. (2012), God in Our Midst, London: SPCK, pp12-13
De Waal, E. (1984), Seeking God, Norwich: Canterbury Press, pp104-105
Draper, B. (2012), Advent e-mail series (quoting Anne Robertson)
Wild Goose Worship Group, Cloth for the Cradle (2000), Glasgow: Wild Goose Publications, pp92-93
