Sermons
Wednesday 25th December, Christmas Midnight Mass
John 1:1-14
by Revd Chris Palmer
I discovered a story in the middle of last year about a woman called Siwar who gave birth to her fifth child in Za’atari refugee camp in Jordan. Her previous four children had been born at home, surrounded by family. But Siwar was now a refugee from the Syrian conflict. She gave birth alone. The chance of her baby surviving were much lower in the squalor of the camp. Indeed, the chances that Siwar herself would survive childbirth, were much reduced. Maternal deaths are an uncounted war tragedy. Not killed by violence, women become pregnant because of a lack of contraception or because they are raped, and the risks from childbirth, already high, are enormously heightened by the lack of care and medical facilities in war zones.
Of course Siwar’s story was told by the journalist as an example, ‘in the flesh’, to the bigger story. Though, for Siwar, it was her own story that counted; she didn’t want to be an illustration of some more general point.
But when I read the story of Siwar, I am reminded of the way that the political realities of the first century shaped the birth of Jesus. If they had had newspapers in those days the main stories would have been about what we think is the ‘background’: the Roman occupation of Palestine; the Imperial order that a census be taken; and the megalomaniac King Herod, a client king of Rome, desperate to prop up his own power base.
The census forces Mary and Joseph to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem, where the only shelter they can find is with the animals; it’s no place to give birth. Later, King Herod’s paranoia, forces them to flee to Egypt, as refugees; the children Herod massacred weren’t even that lucky. Our Christmas celebrations can give the impression that the circumstances of Jesus’ birth were somehow particularly different and interesting. I suspect it’s really the opposite: Jesus’ birth would have served as a good illustration, an ‘in the flesh example’, of an all too common story.
The same probably goes for lots more that Jesus did. Lived in Nazareth, trained as a carpenter. Even when he left home and started preaching, he wouldn’t have been the only one; there were various wandering preachers, even would-be Messiahs. And his death was all too common too: crucifixion was the barbaric and sadistic punishment meted out by Roman rulers on scores of revolutionaries and runaway slaves, in an effort to deter others from the same path.
Jesus’ life scarcely rises above the ordinary. So it’s tempting to seek the points of uniqueness, the things that set this story apart: angelic visitations, a virgin mother, the journey of the Magi, the advent of God himself. After all, without these, why are we here? Why celebrate the birth of yet another peasant baby to an inappropriately young mother against the backdrop of political intrigue and callous authorities?
But I want us not to jump to what’s special too quickly. I said before that Siwar, the Syrian woman in a refugee camp, was an ‘in-the-flesh’ example that we can relate to. We use the phrase ‘in the flesh’ to talk about Jesus too: incarnation. We find it in tonight’s Gospel reading, ‘the Word was made flesh, and lived among us’. The significant starting point for Christians at Christmas is not that Jesus is different from the rest of us, but that he became like us: he was born a human being, lived among regular folk, shared human joy and pain, and died a human death. It’s even rather offensive to other people who’ve suffered to suggest that Jesus’ birth was particularly harsh or his death uniquely painful. We don’t need a set-aside, unique Jesus. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph shine a light on the vulnerability of many women in childbirth, of many babies lacking medical care, of many carers trying to hold together families in the face of political forces beyond their control, of countless displaced people wondering if they’ll ever go home. And tragically this Christmas, hearing about Herod’s murder of children in Bethlehem and the gunning down of 132 children in Peshawar provokes us to mourn for and hold in prayer the forgotten victims of violence against children in all the intervening centuries.
And for us, especially, it is good to call to mind these people. Because our situation pretty much is exceptional. Of course, there are problems in Britain today: poverty, homelessness, hunger, domestic abuse. But we live in a country where power changes hands through the ballot box, where women have professional medical care during childbirth, and cruel and unusual punishments are not allowed. We take these things for granted, but forget they are not the norms of our world or of history.
And if that is true, then our worship at Christmas must not become a form of escapism, a retreat from everyday but comfortable lives into a kind of magic-filled, candle-lit grotto decked out like, but nothing-like a stable. Jesus compels us to go from here to discover him in the many people like him in the world – and only then will we find him in the crib scene.
This is exactly the point that the poet Jessica Powers makes in a poem we used at our carol service. It has a last verse that makes it particularly appropriate for Midnight Mass too.
I went into the Christmas cave;
there was no Child upon the straw.
The ox and ass were all I saw.
I sought His stable where He gave
His goodness in the guise of bread.
Emptiness came to me instead.
Filled with my Father’s words, I cried
“Where have You hid Yourself?” and all
the living answered to my call.
I found Him (and the world is wide)
dear in His warm ubiquity.
Where heart beat, there was Christ for me.
I went back to the Christmas cave,
glad with the gain of everywhere.
And lo! the blessed Child was there.
Then at His feasting board He gave
embrace. He multiplied His good
and fed in me the multitude.
