These are my words for this evening and tonight, at The Marsh, Hope, and Leighton :-
The other day I was told the story of a nativity play that didn't quite go as planned. This particular nativity play didn’t involve primary school children but the church youth group. They’d been given the job of putting on a sort of living Christmas crib for the village. As people came through the doors of the church they could see Joseph, Mary and a number of angels all there in their proper places; it was a lovely and peaceful scene.
People came in and sat down, and revelled in the beauty of it all, as the evening began. The youth club leader began to read the story, while the other participants in the nativity made their entrances. Sadly though, things started to go wrong when the shepherds came in. Most church youth groups include a few pious and holy young people, and two of these were playing the parts of Mary and Joseph, creating just the right impression as they gazed earnestly at the manger, from which a light was shining. Someone had had the lovely idea of placing a lamp in the straw of the manger, and the light glowed like a halo where the baby was lying.
But most church youth groups also include a less reverent fringe, some of whom had been drafted in as shepherds; one of them, who fancied himself as a comedian, said to the lad playing Joseph in a loud stage whisper: "Well, Joe me old mate, that's a cute little kid you've got there; are you going to stand us all a pint then, to wet baby's head?" This remark didn't so much break the solemn spell of the occasion as completely explode it. Even pious Mary and Joseph began to quake as they tried not to laugh, and the chief angel, a large girl who was standing rather precariously on a chair behind them, shook so hard with laughter that she toppled right over. Down she came, taking the backdrop curtain and most of the rest of the props with her. Having knocked over two shepherds on the way down - as I say, she was a big girl - she rolled around on the floor heaving with laughter, leaving the whole stage in a complete shambles.
As the congregation recovered from the shock, they could see that the only thing still standing in all that chaos was the manger, from which the light continued to shine. And I hope that maybe they were reminded of what St John wrote in chapter 1 of his Gospel: 'The light shines on, and the darkness has not overcome it.'
Tonight we celebrate Christ the light of the world, Christ who enters the shambles of our world, and continues to shine in all the mess we make of things. We celebrate the God who doesn't leave us to it, but enters our messed-up world to transform it, and us, life by life and heart by heart; we celebrate the fact that here in a tiny baby Divine and human paths cross and engage. In the infant Jesus God's unending and unchanging love, the love which has been there from the very beginning of time, is made flesh among us.
I was with one of the choirs I sing with in a local residential home for their carol service. In a break between carols one of the ladies there started to sing the old Sunday school song 'Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.' 'That's not a Christmas carol, dear,' someone told her. But in fact that little song takes us right to the heart of what Christmas is really all about. Karl Barth, one of the greatest Bible scholars of the last century, was once asked after a lecture, 'Of all the theological insights you've ever had, which do you consider was the greatest of them all?" And Dr Barth, the writer of so many deep and learned books, simply smiled and repeated those same old Sunday school words: "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so."
And that’s the whole point of Christmas; to celebrate the start of the greatest love story ever. We're reminded that the fact that God loves us takes precedence over all the other stuff people find in the Bible: the commandments and rules we’re supposed to keep, and the penalties we face when we don’t manage to. Of course, the rules are important, and of course God does judge us, and judgement is the big theme of Advent, the weeks that lead up to Christmas.
But on this holy night we are recalled to the simple truth that God loves us. God must be angered and distressed by the mess we make of the world he made, and appalled at the reality of human sin; but his response to the mess we make is one of love; he longs to forgive our sin and to heal our hearts. And so in the darkness of this night, and in the darkness of human sin, a child is born and a son is given, and a new light is lit in little Bethlehem. At Christmas the way of God intersects decisively with our own human lives and their journeys; tonight we affirm the intensity with which God never ceases to love us.
The wonder of Christmas is how small God makes himself, and how vulnerable he becomes. This child is born with nothing guaranteed, to humble parents far from home, and in nothing better than a stable. Imagine that child, laid in a manger, with his parents anxiously watching his little face, listening for his breathing, like any set of new parents. Remember how different the real stable must have been from the clean and glittery cribs that feature on our Christmas cards; remember that any real ox and ass that might have been there will have been every bit as smelly as donkeys and cattle generally are.
This child once grown will call himself 'Son of Man', which means everyman, or any man. He’s born to be one of us, but we also call him Prince of Peace; prince of a peace much deeper and purer than when the guns fall silent on a battlefield - though thank God that sometimes at least that also happens at Christmas. The peace this Child brings is a peace that’s born only in the individual human heart, born when I myself realise that God loves and accepts me just as I am. Then a journey in me begins in which God makes of me more than I ever dreamt I could be. This isn’t a love story to take away the world’s pain and tragedy, it won’t remove in one fell swoop the hurt and sorrow of our lives; but tonight God enters our story to live it with us, and in Bethlehem love divine intersects with our world of shame and waste.
Wherever we are in life, and whatever turmoil there may be in our own hearts, or in the world around us; however lost, faithless or sinful we may be, the God who is love divine and light for the world never ceases to love us, to love me and you, and to desire us and to seek us. Celebrate and sing that love not only at Christmas, but in all the living of our lives, and celebrate the light which cannot be extinguished, that will shine on, however dark and unloving and fearful the world about us may seem to be; and may God's blessing be in our hearts and homes, and with all whom we love this Christmas night and always!
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