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Sermon for Christmas Morning

“For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour,
who is Christ the Lord”

In the gentle quiet of Christmas morn, heedless of the wind and weather, we hear of the simple birth of Christ, laid in manger in Bethlehem “because there was no room for them in the inn,” where Mary, like so many mothers over so many millennia, “brought forth her first-born son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes”. So common, so touching. Yet, the real meaning and significance of this birth is not first made known in Bethlehem and not by man or woman. No. It is an Angel’s word to “shepherds abiding in the field” in the surrounding countryside.

The symbolism is profound and speaks, I think, to the question about what it means to be Christian in a post-Christian and a post-secular world. It does not mean huddling in the ghettoes of our minds or in the various conventicles of self-righteous sanctity. Such are really only other forms of nihilism in a world that refuses to address the wonder of Christmas. The wonder of Christmas is about the mystery of God, on the one hand, and the mystery of our humanity embraced by God, on the other hand; in short, the mystery of the Incarnation.

We can make little sense of Christmas beyond the acquisitive madness of consumer culture and the syrupy sentimentalism that attends it and manipulates us. We can make little sense of Christmas because we are busy about everything except the mystery of God. And without that, the mystery of the Word made flesh, the mystery of God with us, makes little sense. How, then, to recapture for our hearts and minds the mystery of Christmas?

Theology is a wilderness affair. Advent has been very much about the wilderness of human darkness and sin to which comes the redeeming Word of God. But on Christmas morn, in what is sometimes known as the Christmas Mass of the Angels, we are, at least in the imaginative power of the Gospel, in the wilderness with Shepherds. Only with Angels and Shepherds can we make our journey to Bethlehem. Only by way of an Angel’s word.

And what is that word? “Fear not,” the Angel says. That should alert us, awaken us to what is wonderful and terrifying. “The angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them” and, as Luke tells us, “they were sore afraid.” Through such imagery we are made aware of something beyond the ordinary, something greater and more powerful than what we can possibly imagine. It is, perhaps, one of the first things that set us on the path to God, the awareness of the awesomeness of God. “The glory of the Lord shone round about them,” but the first reaction is not delight but fear. This heightens even more the significance of the Angel’s word, “Fear not.” Something is being shown and communicated to us. And as if to bookend this encounter, one might recall the word of the Angel to the women coming to the tomb of Jesus on Easter morning, who says “be not afraid.”

To counter their fear, the Angel proceeds to open us out to joy and delight, to the mystery which is to be revealed, seen and touched as it were, in the city of David. “For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord.” Notice that this all happens in the surrounding countryside. Notice, too, the further description of what they shall find there, namely, “a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger” who is “a sign” of the presence of “a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord.” And suddenly the Shepherds find themselves in a greater company, “a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, Glory to God in the highest,/ And on earth peace, good will toward men.” And we haven’t left the fields! Notice, too, that these “good tidings of great joy” are to “be for all people.”

We are still in the wilderness in the company of Shepherds and Angels hearing about the mystery of God’s engagement with our humanity. What we hear will compel us to Bethlehem. In other words, we will only make the Christmas journey if we hear in our hearts and think in our minds the wonder of God and the wonder of God with us.

What all does it mean? In a word, love. The love of God for our humanity, without which we are nothing and nothing worth. In Charles William’s supernatural mystery thriller, The Greater Trumps, there is a wonderful scene on Christmas morn in Church, where, as unlikely as it might seem, the choir is singing antiphonally the Athanasian Creed – O, I wish! Beyond the power of the music, there is the dawning awareness of the Christmas mystery captured in the phrase that “God and man is one in Christ; One, not by the conversion of the Godhead into flesh but by the taking of manhood into God.” Such is salvation and such is the love of God revealed in the mystery of Christmas. “In this was manifested the love of God towards us, because that God sent his only-begotten Son into the world that we might live through him.”

We have to think God and to think God with us. If it seems strange to have mentioned the rather intellectually demanding Athanasian Creed, let me compound the strangeness by recalling the first article of the Thirty-Nine Articles which express the classical and catholic understanding of the mystery of God without which we can make no sense of the mystery of Christmas.

“There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body, parts, or passions; of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness; the Maker, and Preserver of all things both visible and invisible,” it begins, expressing cogently the understanding of God that belongs to Jews, Christians and Muslims and the ancient philosophers of Antiquity to boot, an understanding which is there for us to reclaim and recover. It goes on to proclaim the distinctive Christian mystery. “And in unity of this Godhead there be three Persons, of one substance, power, and eternity; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”

Christmas celebrates God’s engagement with our humanity. Christian faith is about that engagement with our world in all of its confusions and follies. We cannot retreat into the ghettoes of our minds. Christianity especially is born in the convergence of the intellectual and spiritual cultures of Jewish religion, Greek philosophy and Roman Law. There is a journey of the mind and soul to Bethlehem and from Bethlehem; that journey is about thinking the mystery of God and the mystery of God with us; mysteries which challenge every age and every culture. It is what we are given to celebrate by an Angel’s word.

“For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour,
who is Christ the Lord”

Fr. David Curry
Christmas Morning
December 25th, 2014