“For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour,
who is Christ the Lord”
All the fuss and rush and busyness of this time of year, it seems to me, cannot hide the real wonder and mystery of Christmas. Somehow, it breaks through even in a world that is torn and divided, religiously and politically, socially and economically. It is easy, of course, to be cynical and despairing about Christmas, to see it as overly commercialized and caramelized with sentimentality and hype. No doubt, it is. And no doubt, too, some of us can’t wait until all the fuss and bother is over and done with for another year. Throw out the tinsel with the tree!
And yet, there are “the hopes and fears of all the years” that are found even in the busyness of the season. There are the hopes and desires of our humanity for peace and joy, the hopes and aspirations for truth and righteousness in a world that seems, at times, so false and frightening, so dark and disturbing. There is much, no doubt, that distresses and perplexes. And yet, the strong notes of something more make their presence felt in story and song, if we would but sit and listen. There are the things that abide even in the passing of the season. They are about the things of God with us. Emmanuel means God with us.
“For unto you is born this day,” St Luke proclaims with a kind of excitement and urgency, “a Saviour who is Christ the Lord.” It is a remarkable statement. It opens us out to hope and joy, to something more beyond the depressing realities of our daily lives.
It is the burden of the Christian witness to proclaim Messiah’s birth, to celebrate “the Word made flesh”. It is the message of the season of Christmas, to be sure, but one which connects with those universal “hopes and fears” in human hearts and gives them voice and meaning, allows them to take flesh, as it were, and live in us. Peace and joy, truth and righteousness are not empty words and meaningless concepts. No. They are the ideals that dignify and adorn our humanity, ideals that challenge and convict our hearts. The things that abide are the things that won’t go away. Perhaps we need the crazy business of the Christmas season to remind us, yet again, of the things which really matter, the things which abide even in the face of our distracted and weary busyness.
“O weary, weary is the world, /But here the world’s desire” as G.K. Chesterton puts it in a lovely poem, A Christmas Carol. Somehow what we truly seek may be found in the things that are proclaimed and celebrated in this holy season. To take time to sit and listen is to abide with the things that truly abide. They are the simple things, the holy things. The peace of heaven on earth, the joy of the angels, a mother and a child, God’s great little one in our midst, the things of story and song; together they signal the wonder and the mystery of Christmas. Charles G.D. Roberts, one of Canada’s great poets and a former resident of Windsor in the late nineteenth century when he taught at King’s College here, captures something of the quiet wonder of the things that abide, of peace and the harmony of God and the world, in his poem, When Mary the mother kissed the child. It ends by placing us in the mystery of the things that abide, the things that belong to the wonder of God with us.
When Mary the Mother felt faint hands
Beat at her bosom with life’s demands,
And nought to her were the kneeling kings,
The serving star and the half-seen wings,
Then there was the little of earth made great,
And the man came back to the God’s estate.
May God bless us all in this holy season when we celebrate the holy birth of Christ our Saviour.
“For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour,
who is Christ the Lord”
(Rev’d) David Curry
AMD Service of the Deaf
December 9th, 2012