Sermon for Christmas Eve
When all things were in quiet silence
and the night was in the midst of her swift course,
then thy almighty word leapt down from heaven, from thy royal throne.
I have to confess that this lovely image from the Wisdom of Solomon (18.15) has always captivated my imagination. It captures wonderfully the special mystery of Christmas and complements the extraordinary readings we have already heard. The readings from Hebrews and from The Prologue of John’s Gospel challenge all our conceptions about Christmas. For where in those readings do we hear any mention of a babe born in a manger, any mention of little Bethlehem, any mention of Mary, the Virgin Mother, any mention of Joseph, any mention of ox and ass, of sheep and lambs, let alone camels and kangaroos; well, why not or at least a moose or two or maybe a beaver? And yet, all those images are profoundly shaped and governed by the great thunderous words of The Letter to the Hebrews and by what is, perhaps, the most profound passage of philosophy and theology that has ever been penned, The Prologue of John’s Gospel. It is the great Christmas Gospel.
“Thou hast but two rare cabinets full of treasure,” the poet George Herbert says, and he names them, “The Trinitie, and Incarnation;/ Thou hast unlockt them both,” he says, “And made them jewels to betroth/ The work of thy creation/ Unto thy self in everlasting pleasure” (Ungratefulnesse). The mystery of Christmas enclosed in a poetic nutshell! But one worth cracking open. We behold simply a double mystery, the mystery of God and the mystery of our humanity. Both are locked up together and both are unlocked to view on this holy night.
What on earth am I talking about, you are asking yourselves or at least you should be. Well, I am talking exactly and precisely about the wonder and the mystery of this holy night, the wonder and the mystery of Christmas. Something has drawn you here. It certainly isn’t the pursuit of profit or prestige. Nothing so contemptible in the contemporary culture than religion, to say nothing of the institutional churches. Certainly no commercial or consumer benefit or gain to be found here; quite the opposite, it might seem that the Church is out for your money, more hands in your pocket than the banks. Just joking. Well, maybe.
No. Something speaks to our souls, it seems to me, that draws us towards the idea of ‘truths held sacred’ and all the more so in a culture of darkness and despair. Our culture, our world, our day. It is not that we are simply too much with ourselves, too much preoccupied with a multitude of worries and concerns, what Jesus names, at least in Tyndale’s early English translation, as our “being carefull,” meaning our being full of cares, our busyness, what has more recently been translated as our anxiety. Mightn’t we say Angst r’ us because we are too full of cares about all the wrong things and in all the wrong ways, especially, perhaps, at this time of year? I leave it to you to fill out the ledger in terms of your own lives. The stress of presents and meals, of travel and plans, of parents, of grandparents, of in-laws, of the neediness of children and childrens’ children; the neediness, let’s face it, of us all. No, the greater problem is that we are sceptical and unaware of what speaks to our darkness and despair.
