Category: Sermons

“They found him in the temple”

Where do we find God? In the places where he is named and praised, honoured and worshipped. “This is none other but the house of God … the gate of heaven” is written on the walls of this Church. “Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God” is written in the narthex above where you enter into the Church. How little do we notice these things that remind us that this place, this Church, is and must be a place of teaching, a place where we find God because this is his temple. This is the house of God, where God is to be sought and found, where the things of God are to taught and learned. If the Church is not the place of teaching about God then it is not the Church.

This doesn’t mean that only the Church is the place where God is sought and taught. No. One of the sad tragedies and peculiar paradoxes of our contemporary culture is the failure to realise that there is not a single discipline of the mind, not a single aspect of human intellectual and spiritual culture that is not shaped and formed by religion and religious discourse. And the churches, more sadly, have been complicit in an atheist agenda – trying to make religion acceptable to the age, accommodating the teachings to the assumptions of the culture. From this standpoint, Christmas has become the atheists’ delight since it seems to confirm the essential atheist insight that God is made in the image of man. In the God made man, we see, the atheist claims, the fundamental point that we make God in our image. Nothing could be further from the truth of the Christmas story yet it is easy to see how Christians so easily collapse the Gospel into their own lives and expectations. Christmas quickly and easily becomes a form of self-worship.

Epiphany to the contrary is the atheists’ nightmare. Why? Because it is so resolutely set upon the themes of divinity. Its primary focus is the argument for the essential divinity of Jesus Christ and as such it argues for the essential attributes of God. We “turn ourselves” as John Cosin, the 17^th century Bishop of Durham in northern England puts it, “from his humanity below to his divinity above,” a turn from our contemplation of “His coming in the flesh that was God to His being God that was come in the flesh.” Epiphany is full of divinity.

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“They departed into their own country another way”

Epiphany marks the completion of the mystery of Christmas with the coming of the Magi-Kings to Bethlehem. They are the proverbial Johnny-come-latelies as well as the come-from-aways. They add a certain exotic quality to the humble scene at Bethlehem. Suddenly we realise that Christmas is omni populo, for all people, for rich and poor, for humble shepherds and wise kings, for men and women.

The coming of the Magi-Kings elevates the vision of paradise that Bethlehem represents into something more. It becomes a polis, a city-state, as it were. The social and the political aspects of our humanity are added to the simpler, more agrarian and humble features of our humanity. God’s great little one is not just for the little ones of our society and world but importantly for all. Little Bethlehem, “great among the cities of Judah,” is great not just because of the coming of the wise men but because their coming reveals something more than simply the harmonies of the created order; something more than paradise renewed. Suddenly, the paradise of Bethlehem becomes an image of the City of God!

The coming of the Magi-Kings also marks the beginning of the tradition of gift-giving. Yet, importantly, their gifts are more than the stuff they bring: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Their gifts reveal the greater gift of Christ, the gift of divine love incarnate in the child before whom they fall and worship. Their gifts honour the greatest gift of all, the gift of God’s love for us in the Child Christ. Their gifts reveal who he is both in himself and for us. No greater gift and no greater way for us to be gathered into the circle of eternal glory.

Their gifts of sacred meaning reveal Christ to us as King, and God, and Sacrifice. They at once complete the circle of Christmas love and set us upon another journey into a greater circle, one which is implicit already in everything that belongs to the celebration of Christmas in the cycle of holy days that belong to the Christ Child’s crown of glory. The transition from paradise restored to an image of the heavenly city deepens the mystery of Christmas; nostalgia for a lost past changes into a prophetic present. Bethlehem is complete; everything has been gathered around the Word made flesh.

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“But while he thought on these things, behold”

Christmas really is all about what we are given to behold. To be sure, there is rather a lot to behold in the richness of Christmas, itself a twelve day wonder that not even twelve days can exhaust. After St, Luke’s story of the nativity and St. John’s theological tour de force, we have St. Matthew’s account. It sounds a more human and a more personal note. It is not by accident that the symbol for St. Matthew’s Gospel is a winged man. His account of the nativity shows us the perplexity of Joseph finding himself in the strange predicament of being betrothed to Mary who is found to be with child. Matthew quickly adds “of the Holy Ghost” but Joseph has yet to learn that. His initial response is to make private arrangements. “But while he thought on these things, behold…”

To behold is to pay attention. It requires something of us. What it requires is exactly what we see in Joseph. There is the equally outstanding measure of Mary, who is really in the background here, the figure of Joseph’s musings and perplexity. “How can this be,” it might seem he is asking, even though that is, quite literally, Mary’s question at the Annunciation. Matthew, of course, does not provide us with the account of the Annunciation to Mary; only Luke does. Here in Matthew’s account, however, is a kind of angelic annunciation to Joseph. In his quiet musings, “being a just man, and not willing to make her a public example,” he “was minded to put her away privily.” An angel of the Lord appears to him in a dream to direct him otherwise but only because he was thinking on these things, things which have all his attention.

Matthew’s account unfolds the story of Christ’s nativity through the quiet, humble eyes of Joseph to whom the angel speaks. His words to Joseph are like the angel’s words to the shepherds, “fear not.” What we are given to behold is something wonderful, something for all. Notice how Matthew, quite marvelously really and with great economy of words, unfolds all of the significant points. Mary is your wife. What is conceived in her is “of the Holy Ghost” – though what exactly he is meant to make of that remains unclear! “She shall bring forth a Son,” and, here is something else quite wonderful, “And thou shalt call his name Jesus.” The explanation is precise, “for he shall save his people from their sins.”

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“His name was called Jesus”

What’s in a name? Mere words signifying whatever we choose? Or something more signifying the truth and the reality of what is signified? How do we name things? Are the terms of our naming merely conventions which could be otherwise? Are there not many different names for the same things and are there not different meanings and shades of meaning belonging to words themselves? Such is the wonder and the mystery of words and names.

Something of the wonder and the mystery of words and names are concentrated for us in Bethlehem. What are we to make of the strong words and names proclaimed in the Scriptures on this Octave Day of Christmas? Bethlehem, it seems, is the place of words and names that speak beyond the confines of a stable and a manger. Bethlehem is the place where the Word made flesh is named and signified as Jesus. Such is the wonder and the mystery of this day.

The idea of the Word made flesh, it seems to me, challenges the all-too-easy nominalism and relativism of our culture, as if names were merely of our choosing and at our convenience and as if names and words convey no real meaning beyond what meaning we choose to give to them; in short, that words and names signify no reality. We are really only talking to ourselves.

But Bethlehem shows us something more. It makes visible the astounding wonder of the unity of creation with the Creator and the unity of the whole of our humanity considered in and through the objective differences of its constituent parts. Bethlehem speaks to the deep desires of human hearts and to the form of those desires in their contemporary complexity. What are our environmental concerns about except a yearning and a longing for some sort of connection with the world of which we are a constituent part but from which we have alienated ourselves by our technocratic exuberance and arrogance? What are our social and political concerns about except a yearning and a longing for peace and harmony, for true unity and respect for all the peoples of the world?

Does not Bethlehem speak to such hopes and aspirations? Does not the spectacle of the Word made flesh in the lowliness and humility of Bethlehem speak to our desires? “Rich and poor, high and low, one with another”, shepherds and the Magi-Kings, the poor of the earth and the angels of heaven, humans and animals, men and women, and, especially, God and man, are all one in the wonder and worship of the child of Bethlehem. Here words and names begin to find their meaning.

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“These are they which follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth”

The Feast of the Holy Innocents is perhaps the most challenging of the three Christmas holy days. It challenges the sentimental aspects of Christmas and opens us out to its deeper meaning. Like The Feast of Stephen, nothing of our world of cruelty and suffering is glossed over or hidden from view. Yet nothing could be more disquieting than the slaughter of the Holy Innocents, the killing of children simply because they happen to be in the way, simply as a policy of political expediency.

The Feast of the Holy Innocents open us out to some of the larger biblical features of the Christmas story, particularly the flight into Egypt seen as the fulfillment of the ancient prophecy that “out of Egypt have I called my Son”. But how and why is the child Christ in Egypt? Because of Joseph being warned in a dream about the wrath of Herod seeking to kill the child whom he thinks is a rival to his kingship, little knowing that Christ’s kingdom is not of this world, and little knowing, too, like Pilate, that he has no power at all except it were given him by God. The story also looks back to the story of Moses, to the policy of infanticide enacted by Pharaoh as an attempt to control the Hebrew population.

Yet the real power and the poignancy of the story lies in its theological meaning, especially as indicated in the reading from The Book of the Revelation of St. John the Divine. We are privileged to see things there from a heavenly viewpoint and to learn something about suffering which otherwise remains simply unfathomable in our lives. Like “Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not”, we are often distraught and inconsolable and destroyed by the deaths of little infants or of those who never come to full birth. Such deaths are part of the tragedy of our humanity and yet this feast suggests that there is meaning to be found even in such loses.

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“Even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written”

Books and books, a world of books and a world of words but even and always more than the world. Christmas celebrates something more than ideas and words wafting about on the wind or drifting in and out of our minds. Christmas celebrates the Word made flesh. The three holy days of Christmas underscore something of the radical meaning of the Incarnation: first, with The Feast of Stephen reminding us of the integral connection between Christmas and Easter, and, especially, of the doctrine of the forgiveness of sins which belongs to our Christian witness; now, secondly, with The Feast of St. John the Evangelist; and, then, thirdly, with The Feast of the Holy Innocents.

The Feast of St. John the Evangelist recalls us to the great mystery of Christmas wonderfully signalled in The Prologue of his Gospel read on Christmas Eve. It recalls us to his teachings, his doctrine, found at once in his Gospel and in his Epistles. The Epistle reading from 1^st John echoes the great Gospel of Christmas and serves as a kind of homily or commentary about the meaning of the Incarnation, something which John is especially concerned to proclaim, to think and to contemplate. “That which was from the beginning” namely “the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God” is that, he says, “which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the Word of life”, that is what “we declare unto you.” And why? “That ye also may have fellowship with us … and that your joy may be full.”

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“Lord, lay not this sin to their charge”

The Feast of Stephen comes right after the great festival of Christ’s holy birth. It illustrates something of the deeper meaning of the mystery of Christmas.

St. Stephen is the proto-martyr, the first Christian martyr, to be sure, but the word ‘proto’ here signifies something more. He is not only the first but also the prototype of all martyrdom. Martyrdom is about witness. Stephen shows us what Christian witness really means. And I don’t simply mean by being stoned to death, either literally or metaphorically! What, then, is the witness of St. Stephen which serves as the prototype of all Christian witness? Simply what is captured in the medieval carol of this season and, more specifically, of this day, “Good King Wenceslas look’d out/ On the Feast of Stephen”.

And what did he see? “A poor man…gath’ring winter fuel”. And what did the king do but set out with his page, his servant, with food and wine to attend to the poor man? The story of the carol tells us of the fears and uncertainty of the page-boy about the journey and of the answer of the kingly saint to “mark my footsteps, my good page, / Tread thou in them boldly” and so “in his master’s steps he trod”. The carol concludes by pointing out the moral that “Ye who now will bless the poor, / Shall yourselves find blessing”. True but only if we follow in the master’s steps. In a way, the carol is a parable of Christmas itself. Christ has come to our poor and impoverished humanity in the early winter of our discontent. He has come with food and wine and those who would be his followers must mark his footsteps and follow in them bearing the gifts of Christ to others as well.

Something of what that means is signaled in the Feast of St. Stephen as a parable of the Christmas message. “Christ”, as another carol, puts it, “was born for this”, meaning death and rejection, sacrifice and crucifixion. And by extension, it means that Christ’s holy birth embraces all the miseries and sorrows of our lives as well as the forms of persecution and evil that are either visited upon ourselves by others or that we visit upon ourselves and others in our rejection of God.

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“And this shall be a sign unto you”

In the quiet calm of Christmas morning we celebrate Christ’s holy birth. There is a certain meditative quality to our gathering, it seems to me, after all the fuss and bother, the excitement and the expectancy of Christmas Eve. There is a certain uncertainty to our world and day, a world of fears and anxieties, to which the quietness of Christmas morning wonderfully counters. We are called to the truth of ourselves individually and collectively by our gathering at Bethlehem. The real and deep truth of our humanity notwithstanding the parade of atrocities globally is found in our communion with God in Jesus Christ. It is found in the humble yet awesome scene in Bethlehem.

We are no longer “assured of certain certainties” nor quite so “impatient to assume the world,” as T.S. Eliot puts it. Our world is a dark and disturbing place where we confront the disorder and the disarray of human hearts in acts of terrorism and destruction. Suddenly our cultural certainties seem far less certain; our cultural arrogance much more dangerous. How do we face such things? Do we simply retreat into the ghettoes of our churches, huddled behind closed doors of “certain certainties”, clinging to what we call our personal faith having despaired of the Faith itself? Or do we take a hold of this story contemplatively and enter more fully into its mystery and truth, the mystery and truth of the universal and catholic Faith?

“This shall be a sign unto you,” Luke tells us the angels say to the shepherds and so to us. We are one with the shepherds as the receivers of angels’ words. They are together the messengers of “good tidings of great joy”. “For unto you,” to you and me, “is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord.” A saviour – Jesus, Yeshua, means saviour. Christ means the anointed one of God. Words which we take for granted through their familiarity take on a special significance. What it all means is startling. It contrasts with all of the expected signs of salvation and exaltation. What does salvation mean? What does Christ the Lord mean? Salvation speaks to the wholeness and the completeness of our humanity, to our re-creation and redemption from sin. Christ the Lord speaks to the deep mystery of Christ as God, as “I am who I am” via the biblical circumlocution of Lord for the holy name of God revealed to Moses in the burning bush, the revelation of the principle upon which the being and the knowing of all things depend.

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“When all things were in quiet silence and the night was in the midst of her swift course, then thy Almighty Word leaped down from heaven, from thy royal throne”

What does Christmas mean in a post-Christian and post-secular culture? Perhaps a time to reclaim something of its essential meaning. There are, to be sure, all of the many and varied traditions of family and community, of secular and social customs and practices that surround and often overwhelm us. What does Christmas really mean?

This is not the same question as what does Christmas mean to you and me individually and subjectively. What Christmas means to you and your family and circle of friends is important but results only in a kind of relativism which is unable to explain what anything means in itself. How do we think about Christmas and about its essential meaning?

“I am tired of hearing jingle bells,” someone said at the Capella Regalis concert here last Sunday night. That wasn’t on the programme. And yet that is one of the songs of the season, I suppose, just like Santa Claus is invariably and unavoidably part of the season, if not for many the heart of Christmas. We confront an almost overwhelming array of images that bombard our ears and eyes, not to mention their effect on our pocket books. It increasingly appears that Christmas is an economic event. Do your duty to the economy and spend, spend, spend. That is surely one of the reasons for the season! And yet, however much such things as giving and getting, buying and spending, consuming and consuming and consuming are a feature of the Christmas season now extending in the commercial world from at least Halloween to sometime late this afternoon, they don’t really explain anything. Why Christmas? Why a word that has inescapably a Christian religious reference in a post-Christian world?

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“My Lord, and my God”

Words of faith arise from doubt and uncertainty. The Feast of St. Thomas occurs on the shortest day and the longest night of the year in the week of the winter solstice that brings us to the Christmas festival of light and love. Somehow his feast helps us to think more deeply about the advent of Christ and its meaning, even to “melt the clouds of sin and sadness” and to “drive the dark of doubt away.”

“’What is Truth’, said jesting Pilate; and wouldn’t stay for an answer,” Sir Francis Bacon famously begins his celebrated essay On Truth. Like Pilate, Thomas asked a question of Jesus earlier in John’s Gospel just after Jesus spoke of “go[ing] to prepar[ing] a place for you … that where I am there you may be also. And you know the way where I am going” to which Thomas asks, “Lord, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?” Jesus responds famously “I am the way, and the truth and the life.” Unlike Pilate, Thomas, it seems, stayed for an answer and then again returned for an answer to his doubts and questions about Christ’s resurrection. “My Lord, and my God” are his profound words of faith that arise from the face-to-face encounter with the Risen Christ whose body bears the marks of his crucifixion.

It is that question and answer about the bodily reality of Christ that makes The Feast of St. Thomas an advent feast and catapults us into the mystery of the Incarnation. It serves as well to connect Christmas and Easter; the nativity and the resurrection are like two complementary mysteries, each illumining something of the deeper meaning of the other. The Gospel for his Feast day is the resurrection story of Jesus teaching the disciples behind closed doors and finally Thomas, too, about the resurrection, itself a testament to the Incarnation.

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