Sermon Christmas Day

Sermon. Christmas Day. 2015. St Mary's, Little Ilford.

Luke 2.1-14

Merry Christmas! I bring warm Christmas greetings from St Mary's, Great Ilford to St Mary's, Little Ilford. The point here is not – not! - that they are great and we are little. We'd have to think through if that's the case in any meaningful sense! The point is that we have a Christmas bond with fellow Christians. And I think also that we have another bond – St Mary herself.

I am not going to apologise for beginning with Mary, even though I bored some of you with my sermon on Mary, at St Michael's last Sunday. I will say again that Mary truly is that important.

You know, if we choose to, we have the option of marking, later in the year, the Feast of St Joseph the Worker (on 1 May). We could celebrate Joseph as carpenter, as craftsman. But today, the Feast of the Birth of Jesus, we could fairly call the Feast of Mary the Worker. Mary does the hardest work. Not for nothing is it called 'labour'. However we understand the virginity of Mary (and that's a discussion for another time, surely), the Church does not take it to mean that the birth of Jesus required less effort or pain than any other birth. So there is risk and pain and blood and howls and mess, and no doubt tetchiness and worse, here. These are the things that belong to a birth.

And this is telling us something. I suspect (and in some cases I know) that as you look back at past Christmasses, you see pain as well as joy, disappointment as well as delight. Rows as well as raucous laughter. In particular, you see grief, feel the loss of those who are no longer with you to enjoy the day. Christmas is a potent mix of the positive and the negative. And what Mary's first Christmas tells us is that it was ever thus. Christmas is the fulfilment – or better, the first fulfilment – of Mary's Yes to Gd, as expressed at the Annunciation: Be it unto me me according to your word. So there is joy. But it is also a birth in a cow-shed utterly unsuited for a human birth. So there is agony too. Joy and agony in one. That is the nature of this day. And – I have to add this - meant to be that way, in fulfilment of Gd's plan.

Whether or not Mary's story resonates with you just now, it is true that in the Christmas story, as in all biblical stories, we are invited to see something of ourselves in all the characters. So who are you in today's gospel? It is up to you, and there are no limits. Options are emperor, governer, Joseph, Mary, Jesus, shepherds, and angels. Why do you find yourself?

It's not a question you have to answer now. You can take the sheet with you, and when you have a quiet moment in the days ahead (and, you know what, you probably will at some point), you can read this story slowly, and see what resonates - what strikes a chord - with you. I offer you that not as option for an idle distraction. It's a powerful way of praying.

Here is a different question: what character might we as the Church in this time and place be called to be, in the year ahead?

I have a possible, tentative answer to this question. I don't know, but I think we might be called to be the angels. I don't like telling anybody that they should be angels, as I fear that that will be heard as saying that we should be bodiless as angels are bodiless. That is not what I am intending to say at all. All that I want to say is that we might be called to be the embodied human beings (the human bodies) who say the words of the angels in today's gospels.

The angel and the angels say:

'Do not be afraid.

'Here is good news.

'Here is salvation – which is to say, healing.

'Healing is hidden in the things you already know, like the birth of a child.

'Give glory to Gd in the highest – for you know you are more yourself when you praise.

'And on earth, peace.'

Now, there is no getting around that there is a translation issue here. From early days, from the oldest manuscripts, there have been two ways of taking the underlying Greek of the last bit:

And on the earth peace, good will among human beings

or

And on the earth peace among human beings of goodwill.

The translation we have is different again. I'll be honest, and say I can make no sense of it. But no doubt Fr Brian will take me to one side at some point and explain it to me. But here may be a version which pays some homage to all the translations: peace on earth to human beings, for here is goodwill'.

'Peace on earth to human beings, for here is goodwill.' That will be a message I fear will be hard enough to say in the months and years ahead. We know of all the uncertainties about how things will unfold in Syria, but not only in Syria, but as much (perhaps) in Iraq and Afghanistan. We know of all the uncertainties about how we are to live together as a community of communities in this country, and this city. In all of this, there is a danger of demonisation – the very opposite of goodwill – towards particular neighbours of ours. I mean (and it's important to say it) our Muslim neighbours.

What I fear is that many politicians and press people are going to go to new lengths to make us suspicious of Muslims in this country, and Muslims abroad. That in turn will actually encourage a small but signficant number of disaffected Muslims, here and abroad, to feel they have nothing at all to lose by resisting. By fighting back. And so the cycle of violence will grow and grow.

I hope and pray it will not be so.

I hope and pray that the Church will find new ways (and the ways will have to be new) to say with conviction:

peace on earth to human beings, for here is goodwill.

The good news is that we will have countless hosts of angels with us.

Merry Christmas. Amen.