Sermon for Christmas Day - A Prison

Gospel: John 1:1-14.

I will be honest with you. I am not sure whether to begin with “please” or with “thank you”. But, actually, now I think about it, a good motto for life is: if in doubt about what to say, say thank you. It applies to human beings often, and to God always.

If in doubt about what to say to God, say thank you.

And I want to say thank you to you, my brothers. Why? Because you are here. You do not have to be here. In prison life (we know) you often have to be in certain places at certain times, or penalties follow. But none of you has to be here. The only one who has to be here is me (well, and the Officers who are kindly assisting us). That’s worth thinking about.

You have chosen freely to come here, and together we mark Christmas as one. We mark Christmas not with great feasting – I don’t have turkeys and mince pies hidden away – not with feasting, but with worship. We are here to worship. And I thank you for it. Thank you.

Christmas in prison is hard. We do not have to hide from that. I am not going to say it is a good thing to be a prisoner in prison on Christmas Day. I won’t insult you. Only, there is just this one thing, one aspect of Christmas in prison:

it just is easier to strip away the false layers.

The voices that say it is all only about partying and excesses, and getting on with everyone without any effort “because it’s Christmas”. These voices we can shut up. Or we can let them fade away.

What is left? I am going to put it simply:

what is left is the truth of the Christmas story,

the earthy story of the birth of Jesus.

You know, you know already that the story is of difficult times:

·        a difficult announcement by an angel,

·        difficult journeys,

·        a difficult search for a place to rest,

·        a difficult ruler

·        making for a difficult flight.

There weren’t any crackers or tinsel or sparkling lights. There probably wasn’t even a party, at least not one that took weeks to plan. So be it! This is the reality. And we, even here, even now, are free to embrace that reality. The real Christmas can be ours, can be yours, even here, even now. Thank you for being here. Here, where the real Christmas is.

And so to my “please”. I want to say “please” to you, brothers.

“Please… forgive me”.

Please forgive me, if you came here today expecting the whole Christmas story I have just referred to – you know, with angels and shepherds, and journeys, and Mary and Joseph, and the manger.

It’s perfectly fair that you might expect that.

Now, you do get a lot of it in our carols. But it is true that you don’t get any of it in our readings. And I am sorry about that. Sorry, but it had to be. Had to be, because in my Church the one reading you simply have to have at Christmas is the Gospel reading we have had. And that is the opening of the Gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God…” and so on. Why? We’ll come back to that.

After my thank you (thank you for being here)

and my please (please forgive me),

I want to add one other thing.

That is: “I wonder”.

I wonder… if you can tell me something.

I wonder if you can tell me where Jesus was born?

[Participation]

There are many answers you can give: in Israel/Palestine; in Judaea; in Bethlehem; within the family of Mary and Joseph; in a manger. But, sure, among the answers that people tend to give, we’ll always have:

in a stable.

But! But you will not find any mention of a stable in the gospels, or anywhere else in the New Testament for that matter. We in the West have tended to think about a stable, because of that reference to a manger.

What is a manger? ... A feeding trough. So animals are around. If they are not right there (they too are not actually mentioned), they must have been near enough by. As they would be in a stable.

But! But there are other possibilities.

One is that Jesus might have been born in a cave. There are caves around Bethlehem to this day, and a cave is, of course, a good place to shelter animals. It’s a natural shelter. All you may have to do is put a feeding trough in, and, there you are: an animal shelter. So was Jesus born in a cave?

Another thing to bear in mind is that, in the ancient world, families and animals often stayed under one roof. People didn’t have the money for more than one building. So, when the weather was bad enough for animals to need shelter, the animals slept in one part of the building, and the people slept in another part. What this means is: Jesus gave birth in a back room which animals would also use, not in the guest room, a guest room with some luxuries, some comfort.

So, I wonder. I wonder what you think?

Was Jesus born in a stable, a cave, or a back room?

I cannot tell you. But I also wonder this: I wonder if it makes any difference. I myself think it makes little difference. What is important is what Luke’s gospel makes very plain: Jesus was placed in a feeding trough,

because otherwise there was no room for him.

That is, I think, the most difficult part of the difficult story of Christmas.

God comes to us, to us, human beings, and we have no room for him. We give him no room. He is pushed out, pushed to a place which will do, but only just. There is no room for Jesus, who has come to help, guide, and heal us. We human beings say – all of us in different ways – to Jesus:

“No. Not here. Not with me. Go over there.

I am giving you no room.”

And there is this. This of course means that Jesus is from the beginning close to those who are also told that society has no room for them. I won’t labour this point. You get this point. It means

Jesus is from the beginning especially close to you, brothers.  

So, why must we hear, today of all days,

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God… and the Word became flesh…”?

There is a reason. A good reason.

Today (and every day) we need to hear that

the Word was (and is) God, and the Word became flesh.

Became flesh and blood like you and me.

God is God as God is God.

And God is a human being as human beings are human beings.

So what?

What this means is that when we meet with God in Jesus,

it really is God.

It is not a faint echo of God.

It is not some idea of God.

It is not even some teaching from God.

But it is God as God is God.

 

You see, Christianity is all about intimacy.

We meet with God.

You meet with God.

You are invited,

here and now (and always) to meet with God.

You are invited to be with God.

That’s the best Christmas invitation of all.

And it is for you.

 

We can say “thank you” to God in Jesus for this closeness.

We can say “please” to God in Jesus, 

that we will be helped truly to make the most of this.

We can say “I wonder” –

I wonder how God can love us so much

that God freely comes to a place where there is no room for him.

Amen.