Sermon: Christmas Day
25 December 2020 –
Archdeacon Mark Long
Isaiah 52:7-10; Psalm 98; and Luke 2:1-20; NRSV
As
I said in my sermon at Midnight Mass last night, 2020 has been an amazing year,
full of the unbelievable becoming normal. When we met for Christmas a year ago
none of us would possibly have imagined the way that a virus would turn our
lives upside-down over the next twelve months, yet here we are meeting
virtually after a year in which we have been confined to our homes for substantial
periods, our economy closed down and restarted, our livelihoods threatened (and
for many lost), and life as we knew it so different to our experience today.
And this experience has not been localised; it continues to be a global one.
As
we meet on today I am very aware that this Christmas marks a new surge of the
Covid-19 virus in our communities, and that my level of anxiety in this regard
is high. It is helpful to hear the angels’ words to the shepherds in this
morning’s Gospel reading, “Do not be afraid; …”[1]
and in hearing those words to find an element of calm. These are words that
Jesus will repeat to his disciples after his resurrection, and words that remind
us that when we face the unknown – whatever it’s nature – anxiety and fear are
normal human responses. The shepherds response to this unnerving experience of
being addressed by angels is instructive: they say to one another, “Let us go
now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has
made known to us.”[2]
They step forward into their fear, and seek to discover the truth of the
message. Too often in my experience anxiety and fear are debilitating, a hinderence
to living life to the full. The shepherds’ courage in seeking out the child,
and then sharing the knowledge they have been given, becomes a meaningful
source of hope to others, and we read
that, “… all who heard … were amazed at what the shepherds told them.”[3]
Admittedly a part of people’s amazement at their message was that these were
shepherds, uneducated outcasts of their day. The shepherds themselves, though,
having taken note of the angels message that even to them must have sounded
somewhat unbelievable, move from fear to rejoicing, and we find them returning
to their duties “… glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen.”[4]
The
shepherds’ visit causes Mary to treasure all these words and ponder them in her
heart.[5]
This was not idle reflection. The underlying Greek phrasing suggests a process
of sense-making, of building meaning, and in light of her own encounter with an
angel we can imagine Mary piecing it all together, experiencing the Shepherds’
visit and message as additional confirmation of events that had so upended her
and Joseph’s lives, of which the birth of this baby was a culmination, yet also
the beginning of something different, something new, something beyond the
normal.
I
find myself needing to ponder, needing to make sense of the causes of my own
anxiety and fear, needing to continually evaluate new information, and find
meaning for my own journey, and for the people I serve. For all of us our faith
journey calls us, like Mary, to a constant process of pondering, of
sense-making, of finding meaning at the intersection of all that impacts on our
lives, our community, our world. Pádraig Ó Tuama speaks of the need to follow
“… that small whisper, even when we barely hear it, even when we barely believe
it, even when it hurts.”[6]
What
is the nature of that small whisper as we gather today? What are we hearing?
What is it asking of us?
I
am learning to distinguish between that barely audible whisper that grows
unaccountably into loud shouting as the voice of my fear, and that beyond it
lies the small whisper that is God. Too often I allow my anxiety to drown out
that small whisper, but when I can recognise my fear for what it is, and become
available to the small whisper that is God, I discover that deep peace that
Scripture speaks of, that passes all understanding. I am also learning that the
small whisper most likely isn’t words, it is something far deeper than words or
emotion or feeling: it is God tangibly there, real, accessible. I think this is
what Mary discovered, too. I suspect this is the gift of Jesus birth.
Jesus
birth is of course more than just dealing with our fear. His birth calls us to
realign our lives, and to recognise in Jesus the realignment of earthly power
and authority, a message emphasised by our Isaiah reading this morning. In this
reading a victory is being announced, a messenger is arriving with news of
peace, and while this passage obviously has an historical context, it affirms a
more cosmic reality: this is not any victory; it is God’s victory. While the
passage foresees the return of God’s people from exile in Babylon to Jerusalem,
it’s cosmic nature points to God’s deliverance of the earth, the entire world,
all people.[7]
The inclusion of this reading in today’s lection draws the focus of this
liberation onto the birth of the Christ-child, and in the context of Luke’s
Gospel contextualises this in the experience of the outcast, the
disenfranchised, the Shepherd. While we deal with the everydayness of life, Christmas
challenges us to see a bigger picture, and calls us to play a role in
establishing God’s kingdom in our own time and generation, to reach beyond the
comfort of our lives, to make the justice and love of God a real experience for
others in our world, even when it hurts.
My
prayer for us this particular Christmas, as we celebrate the birth of the
Christ-child in whom God became human, is that we may find it increasingly within
our capacity to accept the possibility of the unbelievable in the new context
that this past year has thrust on us; and that in this we may discover the
purposes of God and the meaning of life and faith anew and afresh.
Let us pray,
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