28 Dec 25 - Christmas 1 (Christ Church St. Lucia)
Readings: Isaiah 63:7-9; Psalm 148; Hebrews 2:10-18; Matthew 2: 13-23
The Rev’d. Sabine Baring-Gould, like many 19th century Victorian clergy, was a man of many interests. He was variously was an Anglican priest, hymn writer, antiquarian, novelist, (he wrote the first novel to feature a werewolf)[1]. He was also a folk song collector and eclectic scholar. He inherited the manor of Lew Trenchard in Devon when his father died and so became the squire. When the Rector of the parish died – who happened to be his uncle – Baring-Gould as patron of the parish simply appointed himself. Presentation Board? Whoever heard of a Presentation Board? He served as President of the Royal Institution of Cornwall for 10 years from 1897. He was instrumental in founding the Dartmoor Exploration Committee and was its first Secretary. One wonders how he had the time for all of this, especially as he and his wife had 15 children, all but one of whom, unusually in Victorian times, lived to adulthood.[2] Maybe he didn’t compose too many sermons. No less an authority on Victorian clergy than Bill Bryson writes that many just bought a big book of prepared sermons and read one out once a week.[3] He is perhaps best known for writing “Onward Christian Soldiers”; not my favourite hymn I have to admit. Granted he didn’t write the tune which was written by Arthur Sullivan of Gilbert and Sullivan fame. However, those who attended the service of Nine Lessons and Carols on 14 Dec heard something much more sublime from his hand – a short carol of 4 verses “Sing Lullaby”. In fact, it’s his translation of a carol from the Basque language. As I listened to it, and read the words, I said to Libbie “I’ve just got a framework for my sermon on 28th”.
The first verse of Sing Lullaby takes us to Bethlehem, the baby reclining, hush, do not wake the infant King, angels watching, stars shining. Lovely words and the arrangement by David Hill I thought fitted them beautifully, but lest we be lulled into soporific complacency, the second verse brings us to today. Lullaby baby, now a-sleeping. Soon will come sorrow with the morning, soon will come bitter grief and weeping. And like many of you I guess, Libbie and I arrived home after the service to the news of the horror of Bondi being inflicted at the same time as we worshipped.
Just as on 14th Dec we were brutally drawn into awful suffering, so the Gospel reading for the Sunday after Christmas reminds us that Christ was born into a similar world. As the English priest and poet, Malcolm Guite writes, “we can lose track of the essential Gospel truth: that the world into which God chose to be born for us was then, as now, fraught with danger and menace….The story of Herod’s jealous rage and the massacre of the innocents would be too appalling to bear were we not called upon to contemplate it almost every day in the news. What Herod did then is still being done across the world by tyrants who would sooner kill innocent people than lose their grip on power.”[4] I’m sure you can think of any number of examples. Added to this is the rise over the last fifty years or so of radical extremism in all the major world religions producing those who would think through perverted logic that violence and terror is valid – as we saw so tragically two weeks ago today.
Matthew tells the story, and in one sense he writes it for a particular community and with a particular purpose. Most scholars think that he wrote for a Jewish community – and in doing so he is almost at pains to present Jesus as the “new Moses”. The return from the flight to Egypt mirrors the saving of the Hebrew people and their return to the Land of Promise under the leadership of Moses. The massacre of the innocents recalls that Moses was rescued by Pharoah’s daughter after her father had ordered that every Hebrew boy was to be thrown into the Nile.[5] Matthew sees a fulfillment of Jeremiah, too, in the words “A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled because they are no more.” We still hear that voice today. Theologically, the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews gives us the commentary on the story: God has made the pioneer of our salvation perfect through suffering which, for the Son through whom God speaks to us, begins almost immediately.[6] In the reading from Isaiah there is a similar theological point – the people are inn distress and are saved not through messages (maybe from prophets) or through angels, but by God who is present with them. God in his love and pity lifts them up and carries them through their suffering. Suffering follows Jesus to the cross and resurrection as Baring-Gould’s “Sing Lullaby” so poignantly reminds us – “Soon comes the cross, the nails, the piercing, then in the grave the last reposing” and then “Dreaming of Easter, gladsome morning conquering death, its bondage breaking.” In four lovely simple verses we reflect on Christ’s life: his birth, suffering as an infant, passion and resurrection. The Collect we pray this morning reminds us that Christ came to share in our humanity so we may share in his life of divinity. We pray this collect today through the lens of the vulnerability of a young child to violence and massacre. No one can accuse God of ignoring the cruelty and suffering of the world. If we are to share God’s life, we cannot ignore it either.[7]
The problem is, faced with such horrors, we can feel powerless to do anything. Where do we start? Canon Rosalind Brown of Durham Cathedral wrote a hymn-prayer in response to seeing the Yad Vashem memorial in Jerusalem at which 6 candles represent the 1.5 million children killed in the Holocaust. It begins, reflecting the Gospel for this morning, “Rachel’s voice from Ramah weeping, as the little children die, still across the land is sweeping in the parents’ anguished cry” and ends with “Light a candle in the darkness, multiply its flickering light. Let it speak in simple starkness of new hope born in the night.”[8]
Last Sunday night, we were invited to light candles across Australia to remember the Bondi victims and survivors. Libbie and I placed one on our balcony. On Christmas Day we heard that light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. Our Jewish sisters and brothers have been reminding us that the message of Hanukkah is the same. If we believe that, Rosalind Brown writes, we can dare to light candles in the darkness of our world. Light one candle for hope – one bright candle for hope.[9]
©The Rev’d. W.D. Crossman
[1] Bill Bryson At Home, A Short History of Private Life Doubleday UK 2010 p38
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabine_Baring-Gould
[3] Ibid p36
[4] Malcolm Guite Waiting on the Word – A poem a day for Advent, Christmas and Epiphany Canterbury Press Norwich UK 2015 p 115,116
[5] Exodus 1:22
[6] Rosalind Brown Fresh From the Word Canterbury Press Norwich UK 2016 p12
[7] ibid
[8] ibid
[9] TIS No 286