Last Friday evening for some reason I was at sixes and sevens a bit. I wanted something to read. I had four books on the floor by my bed, but they wouldn’t do. I’d just read two of them and didn’t feel like picking up the other two. So off to the bookshelf for something not too taxing. I took down a collection of short stories I haven’t read for years; “Adventure Stories from the Strand”. The Strand was a monthly magazine first published in 1891 and ran until 1950. I looked at the contents page, and my eyes lighted on a story written by H.G. Wells in 1903 - Wells was known as “the father of science fiction”. The story was titled “The Land Ironclads” and in it he does some military crystal ball gazing and forecasts the use of tanks in modern warfare.” Where’s he going with all of this?” many of you may beginning to think. Bear with me. In the story, none of the characters are named – perhaps, I think, to depict the de-humanising nature of warfare. In the opening scenes, Wells writes this of one he describes as “the war correspondent”. He was depressed. He believed that there were other things in life better worth than having proficiency in war; he believed that in the heart of civilisation, for all its stresses, its crushing concentrations of forces, its injustice and suffering, there lay something that might be the hope of the world.[1]
Words for our times surely. Quite a few people comment to me about how depressing news bulletins are these days. I think many around the world desperately long for some sense or vision of hope. Whether it be people trapped in seemingly endless awful violence and conflict in and between Ukraine and Russia, Gaza, the West Bank, Israel, Lebanon and Yemen, Sudan and South Sudan. In other places ordinary people struggle to survive under corrupt regimes where entire economies have been destroyed. I saw a news bulletin the other evening about the human and societal destruction being wrought by gang warfare in Haiti. Around the world we see the rise of right-wing populism, in my view a dangerous threat to properly functioning democracy. In the past week we’ve seen the dreadful loss of life at the Magdeburg Christmas Market in Germany, and the suffering following the earthquakes in Vanuatu. Many are worried about approaching bushfire and flood seasons, others carry their private grief of illness or loss. In all this a sign, even a glimpse of hope can literally be lifesaving. Among the many great gifts of Christmas is the gift of hope, please pray that those who see no hope may catch something of the hope of the world whose coming we celebrate each Christmas. In the Christ Child we pray that that the light of hope may shine brightly for them.
Light, of course, has always been associated with the joy of Christmas. The prophecy of Isaiah – “the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light”, or the light of the guiding star, or the glory of the Lord which Luke describes shining around the shepherds. And it’s interesting, or at least I think it is, that amid all the joy and celebration we feel, the message of the angels to the shepherds is essentially the same as the message given separately to both Joseph and Mary in the gospel accounts leading up to the account of Jesus’ birth – and that message is “Do not be afraid.” A former Archbishop of Canterbury, Archbishop Rowan Williams commented some years ago now that this message “Do not be afraid” is a “recurring motif in the Christmas stories, and a significant reminder that the overwhelming news of God the Saviour's coming is both all that the human heart could hope for and also something that powerfully disrupts the way the world goes and the way our lives go. There is something to be afraid of in the renewal of a world”[2]
On one hand, we may not be so keen on a renewal of a world when we think we’re OK – kind of. If we are safe, secure comfortable, it’s possible that we may not be so keen on having God unexpectedly break into our world. The stories surrounding Jesus’ birth have God breaking into the lives of Mary, Joseph, Mary’s relative Elizabeth and her husband Zechariah in extraordinary ways. They were ordinary people, living ordinary lives and suddenly caught up in God’s wonderful purposes – and they really wondered what it was all about. Why me? Who am I? – they ask. But the message comes – don’t be afraid. All of us are like Mary and Joseph – ordinary people - and the wonder of Christmas is that we too can be caught up, if only for a time in God’s purposes – to hear the story again, to have our imaginations fired, our sympathies broadened, our harshness softened as we hear again the story of Christ’s birth. The gospel reading reminds us that joy is not just a matter of circumstance or worldly success but emerges even in the most contrary environments. Jesus was born in Roman occupied Judea. They are the ones who order the census, no doubt so they can make sure everyone, even an ordinary man like Joseph pays tribute or taxes to the oppressor. Jesus’ birth took place in the humblest environment. Incarnation –– God coming to us in human form - God’s vision of possibility is another description I’ve read - is global, not restricted to the environments or communities we might think are the obvious ones. God comes to the weak as well as the strong; to the powerless as well as the powerful; to the foreigner as well as the neighbour. The message to us is the same – Do not be afraid. God is with us. The Holy Child is the hope of the world.
There are many who do not want their worlds changed – particularly those who wield power and influence unjustly. Like King Herod, they are threatened by faith in one who comes in weakness and vulnerability – who in his life of teaching showed there was a different way. People can feel uncomfortable when religion makes a visible difference in public life. A couple of weeks ago here in a sermon I quoted The Rev’d Geoffrey Studdert-Kennedy who wrote “Nobody worries about Christ as long as he can be kept shut up in churches. He is quite safe there. But there is always trouble if you try to let him out.”[3] Why is that I wonder. What do they fear? Loss of influence, loss of power – or are they thinking about bad stereotypes of Christianity we see too often in the media. At the extreme, fear of genuine faith can lead to the unthinking violence of the religious extremist.
But there is nothing to fear because, again to paraphrase Rowan Williams, what happens when God comes to earth is not something like the first landing of an occupying army, who possesses land ironclads and wants to take all that is ours. The truth is as different as could be and the clue is in those simple words from St’ John’s Gospel, simple words that invite a lifetime's joyful reflection, 'The Word became flesh and lived among us'.[4]
God comes in stillness. He comes in dependency and weakness. He comes by God's absolutely free gift. Yet he comes from the heart of our own human world and life, from the womb of a mother, from the free love of Mary's heart given to God in trust.
As Christians, our faith does not need to carve territories to defend, nor do we need to mount campaigns to take over a potentially rebellious world and subdue it by force, although we must admit in times past Christians have used force supposedly in God’s name. We simply witness to the world that the world will never be fully itself except in what Rowan Williams calls the glad receiving of God's presence and the recognition of the 'true light' at the centre of all human, all created life. And it’s this glad receiving we celebrate at this holy season. As humans, God calls us to a destiny more glorious than we can imagine. We need not be afraid of this.
We don't have to fight for our claims in such a way that all the world sees is another power-obsessed and anxious human institution; we have only to let the Word be born in us and speak in us. In the stillness of this place, in the stillness of these next few moments, ask that God may give us grace to let Jesus Christ, his son, the Word made flesh as St. John calls him, be born again in us this Christmas, and live in us, and speak in us…………………………………………………………………..
Michael Leunig, the cartoonist, died just under a week ago. I felt pangs of sadness as I was a fan of his work and because he died on my birthday. He could be savage and controversial and confronting. But he could be whimsical, delightful and profound. In a cartoon simply titled “Christmas” wrote these few lines with which I conclude. We thought about them in our Advent Study Group the other day and thought, on balance, we could see reference to the Christ Child, the hope of the world being born in us. He wrote:
I see a twinkle in your eye
So this shall be my Christmas star
And I will travel to your heart
The manger where the real things are.
And I will find a mother there
Who holds you gently to her breast
A father to protect your peace
And by these things you shall be blessed.
And you will always be reborn
And I will always see the star
And make the journey to your heart
The manger where the real things are.[5]
And may you all have a holy, happy and blessed Christmas.
[1] Adventure Stories from the Strand The Folio Society Ltd., London. 1995 p90
[2] This and other references to Archbishop Rowan Williams from http://rowanwilliams.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/1620/christmas-sermon-2003.htm
[3] https://www.azquotes.com/author/32441-Geoffrey_Studdert_Kennedy
[4] John 1:14
[5] The Essential Leunig Viking, an imprint of Penguin Books, Melbourne, 2012 p257
© Rev’d Bill Crossman