Sunday 31st December 2006CHRISTMAS 1

Fr David Cherry

1 Samuel 2 : 18-20, 26 ; Colossians 3 : 12- 17 ; Luke 2 : 41- 52

“But his Mother kept all these things in her heart.”

On this Sunday after Christmas we are invited to contemplate the impact of the coming among us of God in flesh.  

God comes to make us more.

Immediately we begin to see in the feast days of the Octave the outplaying of what St John told us on Christmas morning: He came to his own and his own received him not.

On 28th December the feast of the holy Innocents:
Herod then with fear was filled, a Prince he said in Jewry
All the little boys he killed at Bethlem in his fury.

The still centre of God, the infant Jesus, has an effect on those around him: jealousy.  The presence of God threatens the status quo.  A ruler is driven mad and to violence.  

St Stephen’s Day is the 26th December.  He is stoned to death for proclaiming that the God of glory who appeared to our ancestor Abraham and told him to leave the land of Chaldeans and go to settle in the land of Haran, this same God had become one with us, a human being in the form of Jesus.  As he dies ‘his eyes at last see Him…’

St Thomas a Becket on 29th Dec.  In our own national history, a man involved in the machinations of political power, killed for standing by God and his church.

The effects of God in our humanity, present, involved in the human story.  In our own society the attempt to keep the spiritual and human-political separate is still prevalent.  But it won’t work.  Religion will not remain a privatised affair.  Desmond Tutu said that when people said that he should keep out of politics he wondered ‘what bible people are reading’.

But the purpose of God coming to us is not to bring disruption and chaos, but to bring to birth something new in us, and in society.  There is inevitable resistance.

At a personal and spiritual level there is also resistance.   Gerry Hughes in his book God in All Things.  Talks about the difficulty of allowing God to come close like this:

“Imagine a couple getting married.  They have been encouraged by the presiding minister to use their own formulation of the marriage vows, so the groom declares ‘You are my heart’s delight and I love, you, my dear, with all my being.  However, you must understand that from this moment on, you must not expect me to have the slightest interest in your wants and desires.  Henceforth, till death do us part, your whole good and your happiness consist in your doing my will with total dedication, resisting and overcoming you own.’  Having solemnly declared his love so movingly, the groom awaits the bride’s answer!”   
Gerry goes on:  “This is the image of God that can lurk in the Christian subconscious.  With such an image of God, it is not surprising that we sometimes appear to be less than enthusiastic for the things of God, and we can begin to understand the advantages of a split spirituality.  If we allowed this monstrous God into every moment of our lives, life would be unendurable!”

But this is not God.  God is not opposed to our freedom, not opposed to who we are.  He comes to make us more.

In the gospel we are invited to be with Jesus about his Father’s business, to be about discovering what his Father is truly like.   The impact on Joseph and Mary of Jesus’ disappearance for three days (a forshadowing of his three days in the tomb) brings them into a new awareness.  

And when they saw him, they were amazed: and his mother said unto him, Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing.

This child is someone else, someone other than a projection of myself, some other self.  This child is being formed by his relationship with his Father.  They are filled with wonder as any parent is when they see that their child is his or her own self – peculiarly different.

There are the hidden years which apocryphal gospels fill in.  But perhaps the point is that we are invited to contemplate the boyhood of Jesus and in doing so contemplate our own formative years. How we were drawn to the Father or found ourselves somehow feeling disqualified. The forming influences, the way in which we have been shaped.  

We are invited to see God there drawing us into relationship.  

But as many as received him writes St John – as many who allowed him to inhabit them and make them who they most deeply are, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

We are invited to find ourselves being born out of the will of God, out of God’s desire for you and me to be free, living abundantly.

This Sunday is also called Holy Family Sunday.  It is a Sunday for you and I to contemplate that we are called into community, by the will of God.  The Church has been called Holy Mother Church, often spoken of as if She must be obeyed not matter what.  Not so.  Holy Mother Church, a nurturing community, nurturing us in faith, nurturing in others what will bring their true sense of a daughter or a son of God to birth, into the light of day.  

The epistle outlines what that nurturing community is to be like – for our sakes, for our own enrichment of life and for the sakes of others, the building of a new society; so that we may experience in our humanity what the life of God is like.  

So let us keep these things in our hearts and give love and praise to our God, Father Son and Holy Spirit this Christmas Day and for all eternity.  Amen