24th Dec 2007CHRISTMAS : MIDNIGHT
Fr David Cherry
Isaiah 9 : 2 - 7 ; Titus 2 : 11 - 14 ; Luke 2 : 1 - 14
Two words of the heavenly host : “Fear not”.
It is always the same to you and to me, to all who will hear: ‘Fear not’.
Messages left on answering machines are not a good way to
communicate; but eventually Paulus in Oxford got through. I
picked up the phone just as our entire household was about to decamp to
John Lewis. “All this mayhem”, he said “and all
because of a baby.”
Parents will know well the costly disruption of a baby. But
the disruption caused by this child has been going on rather long time.
It was the power of an empire which first caused an upheaval. The
world was to be registered and taxed, order had to be created, people
brought into line – it was ever thus. And the Holy
Family find themselves on the move, pushed out from Nazareth and to
Bethlehem; pushed out of an inn and into a stable; pushed out of
Israel, as refugees in Egypt. This baby will be an itinerant
Messiah with nowhere to lay his head; a prophet not welcome among his
own people; pushed out, out of society – ultimately onto a
rubbish heap outside the walls of a deeply religious City and put to
death as a common criminal.
“His own people received him not”, we will hear from the
prologue of St John’s Gospel tomorrow morning. Out! No
room! But this baby, in the words of St Paul, will prove to be the
‘cornerstone rejected by the builders’; the very
cornerstone of a new culture and society, a new People, the New Israel
of God emerging from the dust of empires and fractious cultures, from
exhausted aspirations and human failure. “For unto us a
child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon
his shoulder…”
And his governance is not one of co-ercion, neither of strict order,
for it is never imposed, but invited. The Christian community,
the Church should never be a community of regulation, neither its
doctrine prescriptive. The message is always the same :
“Fear not. God is for you – offered ; unto to you is
born a Saviour.”
The rule of this God is revealed to you and me in the manger and begins
from this ‘nowhere’ : from the vulnerability of a child
claiming our love, clambering in his mother’s lap, seeking her
lips, trusting himself to us.
This is not the tortuous God Christians are berated for for addictively
believing in. Neither is it a message left whose instructions are
to be slavishly followed, but a Person to be known and rejoiced in. He
is Immanuel, which means ‘God is with us’ – with us,
for us, wanting us, not one day when or if we have become what we
should be like. But now as we are.
“Men here may draw like breath…” says Hopkins.
There is room for me and there is hope for all people.
And God’s new culture is to be built by persons living in
Communion; a new People built from those wasted by power, the debris of
human economy; from those, who having lost everything, have nothing
more to lose. To them comes the celestial message of the angels: to
shepherds – not that pastoral kind on Christmas cards, but the
ultimate outsiders of society, homeless vagabonds, against whom people
locked their doors when they came into town.
This new kingdom or culture that dawns on the world is one of forgiving
love, where there is no retaliation or vengeance. No wonder
Pilate will be confused. For it is built from vulnerability
- the places in myself where I am brought to an end in myself and
recognise that I must be saved from myself; the place of truth,
of recognising the failures in following my Lord both personally and as
a Church that only falteringly exercises Christ’s priesthood for
the saving of the world; the blindness of a society addicted to a
charade of happiness, habitually in denial of the God who loves us.
And to find within oneself this kind of poverty of spirit is to chance
upon a strange joy and gift from God, which Jesus called a state of
‘bless-edness’ – blessed because it is true and full
of hope. Blessed, because the madness of frightened
self-justification can cease; and we can hear again, beneath the din of
the boots of tramping warriors and the images of garments rolled in
blood - we can have time to hear another dark year on - the
message of angels. It is always the same to you and to me, to all
who will hear: ‘Fear not’.
Here, in this mass, we are invited to the manger at Bethlehem, to find
ourselves undone again from all our foolish pride so that we can be
remade again in our poverty where we must be held by Another; talked,
touched, soothed into Being.
Men here may draw like breath
More Christ and baffle death;
Who, born so, comes to be
New self and nobler me
In each one and each one
More makes, when all is done
Both God’s and Mary’s Son.
Fear not as you come forward to the God who approaches you, to welcome,
to commune and make himself one with you in Holy Communion this Christ
Mass, who comes to pledge his love for you and all the world.
… for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which
shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of
David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.” Amen