Tuesday 25th DecCHRISTMAS DAY

Fr Julian Browning

Isaiah 52 : 7 – 10 ; Hebrews 1 : 1 – 4 ; John 1 : 1 - 14

“In the beginning was the Word”    John 1.1

Is it true for me, and is it going to make any difference in the direction my life is going to take? 

Good news, at last. For us, I mean. Advent has been about God, and what He is going to do. At Christmas we see God. We can see God because God has come to live with us. That is what the crib and the carols are all about: God living with us in a homely, personal, uncomplicated way, as natural as a new born child coming into a family. It is the last thing we are expecting to happen. It is new for us, and it is challenging too. The Prologue to St.John's Gospel, those famous words read this morning, are about something new in St.John's life, in our life, and in everyone's life. No one has ever seen God, he says. That was the Old Testament way, and it tends to be our way too. You hide your face, you don't look up, you rather hope He'll go away. And God gets things done in a mysterious, behind-the-scenes manner. My ways are not your ways, says the Lord. But that is not the whole story. God also comes to where we are. This is an irreversible fact, like the birth of a child. In Jesus, in all that he is going to say to us and do with us, we can see God. And only when God is seen does life truly begin.

In the beginning was the Word, and the word is the cry of a newborn child. St.Augustine says somewhere that although God is older than the world itself, He is younger in age than many of his servants in the world. We are travelling through this world with no end of baggage, what we've done and failed to do, what others have done to us, no end of chips on shoulders, grumbles and false hopes. God is born today. The new life begins now. He is born as one of us, so that we can become like Him, all life, all hope, all loved as new born child is loved. It is at the crib that our journey to eternity begins, our life on earth. There is a new language to be learnt, new words to be heard, the music of eternity. The mystery of Christmas, it seems to me, is that as the story becomes more earthy, more human, more dangerous, more about people and what they do to each other, the whole scenario becomes filled with the glory of God, and we know there are angels here. You would think it would be the other way round, as it is in our lives. Our humdrum lives leave no room for God, he's elbowed out, no room at this inn. The message of Christmas is that that sort of me-only life is a shocking waste. When we meet the living God in Jesus Christ, in other words in our particular bit of the world, our slice of time, we shall know what life really is. Some of us went to Marylebone Parish Church last week, together with the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Methodists, to celebrate the tercentenary of the birth of Charles Wesley. We sang thirteen of his hymns, so I'm well up on Charles Wesley. His hymns, and so many of the songs of praise we sing, are all about the divine, the wonderful, the eternal, being found in the human, the simple, the transient lives we lead, just as Jesus is to be found in that crib. Knees and hearts to him we bow; Of our flesh and of our bone, Jesus is our brother now, and God is all our own.

Good news for us, and good news for everyone, for the whole world. That's the point of the Virgin Birth. Jesus has no human father, so that no tribe, no family, no country can claim him just for themselves. This is why we can say that we belong to the Catholic, the universal Church. Tribal warfare, my idol against your idol, the programme of me and those who think like me against you and your lot, that is not the story of Emmanuel, God with us. We may not be on the warpath all the time, but you will know what I mean: a permanent state of crossness with other people, and living tied to the fantasy that we must be right all the time. That stops today; that is driven out by gratitude for what God does for us. God so loved the world – not the Church, not my bit of the Anglican Communion, not the moral majority whoever they might be today – but the world. It's a thought which can literally enlighten us, and it is implied in the first chapter of St.John's Gospel. Just as we all live in a world created by God, so we all walk in the same light. It has been given to everyone, whatever they believe, whatever they have done, this light by which we can see our way. We and many others might prefer darkness, but the light will always banish the darkness. True light is there for us and for everyone.

At Christmas we believe that this true light, the illumination of our hearts, is as real and as factual as the birth of Jesus at Bethlehem.  It is also a time for some healthy doubt. Is it true? Is it true for me, and is it going to make any difference in the direction my life is going to take? We are too easily knocked off course by doubt – was there a virgin birth, are there angels, was there a stable, is the date right, and so on. But doubt – looking for right answers -  is not the same as unbelief. A believer can have doubts, and still believe. In fact it is the doubts which draw us further into the mystery of this day each year. Christians do not have to know it all. All we know today is that Christ is born, that God is to be seen, and that our true life can now begin. As Charles Wesley wrote: With the angelic host proclaim, Christ is born in Bethlehem.