30th December 2007THE HOLY FAMILY
Fr David Cherry
Ecclesiasticus 3 : 2 – 6 & 12 – 14 ; Colossians 3 : 12 – 21 ; Matt 2 : 13 – 15 & 19 - end
Words from today’s Collect : “Grant that, as he came to share in our humanity, so we may share the life of his divinity.”
With all these musings we come to the Manger this morning; to the God who is come among us to be human with us; to draw us together, to include and save from loneliness and alienation. The bread is broken, the cup shared.
Well, so that is that. Now we must dismantle the tree,Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes --
Some have got broken -- and carrying them up to the attic.
The holly and the mistletoe must be taken down and burnt,
And the children got ready for school. There are enough
Left-overs to do, warmed-up, for the rest of the week --
Not that we have much appetite, having drunk such a lot,
Stayed up so late, attempted -- quite unsuccessfully --
To love all of our relatives, and in general
Grossly overestimated our powers. Once again
As in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed
To do more than entertain it as an agreeable
Possibility, once again we have sent Him away,
Begging though to remain His disobedient servant,
The promising child who cannot keep His word for long.
So concludes the Narrator of Auden’s Christmas Oratorio.
In that very long poem by Auden, one of the themes that is explored is
the gap – the distance - between the stupendous revelation of God
and the indifference, the human inability to be stirred into belief:
To do more than entertain it as an agreeable
Possibility, once again we have sent Him away…
Today we are invited to contemplate the Holy Family of Nazareth.
I feel ambivalent about this feast. In some churches clergy will
be preaching about the sanctity of family life, the gift of stability
and the appropriateness of bringing up children in the unit of a
family. Of this I have no doubt.
“O son, help your father in his old age, and do not grieve him as
long as he lives; even if he is lacking in understanding, show
forbearance.” advises the Son of Sirach in the first lesson.
It is good to be reminded after our family Christmases where we may have grossly overestimated our powers….”
I suppose I am ambivalent because in the hands of men the Holy Family
has become the only Christian model of life to aspire to and can be
left unrelated to the rest of Jesus’ revolutionary life. I,
for one, am very grateful that that model is now being set in a wider
context among the constellations of loving relationships that emerge in
today’s society which also bear the hallmarks of God’s
life.
At midnight mass I spoke of the disruption caused by this child quoting
my friend Paulus who rang up before Christmas and said:
“All this mayhem; and all because of a baby!”
Jesus docility and obedience, the quiet life of Nazareth, needs to be
set alongside the disruption to family life caused by this growing
boy. He causes a disturbance which is of God. Herod
the Tetrarch is threatened by this child. What is coming to birth
– this extraordinary freedom to the public - threatens to
unravel his power and the very fabric of the society he tells himself
he has worked so hard to improve. It must be stopped.
In the same poem by Auden, Herod reasons :
Alongside that image of the Holy Family, of Jesus becoming a carpenter
at Joseph’s side, let us not forget the subversive, freeing note
at the beginning of Matthew’s gospel (See HOMILY for Advent IV);
the unmarried mother, the foster father. Alongside our tidy
projections of our culture we need to place the consternation of his
parents finding him in the Temple about his Father’s business,
discovering his vocation – Jesus’ disobedience because of a
deeper call and obedience.
Alongside that, set some of the hyperbolic sayings of Jesus,
“unless you hate mother and father for my sake…. You
cannot be a follower of mine”. And what about his followers
leaving their nets and families to follow him? What about the
overwhelming sense of the New Testament that it was better to remain
single until the Day of the Lord? (And there is still this
understanding in the BCP preface and reasons for Holy Matrimony : It
was ordained as ‘a remedy against sin and to avoid fornication;
that such persons who have not the gift of continency might
marry’. )
And what about the counter-cultural hermits who took refuge in the
deserts; the lives of consecrated virginity and service in religious
communities? All these signs of a new dispensation dawning on the
world to upset our Herod and our own politicians.
Alongside this image of a Holy Family, set too your own experience;
your thanksgivings for your own families; your own lives. Not
many of us, present this morning live in heterosexual families or are
parents or want to be, or feel called to be.
The disruption of this God-Child that Herod tried to stamp out, is a
disruption to world order – it seems to me - to bring about a new
constellation of relationships between people in a New
Family. St Paul is writing to part of that new family in
Colossea ….and so it is addressed to you and me this small
family of God’s Church too.
“And above all these put on love, which binds everything together
in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to
which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful.”
With all these musings we come to the Manger this morning; to the God
who is come among us to be human with us; to draw us together, to
include and save from loneliness and alienation. The bread
is broken, the cup shared. This is home enough for all. So
may the Holy Family mean this to us today “so we may share the
life of his divinity as he came to share in our
humanity.” Amen