In this child is the fullness of God: A Christmas Day sermon

Isaiah 52.7-10 Rejoice, for the Lord is consoling his people

Hebrews 1.1-6 God has spoken to us through his Son

John 1.1-18 The Word was made flesh, and lived among us.

 

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I was on a train the other day and saw two new parents with their clearly very newborn child.

 

The sight was deeply moving and compelling and, as we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ today, it struck me as an icon of what we see in the scene of the birth of Jesus, what we call the nativity.

 

The mother of that newborn was holding her child in her arms and gazing adoringly, gently rocking him, and then, very discreetly, placed him on her breast to feed him.

 

All the while the child’s father gazed at him too and ensured that his wife was comfortable and undisturbed.

 

What I saw on the train will have been what the shepherds and Magi saw too in the stable of Bethlehem, parents nurturing and protecting their new-born child.

 

In the scene at Bethlehem we see something profoundly human, just as I saw on the train.

 

We have to see the birth of Jesus Christ through the lens of a human birth, because that shows us his humanity, all that he shares in common with us.

 

And yet the Gospel reading proclaimed this morning did not reference Bethlehem or the adoration of Mary and Joseph.

 

It’s St Luke who gives us the details of shepherds and angels, of the inn and manger.

 

St Matthew gives us Bethlehem, the star and the Magi.

 

And those gospels speak powerfully of who Jesus Christ is, and from them we can see the intimacy and warmth of the parental love of Mary and Joseph for their divine son as ox and ass worship him and the heavens realign to signal their maker.

 

Yet we domesticate the birth of Jesus, and disenchant it, when we think of the nativity of the Saviour simply as a touching human scene or declare that Christmas is all about children.

 

We strip out the fact that the gospels consistently proclaim the reality underlying the birth of the Saviour,  which is something of profound significance, that holds together both a human birth and the fullness of the presence of God the Most High.

 

As our second reading put it, ‘[This Son] is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being…’ (Hebrews 1.2).

 

This is what we call the incarnation, which literally means the ‘taking of flesh’, the taking of flesh by God himself.

 

That is why we say that Jesus Christ is truly God and truly man; Son of God and Son of Mary.

 

So:

 

Jesus Christ didn’t look like a human being; he was one.

 

His humanity did not diminish his divinity; it was his glorification.

 

Jesus Christ is God, uncompromised by his human body and mind or his birth in time and history.

 

Jesus Christ has a human start, but is the divine Word from the beginning.

 

All the statements I have just made come straight from the earliest and enduring understanding of the Church about who Jesus Christ is: we speak of it in our Creed to be proclaimed shortly.

 

And this is what our Gospel this morning proclaims, speaking so powerfully of the mystery that lies behind the humanity of the reality of the nativity.

 

The Gospel affirms both the fleshly reality of Jesus Christ, and his divine origin.

 

We’ll sing of this shortly in the hymn ‘Of the Father’s heart begotten’.

 

The hymn affirms who Jesus is, born of God the Father out of the Father’s love for his creation that began, is sustained and will ever be through his Word.

 

All time and eternity belongs to him, he is the beginning and the end, and yet he deigned to be born as a human being locked in time:

 

Of the Father’s heart begotten,

ere the worlds from chaos rose,

He is Alpha: from that Fountain

All that is and hath been flows;

He is Omega, of all things

yet to come the mystic Close:

evermore and evermore.

 

The magnificence and wonder of the Incarnation is that through Christ being born as one of us, born of the pure Virgin Mary, we ourselves have the potential, capacity and means to become God’s children by adoption and by grace.

 

Go back to that image of the parents and baby on the train; go to the image of Mary and Joseph with their child who is the Promised Messiah and Saviour; and then picture yourself embraced in the loving arms of God who beholds you as his precious child.

 

Jesus Christ comes to make us more human not less; more what God created us to be at the Creation, before falling away from him by our sin.

 

God stretches out his arms of love towards you at Christmas, and every day, and delights to see your arms stretched out before him to receive his Son, the Bread of Life, the child of Bethlehem; the Saviour of the World.

Come and see: A Midnight Mass homily

Isaiah 9.1-7 A Son is given to us

Titus 2.11-14 God's grace has been revealed to the whole human race

Luke 2.1-14

‘Come, let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us’.

 

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The Christmas story is attractive on so many levels.

 

I don’t just mean that it gives us a warm glow of nostalgia remembering Christmases past or the delight of seeing the faces of children opening presents and performing in Nativity plays or the aesthetics of candles and carols.

 

The Christmas story, the birth of Jesus Christ, is attractive in the sense that it attracts, entices, intrigues: it says, ‘come’.

 

It draws people to gather and, fundamentally, to gather around the mystery at the heart of the crib of Bethlehem: Jesus Christ.

 

The tinsel and sparkle may captivate us.

 

But our very presence in this church, at this Mass, means that we have taken the step beyond the tinsel and are going deeper into the mystery.

 

This ‘great and mighty wonder’ attracts us, draws us and whispers to us, ‘come, come and see, come and see this thing that has taken place’.

 

The message of the angel to the shepherds is come, come and see this sign given to you.

 

We have been drawn here, to our own Bethlehem tonight, some invited, some perhaps compelled, yet all welcome to come and to gather, to come, to see, to go deeper and – whisper it – to be transformed.

 

We have responded to what the angel called the shepherds to do, to come and see the One Who Is: Saviour, Messiah, Lord.

 

Those titles speak of power, destiny and purpose – they’re foreshadowed by Isaiah the prophet - yet they speak of a child lying in an animals’ feeding trough, for that’s what a manger is.

 

Here’s the attractive, attracting mystery: the fullness of God and the fullness of humanity; the Lord of Hosts and the newborn child.

 

In the face of this mystery the heavens are filled with light and the praise of God – that exultant, exalting, joyful angelic proclamation – ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those whom he favours’ (Luke 2.14).

 

Like the shepherds, we ‘come and see’.

 

There is an irony for those of us who have been journeying through the season of Advent that has as its refrain ‘Come, Lord Jesus’; a time when we sing hymns such as ‘O come, O come, Emmanuel’ and ‘Come, thou long expected, Jesus’.

 

In Advent we plead for Jesus to come: come into our world, our nation, our lives.

 

Tonight we sing, ‘O Come all ye faithful’: the pleading that Christ will come to us flips on its head that we will come to Christ.

 

The Christian hope:

 

rejoices in the first coming of Christ in flesh and blood;

 

is strengthened in the presence of Jesus Christ in the flesh and blood of the Bread of Life which we receive at Holy Communion;

 

anticipates his Second Coming in glory.

 

So, we are attracted to come to Bethlehem, but we cannot remain there for ever.

 

The mystery invites us on - ‘come and see’ - so we ‘await the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Saviour’ (Titus 2.13).

 

This is a lifelong invitation which summons from us a lifelong response.

 

It is a response that has seeking Christ at its heart.

 

And as Jesus says in the Gospel of John, when he is asked what he is all about, ‘Come and you will see’ (John 1.39).

 

May we remain attracted to the mystery of Christ Jesus: we have come, now may we see.

 

There is no better way to begin that journey than with Mary, the Mother of the Lord as, with her, we treasure all these things and ponder them in our heart (Luke 2.19).

 

So we come, we see and Christ conquers, to reign our hearts so that we might glorify him and be drawn into his Heart of Love.

 

Gaudete! Christus est natus, Ex Maria virgine. Rejoice! Christ is born, Sing with joy! Born is the Saviour from the Virgin Mary.

 

Come, let us adore him.

 

Who are you?

Isaiah 61.1-4, 8-11 He has sent me to proclaim a year of favour from the Lord

1 Thessalonians 5.16-24 May you all be kept safe for the coming of our lord Jesus Christ

John 1.6-8, 19-28 ‘There stands among you the one coming after me’

 

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Who are you? What is your identity? Are you this, are you that?

 

This morning’s gospel gets topical because identity - who I am, what makes me, me, and how I want the world to perceive me - is a hot topic in wider culture.

 

It’s even known as identity politics.

 

The question of identity hinges on how I understand myself to be.

 

This can be a source of some anguish for those for whom their identity confusing, uncertain or a source of pain.

 

And indeed for people in that position compassion and love is profoundly important.

 

As we consider identity in relation to the Christian life the gospel passage seen through the lens of John the Baptist today drives home a key point.

 

‘Who are you?’ Is the very first question John is asked.

 

Let’s be clear, they know his name, they have heard about him, but they want to know more – who, at the deepest level, are you?

 

Before we look at that question, and how John replies, the passage began with an assertion of the identity of John the Baptist as narrated by John the Evangelist, in the Prologue to his Gospel.

 

This is who John is: he is sent by God; his name is John - a name which means ‘God is gracious’ - rather than his father’s name Zechariah, as custom would have had it; he is a witness - no more, no less - and he testifies to the light, so that all might believe through that light, and not through him.

 

Apart from the clear statement that John is not the light he is defined in the positive.

 

This is who John is; this is his identity.

 

Contrast that with what he says of himself when he is subject to the interrogation of the priests and Levites sent from Jerusalem: I am not the Messiah; I am not Elijah; I am not the prophet.

 

Who the heck are you then?

 

And we see, John is ready to declare his identity.

 

‘This is what I say of myself, ‘I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, “Make straight the way of the Lord”’.

 

Even then he is quoting someone else; it’s what the prophet Isaiah said.

 

So John identifies himself solely in relation to the Coming One: Christ, Messiah.

 

It’s entirely of a piece with his declaration in St John’s Gospel when he says of Jesus, ‘he must increase, but I must decrease’ (John 3.30)

 

In other words, the Christian life s one that allows Christ to shine through, undistorted by our petty rivalries, fantasies and jealousies but rather enhanced by our unique gifts and our faith and love.

 

Of course, this is not just about John however important he is in the story of the Coming of Christ.

 

What the Gospel points us to is what John the Baptist points us to the profound question for us all to contemplate: who is Jesus Christ?

 

St John’s Gospel tells us: He is the very fullness of the presence of God: the Eternal Word from the beginning; in him is life; he is the light to enlighten all human lives; he is the Word made Flesh; he is the bringer of grace and truth.

 

So, John the Baptist’s ‘I am not…’ declarations provide a contrast with the ‘I am…’ declarations of Jesus.

 

I am the Bread of Life (John 6.35); I am the Light of the World (8.12); I am the door of the sheepfold (10.7); I am the Good Shepherd (10.11); I am the Resurrection and the Life (11.17);  I am the Way, the Truth and the Life (14.6) I am the true Vine (15.5).

 

In declaring his identity as ‘I am…’ Jesus identifies himself with the Divine Name of God revealed to Moses, ‘I AM THAT I AM’ (Exodus 3.14)

 

And when Jesus says, ‘before Abraham was I am’ (8.58) he is declaring his identity as the Eternal Son of God, before all time.

 

So who are you? What is your identity?

 

The Gospel calls each man, woman and child to find their identity as fundamentally rooted in Christ, our entry point into the life of the Holy Trinity.

 

For when our identity is shaped on him then the salvation of our souls is made possible.

 

That shaping of Christian identity begins at our baptism and is shaped by our spiritual lives, that is growing in prayer and devotion; by our lives of love and service to those in need around us; an supremely by the sacraments, those channels of God’s grace, especially the Eucharist, what we are doing now.

 

In that way of life we become who we seek to be: children of God, who live a life directed towards the Beloved and hear his call.

 

The word ‘martyr’ means witness, and to be a martyr means a deep identification with Jesus Christ such that we even go to the cross with him.

 

In 2015 Islamic State beheaded 21 men on a beach in Libya, because they were, in their murderers’ words, ‘People of the Cross, followers of the hostile Egyptian Church’.

 

As they died each called out, ‘Jesus, help me’. That itself says that their identity  was with the crucified Lord.

 

And on that beach the twenty first captive was not Egyptian. He was Ghananian man called Matthew Ayariga. Because he was not Egyptian he might have been spared, yet when asked ‘who are you?’ he simply replied, ‘their God is my God’.

 

The witness of John the Baptist, also beheaded for his fidelity to Christ and the witness of the martyrs spurs us on to claim our identity in Christ.

 

Who are you? I am a Christian.

'My words will not pass away' - A sermon for Advent Sunday

Isaiah 64.1-9 O that you would tear open the heavens and come down

1 Corinthians 1.3-9 We are waiting for your Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed

Mark 13.33-37 If he comes unexpectedly, he must not find you asleep.

 

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It's becoming almost painful, and certainly more and more upsetting, to see and hear the news day after day.

 

You don’t need me to list what those things are

 

I suspect a newsfeed on a phone may well have pinged in some more bad news even as we are here this morning.

 

The news and events at home and abroad and globally, are profoundly disturbing.

 

It leaves us with questions: about human nature; about God; about the nature, purpose and destiny of Creation itself.

 

And is our faith silent on these questions? No.

 

Are human beings irredeemably doomed? No.

 

Has God abandoned us to our self-induced fate? No.

 

Can the Good News still be proclaimed - and received - in a dark, frightening and forbidding world?

 

Yes. It most certainly can.

 

Today’s passage from St Mark’s Gospel gives us the pointers for the hope that is promised in Jesus Christ, who says

 

²⁴ ‘But in those days, after that suffering,

the sun will be darkened,

   and the moon will not give its light,

²⁵ and the stars will be falling from heaven,

   and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.

 

Those words are not words of upbeat boosterism or naïve optimism.

 

They are stark words, full of foreboding.

 

The mistake of the world, our of culture, of those who do not believe, or ourselves when we’re feeling fragile, is to think, ‘that’s it: we are all doomed’.

 

The mistake of our world and culture is not to read on.

 

Yes, Jesus is speaking in dramatic terms about how the world feels in the depths of despair.

 

It is a depth of despair and pain that is an all too real reality for so many people.

 

Yet in the midst of that Christ is present and is coming.

 

The Master is present to the world, and those who are awake to him will be alert to receive him.

 

There is an invitation here not to be despairing but quite the opposite, to be trusting and recalled to faith.

 

The invitation: are you ready to commit to Christ, ever more deeply, in trust and faith?

 

That in itself is a good message for this Season of Advent: be renewed in trust and faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

 

Today’s Gospel asks us, ‘when all is stripped away, what is left to us?’

 

One day all of the joys, goods, pleasures, and accomplishments of this world will be taken from us.

 

At your funeral, and mine, almost certainly these words will be used: ‘The Lord gives and the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord’

 

All we have is grace, for life is a gift in the first place that is not ours to play with.

 

As the prophet Isaiah says in our first reading,

 

⁸ Yet, O Lord, you are our Father;

   we are the clay, and you are our potter;

   we are all the work of your hand.

 

The signs of the times tell us that our efforts, under their own steam, in contravention of God’s word, are doomed to lead to what we see in our world.

 

Lives lived in accordance with God’s will and purpose, for men, women and children and for the whole creation - of which we are a part, not apart – is what we must commit to at all times and in all places, especially in the darkness.

 

The culture that says ‘it’s all about me’, ‘I am the master of my own destiny’, ‘I am immortal’ is a culture of death, darkness and despair; that’s a culture that won’t see beyond a collapse into nothingness and absurdity.

 

The Gospel culture that says ‘my existence is first about God’, ‘God is the Creator and sustainer of the Creation where I find myself’, ‘I am mortal, dust of the earth, to which I shall return’ - that is a culture of life, of hope, of joy, of assurance.

 

The Christian Gospel has so much more to offer our dark, cold, despairing world than the voices we hear around us that airbrush God out of the picture.

 

When we see or hear the news, let us not allow the darkness to collapse in on us, but offer the darkness to be transformed by the light.

 

The Season of Advent speaks, amongst many other rich themes, of the dawning light, the light revealed in the true light Jesus Christ,

 

For in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. (John 1.4,5)

 

So, we look elsewhere; we look beyond to the steadfast love of God, which brought the entire universe into existence from nothing, which sustains it even now, and which will one day draw us to a life and a joy beyond it.

 

Out of destruction and desolation God has the capacity to renew and refresh: just look to the Cross on which he died, and from which we now proclaim him, Risen, Ascended, Glorified!

 

And may the Lord, when he comes, find us watching and waiting. Amen.

Wake up; shine out; come in

Wisdom of Solomon 6.12-16 Wisdom is found by those who look for her

1 Thessalonians 4.13-18 Do not grieve about those who have who in Jesus

Matthew 25.1-13 Stay awake, for you know neither the day nor the hour

 

Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.

 

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This evening’s gospel reading is both familiar and uncomfortable.

 

Perhaps it is familiar because the parable of the wise and foolish bridesmaids is one that can easily be visualised.

 

Ten bridesmaids with their oil fuelled lamps; five have got enough oil and five haven’t, and on the stroke of midnight, when the lookout calls that the Bridegroom is coming five are ready to go and meet him, and five are not.

 

It’s the subject of the great Advent hymn, ‘Wake, O wake!’

 

Wake, O wake! With tidings thrilling

the watchmen all the air are filling,

arise, Jerusalem, arise!

Midnight strikes! No more delaying,

'The hour has come!' we hear them saying,

'where are ye all, ye virgins wise?

The Bridegroom comes in sight,

raise high your torches bright!'

Alleluia!

The wedding song swells loud and strong:

go forth and join the festal throng.

(New English Hymnal, 16, Philipp Nicolai 1556-1608, tr R C Burkett 1864-1935)

 

That is a stirring and inspiring hymn.

 

It envisions the Church as the bride (cf Ephesians 5:22-33), and her children, the baptised, as the Bridesmaids who hear the call of the watchmen, those prophets who are the lookouts, who see and point out the coming Bridegroom, who is Christ himself.

 

That evokes a vision of the Book of Revelation:

 

After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. (Revelation 7.9)

 

There is the Church, in all her diversity living and departed, saints and martyrs, gathered around the Bridegroom, the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ; the Church witnesses to the light.

 

The hour has come! At the wedding feast at Cana Jesus tells his Blessed Mother, my hour has not yet come, but now the hour is here, the Bridegroom comes, bringing the wine of the kingdom.

 

So we bridesmaids then raise are torches, our lanterns filled with oil, praising the Lord and join the festal throng of the Church throughout the ages to the wedding banquet.

 

What a glorious and rich vision that is!

 

It is lovely to contemplate that, as Jesus says as he begins the parable, ‘the kingdom of heaven will be like this’.

 

But that is also what makes it an uncomfortable parable to hear.

 

‘The kingdom of heaven will be like this’.

 

If so, the kingdom of heaven challenges us because the foolish bridesmaids were not ready and, despite having the extra time granted to them - the bridegroom was late - they did not gain admission to the banquet.

 

This sits ill at ease with contemporary sensibilities around inclusion and is hard to hear, surely, we assume, everyone will be admitted to the kingdom of heaven?

 

This parable contains invitation to all, in that way it is thoroughly inclusive; but it also contains judgement: not everyone gets in to the banquet.

 

Likewise it seems unfair, but all ten bridesmaids were similarly equipped.

 

They had their lanterns and no one was denied oil – it is that the foolish bridesmaids just didn’t replenish the oil that was there for them.

 

This is a theme of some of the parables in St Matthew’s gospel: the foolish rule themselves out of attending the banquet, like the man who thought he could be admitted to another wedding banquet without the garment the guests wear.

 

Sop this parable is about openness to grace: grace is the oil that fills the lanterns of our faith as an unmerited and boundless gift to us.

 

We don’t enter the banquet on our own terms: conversion of life, vigilant expectation is part and parcel of being a follower of Christ the Bridegroom.

 

What’s then the measure of the wise bridesmaid-disciple?

 

It could be summed up like this: wake up; shine out; come in.

 

In our discipleship we will get drowsy, we will doze off: that speaks of our human frailty and sinfulness.

 

Whilst we will doze off, the wise bridesmaid will wake up ready and prepared: ‘Wake, O wake!’.

 

As St Paul writes in his letter to the Romans:

 

…you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armour of light; (Romans 13.11-12)

 

The hour is here.

 

As we've seen, at another wedding feast, the one at Cana, Jesus said to his Blessed Mother ‘my hour has not yet come’. Then to the woman at the well, ‘the hour is coming’ (John 4.21,23; cf also 5.25,28), then as he looks to his Passion, ‘the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified’ (John 12.27) and then at the last supper ‘Father, the hour has come’ (John 17.1).

 

The hour is here! Wake up.

 

And then shine out.

 

What is the newly baptised person told as they are handed a candle lit from the Paschal Candle of Easter?

 

‘Shine as a light in the world to the glory of God the Father’.

 

We are to be the lamp that bears the light of Christ.

 

The oil that replenishes us is the grace of Christ; in this way we share the life of the Church and inhabit the heavenly city.

 

This is the mystery of what the vision of Revelation describes: ‘And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband’. (Revelation 21.2)

 

Wake up; shine out and, now, come in.

 

Finally let us come to the banquet now - vigilant, expectant and prepared - for in this banquet of the Eucharist, we have a foretaste of the banquet of heaven, we replenish the lamps of our lives with the Bread of Life and Wine of the Kingdom, Christ’s body and blood, and we grow in wisdom.

Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage banquet of the Lamb.