Sermon by Rev Sydney Maitland for Sunday 25 December 2024.
• First Reading: Isaiah 62: 7-10 ()
• Epistle: Hebrews 1: 1-12 ()
• Gospel: John 1: 1-14 ()
I think that they call it ‘displacement activity’ when in the face of an overwhelming but unfaceable reality, we take to something quite different, but which occupies our minds.
The loss of someone close to us is an obvious example, but it applies to other kinds of loss as well: of job, friends, pets, and ambitions.
But then at Christmastide, we also do the same thing. Just how many of our lovely carols have no mention of the incarnation of Jesus Christ? ‘We wish you a happy Christmas’ is one example. There are songs about Santa Claus, or wishing someone a ‘Merry little Christmas’, seeing mommy kissing Santa Claus, or even ‘Tomorrow shall be my dancing day’.
Maybe, faced by threats to our way of life, the environment, the national budget and national defence, this is understandable.
Certainly if that is all that Christmas is. A midwinter festival of warmth and light, with feasting and all kinds of merry-making.
But then there is another side to it. Mothers have been giving birth to their babies since lifeforms abandoned egg-laying in favour of carrying, birthing and then nursing their young.
But this birth really is special: not, with respect to the mother but in terms of the baby born. Mary was and is special because she consented to carrying the embryo of God in her womb. The miracle was the conception, but the birth and upbringing of the baby were in the normal course of human life.
Now we are seeing eternity distilled into and focused on one particular life. This is the Word which was with God and which was God. The Word that said ‘Let there be light’ and it came to be.
The same word that would say, ‘Love God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength; love your neighbour as yourself’
But then He would also say, ‘God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, so that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.’
And to His disciples, ‘Love one another as I have loved you,’ not too long before forgiving His executioners.
This is the kind of love that is utterly and totally real, wholly committed to the needs and well-being of the other person as opposed to the satisfaction of some personal emotional need.
This is the love that does not compromise, and is obedient to God in all things, even to the point of death.
Perhaps it is small wonder that some may prefer to trivialize Christmas with heart-warming ditties. The issues are just too great for the whole of humanity so perhaps we should be gentle in our judgments of these things.
But then we can look at it another way.
God chose the normality of a human birth to draw us into His purposes. Jesus lived a normal human life: childhood, adolescence, adulthood, because that is what people normally do.
He suffered exclusion and rejection, being misunderstood and abused, and finally betrayed and killed, for that is also part of the human experience.
He drew close to us then – and He still draws close to us now, because that is where we are weakest and in our greatest need. He is alongside us as we face death, for He has been there and come through it, to the other side.
Christmas is never the climax to the normal year: it is far more like the starting point of a journey of the soul as our spirits stop looking at ourselves or even one another and start looking for and at God.
And we are invited to start or to restart our spiritual journey with the simplicity of a baby born in a stable. No great performance or announcements. No song and dance: just a simple, humble heart.
It calls out to God from where we are, with all our sins and failures, all our compromises and disappointments. It is there in all the difficult details of our lives, and the more we know that we come short of the moral purity and holiness of God then the more we have already prepared ourselves.
For this is the place where with Isaiah, we say ‘Burst into songs of joy, Jerusalem, for the Lord has saved and comforted His people.’ He calls us to echo that comfort for those who mourn.
For Jesus is indeed the radiance of the Glory of God and the exact representation of His being, and with John we in the later years of the church, still say ‘We have seen His glory.’
For this celebration is all about God: it is directed at Him and as we do so we may also bring before Him our needs and those of our families, friends, communities and of the world at large.
None of this is because we deserve it: it is purely because we come before Him in trust and at the invitation of the One, born a baby in a stable in Bethlehem.
Now the celebration makes sense. It fits together. It starts in the glory and majesty of God and finds its focus in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ.
He is the One who draws it together, and who put Himself on the line, taking personal responsibility for all the degradation and abuse in the world.
O Come, Let us adore Him!
