SERMON         CHRISTMAS 2004 

In the name of God, born as one of us. Amen. 

This is a very difficult time of year. But you probably don’t need me to tell you that. The combination of end-of-year parties, the start of summer holidays and the major public celebration of the year is a potent mix. Unless we really have our act together, or are within the sphere of influence of somebody who is deeply organised and calm, life can get unravelled pretty quickly. Is the dog booked in to the kennels? Have we stopped the paper and re-directed the mail? Who doesn’t have any presents yet? What if all the children refuse to go and pick up Aunt Maud because she is always so rude to them?  

In the midst of the chaos, the weight of expectations bears heavily on us – we should be relaxing, we should be enjoying ourselves, we should be laughing at Aunt Maud’s little foibles instead of feeling like strangling her with the string we are meant to be using to truss the turkey. We should be finding time to focus on the true meaning of Christmas, rather than getting submerged in a sea of complex arrangements to do with food, presents and visiting relatives and friends. But can we find the piece of paper that tells us what time Christmas services are on? 

And so - my congratulations to all of you! You have found the piece of paper and you are taking some time to focus on the miracle that brings us here today.  

The birth of Jesus calls us to many things – but frantic celebration, stressed-out shopping expeditions and depression are not among them. One of my predecessors as Rector, Canon Jim Tregea, has entered into parish mythology as the preacher of the shortest Christmas sermon ever. Bypassing the pulpit altogether, he stood at the chancel step and just said, ‘the message of Christmas is love’.  

And so it is. But, unlike Jim, I’m not going to leave it there (sorry!) In deciding to enter our world and live as a human being, bounded by time and space, God decided to reveal Godself to us in the most direct way possible, unequivocally, in our faces. Jesus shows us what God is. His life, teaching, ministry, death and resurrection show us what God’s love means: acceptance for the outcast, forgiveness for those whose wrongdoing causes them guilt and pain, healing for the ill.  

Jesus’ message was clear – God loves you, unconditionally, passionately, transformingly.   

The Christmas story brings a particular twist to this revelation.

Unlike a Greek god, springing fully formed from the head of Zeus, Jesus was born as a human baby, small and vulnerable, utterly dependent on the people around him. He owed his very existence to Mary. Bone of her bone, flesh of her flesh, she carried him first in her body and then in her arms. The infancy stories tell us that his life was at great risk and that he survived only because of the wisdom of the magi, who did not go back to tell Herod where they had found him, and then, after this, only because Joseph obeyed God’s instruction to flee the country.  

This idea of God being vulnerable to us, to our actions, to our faithfulness, is profoundly challenging and places enormous responsibility on us. It is tempting to dismiss it. But it was not just the case through Jesus’ childhood. It remained so through his life. Jesus lived in a set of interdependent relationships which affected his living circumstances and his well-being, just as we live in sets of interdependent relationships which affect our living circumstances and our well-being.  

The ultimate act of vulnerability was, of course, Jesus’ death on the cross. He chose not to deny his relationship with God nor to trade on it, and he submitted to a process which led to his early death at the hands of other people. The resurrection might show that God’s love can triumph, even over death, but it does not take away God’s vulnerability to human actions nor the fact of death itself.  

Vulnerability is, after all, a natural part of loving. How can I say ‘I love you’ and then pretend that I am not affected by what you do or by how you feel about me? Relationship only makes sense if we are open to each other. If it’s not there, then there is no emotion, no love. As Jesus wept when he heard the news of Lazarus’ death, God weeps with us when we suffer.  

The message of Christmas is love – love for God and love for each other. All the thought and effort we put into Christmas celebrations are, in their own ways, expressions of love – love for the people to whom we are giving presents, love for the people with whom we will share festive meals, loving gratitude to God that we live in peace and are able to celebrate in this way. Sure, that loving impulse can be buried under stress, or give way to the competitive instinct where all you want to do is show everyone that you can put on a better Christmas dinner than that idiot of an uncle did last year, but love is usually there at the heart of it all.  

However, the call to love each other extends way beyond our immediate circle. Challenging though it might be to love Aunt Maud, it is even more challenging to hear the call to love those we might condemn, those we might think of as our enemies, those who might wish to hurt us. It is also challenging to look even further and respond with love to those we don’t know but who may be being harmed by our actions. We cannot and should not ignore the fact that Western lifestyles contribute to great hardship throughout the world. God weeps because of us when we fail to treat each other with loving compassion. The call to social justice is intrinsic to Christian belief.  

The message of Christmas is a call to place love at the very centre of our lives, in all its complexity and beauty, with all its challenge. As we gaze at the little baby, and see focussed in him the extraordinary depth of God’s love for us, may we also hear the call for us to love God and to love each other. Amen.

Sarah Macneil