Church of the Good Shepherd

Christmas Sermon 2009

I don’t know if your family is like mine in so far as you have certain things you do in the run up to Christmas; kind of family rituals.  By family rituals I don’t mean religious rituals but ordinary things that you just feel you have to do otherwise it just doesn’t feel like Christmas.  In our house four films have to be watched in the week leading up to the great day.  The first is Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas”, a fantasy which almost came true this year.  Then there is “Love Actually” starring the, to my mind, annoying Hugh Grant – Hollywood’s idea of what a typical Englishman is like.  The third film which must be watched is “A Muppet’s Christmas Carol” starring Michael Caine as Scrooge with a supporting cast of various Muppets.   The final film is in fact both the longest and my favourite: “It’s a Wonderful Life”.  I say it is the longest because it stars James Stewart, fans will know that he was not known for delivering his lines speedily.  In many ways this old black and white film is corny: James Stewart plays George Bailey, a young man who desperately wants to broaden his horizons and leave the little American town where he lives.  Just as George is about to depart to fulfil his dreams his father dies and the board of the loan company which his father chaired asks George to stay on and take over.  Fearing that the local grasping Capitalist villain will swallow up this business which helps the poor get homes of their own George reluctantly agrees.  After various acts of self sacrifice he is driven to despair one Christmas when his uncle loses all the money.  Facing imprisonment and disgrace, George decides he is worth more to his family dead than alive and is about to throw himself off a bridge into the icy waters beneath when a trainee angel called Clarence is sent to rescue him.  Clarence shows George how things would have turned out if he had never existed, eg, his younger brother whom he saved from drowning would have died leaving his mother heart broken, his wife would have been a lonely old spinster who never really lived or loved, the numerous people he helped gain their own properties through his loan company would have been victims of the aforementioned Capitalist hyena, etc, etc.  You get the picture if you will excuse the pun.  It all turns out well because the good folk whom he has helped over the years manage miraculously to come up with the money to replace that which uncle lost and thus they save the day.  If that were not enough the added bonus is that Clarence, who it has to be said is a somewhat inept angel, finally gets his wings.  Not a dry eye in the vicarage I can tell you!

Well we are here today to celebrate a wonderful life coming into the world.  Not the stuff of Hollywood fantasy but an actual life of epic proportions which had very humble origins according to St Matthew’s and St Luke’s accounts.  Jesus was born in a stable in poverty and deprivation due to there being no room in the inn; we know the story well.  We might however do well to consider how things would have been had Jesus Christ had not been born.  We would not be here today for a start.  The world would have been denied someone who showed us what God was like in human terms which we could all see and understand.  God would have remained a distant figure.  I have come to think that one of the ironies of modern living is that everyone seems to be constantly in touch with one another – emails, Facebook, texting, speaking on the phone but the very means of this supposed communication actually keeps people at arms length from one another.  You cannot see a person’s facial expression in a text; you cannot experience the subtle nuances of their body language on Facebook, not to mention the fact that people seem to say the most appalling things to each other over the internet which they would not dream of saying to each other face to face.  The fact of the matter is that with the increase in ways of messaging there has been a decrease in actual connection and intimacy.  I am not knocking technology, I would not be without it but I recognise its limitations. 

When God in Christ entered the world He did so in the most personal and intimate means of communication that He could have possibly used.  He did not even speak, He gazed at the world through the non judgemental eyes of a venerable child.  The Word did not thunder at us from afar – the Word became flesh.  Martin Buber was a Jewish philosopher who considered the most fundamental relationship a human being could have was what he called an “I Thou” relationship.  To illustrate what he meant by this he suggested we thought of two lovers sitting together, just being – not making any judgements about each other just being and enjoying each others’ presence.  All other relationships were in Buber’s opinion “I It” relationships where people make judgements and demands of each other and treat each other, not as equally valuable human beings, but rather as objects to be exploited.  He felt God could be experienced as “I Thou” but that so often religious people wanted to turn God into an object which they can then use for their own advantage.  Pursue God demanding a religious experience said Buber and you are destined to disappointment, be open to God and eventually He will find you.  When Christ was born it was the biggest “I Thou” moment in history.  To share that “I Thou” moment we need, like the Shepherds and the Wise men and the Blessed Virgin, to be quiet and gaze into his vulnerable eyes with utter wonderment.   As the hymn puts it so well, “Let all mortal flesh keep silence!”  Christ’s birth heralded the arrival of a wonderful life indeed.

Now what about you, do you have a wonderful life?  Perhaps if you are feeling down this Christmas you don’t feel you have.  Let me disabuse you on two fronts.  Firstly biologically speaking you are the next best thing to a miracle.  Let me quote from the writings of Richard Dawkins who, when he is talking biologically, makes a lot more sense that when he is knocking religion: “We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people.  In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.”  The fact that you are here at all is wonderful – so be amazed. 

Secondly, if you never actually existed then think of the impact that would have had on those you hold near and dear.  The film “It’s a Wonderful Life” is a fantasy pure and simple but it is a fantasy which begs a profound question – like it or not you have, and will continue to have, an enormous effect for good or ill on those with whom you have to do day by day in the ordinariness of life.  Their lives would be the poorer if you had not existed.  At that level too you have a wonderful life – so celebrate it.

However there is in fact a third reason why you, potentially speaking at the very least, have a wonderful life.  God still wants to be incarnated, not now in the infant Jesus but in the lives of ordinary folk like you and me who form Christ’s lasting legacy on earth, the church.  Mary’s openness to God when he surprised her one day and announced through an angel that she would bear His Son can in a sense be our experience.  If we follow Buber’s advice and remain open to God, not demanding anything, merely, like the Blessed Virgin, open to him, then sooner or later we will find that Christ will be conceived anew in the womb of our souls and what we can then bring to birth will be every bit as wonderful as the babe of Bethlehem.  This is not something reserved for those who are somehow special and unique; this is something open to all.  For those who can perceive the Word made flesh in the infant Christ will find, as St John promises, that they will have power to become the children of God, for they will be born “not of the will of man, nor of the will of the flesh but of God”.  His story and our story will become inexorably entwined and the result will be a truly wonderful life.   Have a very happy Christmas.  Amen.