Christmas 2007

Happy Christmas !!!!

One of the best known and loved of all Christmas carols is ‘O little town of Bethlehem’. It continues ‘How still we see thee lie; Above thy deep and dreamless sleep The silent stars go by; yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light. The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.’

It’s a wonderful romantic picture of the place where Jesus was born, and yet the reality couldn’t be further from those words. Today Bethlehem is far from peaceful. Off and on for years it has been the scene of violence. Now it is a walled city with security gates which would probably stop the shepherds, and the wise men coming in.

This year a charity called the Amos Trust have sold nativity scenes made in Bethlehem with the separation wall which has been built by the Israelis included in front of the crib. It is a removable wall which can be removed when peace finally comes to Bethlehem.

And that crib scene reminds us of the tragedy of so much of what people have described as religion, and it also reminds us of how far removed such actions are from Jesus, whose birth we celebrate. This was the man born into the world to bring peace, peace between nations, peace in broken families, peace in the midst of heartbreak and suffering and peace in the hearts of people everywhere.

Our gospel reading this evening describes Jesus as the true light, which enlightens everyone, and it speaks very much of a light which even today has not been accepted by everyone but a light which still shines brightly.

One of my favourite words which is often associated with Christmas is the word ‘Emmanuel’. It means ‘God with us’, and one of the things that is striking about that word is that it doesn’t refer to a time 2000 years ago when God dwelt amongst us, but it refers to today – God is with us here and now in this place !

And that fact must surely make a difference in our lives. I want to tell you a short story about a man called Arthur... Arthur loved fishing and spent a lot of time out doing it, but there was one problem – he was bad at it and never caught anything !

One very wet and cold day though as he was sitting by the river he felt something tugging on his fishing line – he was shocked but excited – he remembered all he’d been told about how to haul in the fish, but as he drew the line from the water he noticed that all there was on the end of it was an old wig.

And so, fed up, he decided to go home – really miserable ! And as the rain got heavier and he got colder he decided to put on the wig which had just about dried out in his bag, and he began to think. He said to himself ‘I wish when I got home there was a lovely roast beef dinner ready for me’, but then he thought ‘there won’t be though because my wife never cooks a roast for me’.

But when he went in the house, he could smell a roast, and sure enough his wife had cooked roast beef for him !

Later as he was rather full after the meal, he decided he would take a walk. He couldn’t find his hat, so he decided to put on the wig again to keep warm, and as he went out he wished that the rain would stop and the sun would come out, and sure enough it did !

And he realised that whatever he wished for came true if he put on the wig, and so he made up a little rhyme to go with it, ‘Make me happy, make me jig, grant my wish O magic wig!!!’

And so the following day he thought he’d like to go and have tea at Buckingham Palace with the Queen – on went the wig and sure enough he was off to see the Queen. As he was leaving he thought he really liked the Palace and so he made another wish, and that was that he could be where the greatest king that has ever lived was born.

And then he woke up, in a stable surrounded by animals and smelling, well, just like a stable really !

And it dawned on him where he was because in the back of his mind somewhere with a whole lot of things in the way of it was the knowledge that Jesus is the greatest king that has ever lived. He came without any riches, he came without an army… he came, born to people who were poor, born in a stable, born seemingly without a chance of making a difference in his own town, let alone the whole world.

And yet 2000 years on we celebrate his birth, and we know that he has changed the lives of millions of people since that time, and we know, maybe sometimes only in the back of our minds, that he is the greatest king that has ever lived…

And this king wants to share our lives with us. He wants us to take down the walls that separate us from him – perhaps they are walls which we create in our minds of being too busy, too preoccupied with other things, too concerned with questions that we can never answer, too ready to run with a crowd that is often it seems running away not just from the Church, but from Jesus.

We create barriers in our lives, sometimes that separate us from other people, sometimes that separate us from God, but as we celebrate the birth of Jesus, we are reminded that God wants to come into our lives, and be a real presence – God with us today ! Not yesterday, not 2000 years ago, not just in a book, or in theory, but God with us here and now !

And so this Christmas time, let’s celebrate, let’s enjoy the birth of Jesus, and the things that go with it today, but let’s also make a decision to not just celebrate his presence here and now, but to let him into every moment of our lives, to let him in so that we can feel his love, his warmth, his joy, his power… his peace…

And if we can do that, if we are prepared to allow him to embrace us, then we will, as we heard in the gospel see his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth, and we will see his light, a light which banishes all darkness from our lives, and which no darkness can ever overcome. AMEN