Sermon by Fr James Heard, Sunday 31 December 2017, Christmas 1, United Benefice of Holland Park
Sermon by Fr James Heard, Sunday 31 December 2017, Christmas 1, United Benefice of Holland Park
Thank God for St Luke, whose Gospel we hear this week. Mark,
the first Gospel to be written, doesn’t have a birth narrative. John’s Gospel
starts with a universal cosmic dimension – in the beginning was the word, and
the word became flesh. Without Luke’s account we would have no stable, no
manger, no shepherds, no heavenly host.
Some people find the inconsistencies of the Gospel’s
confusing, some people even lose their faith over it. Others try to make sense
of it in a different way. This week I read one blog about the Christmas story
which suggested that we needed to deconstruct the Christmas story. Was there
really Magi, wise men from the East? Did it really happen in a stable and did
it really happen in Bethlehem? These are all worthwhile questions. And I
suppose the writer was quite rightly concerned that people in the sceptical
West don’t write off the story as simply a fairy tale with no inherent meaning,
apart from a good excuse to indulge in some lovely food/ wine and presents.
But what I think the author was missing is the staggeringly
outrageous theology of Christmas – because Christmas expresses the most
extraordinary dimension of our faith, the incarnation. That God became
incarnate, in flesh and blood, and sweat and tears, with love and sorrow,
happiness and grief. This is what the incarnation expresses.
The incarnation overcomes the gap between God and everything
else. It is the synthesis of matter and spirit. Without incarnation, God remains
separate from us and from creation. Because of incarnation, we can truly say,
‘God is with us!’ In fact, not only is God with us, God is in us, and in
everything else that God has created. We all have the divine DNA; everything
bears the divine fingerprint.
The Christmas narrative is actually the creation story told
and retold. Some 14 billion years ago beginning with the Big Bang, God,
who is Love, incarnates the universe. Then 2,000 years ago, God incarnates as
Jesus of Nazareth. So matter and spirit have always been one – God’s ruach,
God’s spirit breathing, causing creation to come to live, pregnant with the
divine energy. God’s first act of creation. The birth of Jesus tells the story
of creation over again… only this time with greater emphasis. It’s the story of
creation and re-creation not just in words, but in a Person.
And It is crucial that we understand the importance of
incarnation. Because, in short, it affirms the most profound truth - God is not
out there! The belief that God is ‘out there’ is the basic dualism. In
contrast, the incarnation affirms that creation is good, to be human is good!
The material and the physical can be trusted and enjoyed. This world is the
hiding place of God and the revelation of God!
And so the message of Christmas is one of joy and of
hope: Christmas is at its core a celebration not of us finding God, but of
God finding us.
Most great religious traditions speak to our human yearning
for God, for the divine. They speak to that truth expressed so well by St Augustine,
the c.4 North African bishop of Hippo: ‘God has made us for himself; and our
hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee’. Religious and
spiritual traditions throughout the world all provide ways intended to lead
people to God; paths to the divine that people may follow. Christianity – in
its best expressions – speaks favourably about such diverse paths that people
from various faith traditions may pursue in their life’s journey.
But the uniquely wonderful thing about what we celebrate at
Christmas, about our belief in the Incarnation, is that no matter what happens
our spiritual pilgrimage, no matter what paths we take, or indeed, the wrong
paths we often take, Christmas reminds us of this truth: that God so loved the
world and so loves each and every one of us that God is present within our very
flesh.
Christmas provides new life, new hope, new possibilities. And
whilst we celebrate Christmas just once a year, it’s a feast that needs to be
lived out throughout the year. Christmas is an annual new beginning. It’s a
“Let’s start this again” moment. Christmas carries a message of forgiveness and
mercy and of hope. Christmas affirms that the future is not predetermined by
the mistakes of the past but is waiting to be made. No matter where we are on
our life’s journey today, Christmas reminds us that the light that came into
the world 2,000 years ago still shines within each and every one of us. It
affirms that even (and perhaps especially) in those times when we’re not quite
sure where we are, or where our world or Church might be going, we are called
to have faith that our loving God will surely find us once again. Christmas
carries the hope of new life, new possibilities. Once again, Happy Christmas.
Reference:
Richard Rohr, God
Is Not "Out There", Sunday, January 10, 2016