Midnight Eucharist for Christmas Eve

John 1:1-14

Let me begin by asking you a question. According to the song ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas,’ how many partridges in a pear tree did my true love send to me? One? Any advance on one? The answer is twelve: one on each of the twelve days of Christmas. My true love sent to me 12 partridges and drummers drumming, 22 turtle doves and pipers piping, 30 French hens and lords-a-leaping, 36 calling birds and ladies dancing, 40 gold rings and maids-a-milking, and 42 geese-a-laying and swans-a-swimming: 364 gifts in all. Thank god for eBay…

Now let me ask you another question. According to the Gospels, how many children of God are born at Christmas? One? Jesus, laid in a manger? Well, yes…and no. Listen again to what John wrote:

‘He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.’

How many children of God are born at Christmas? We don’t know the exact number, but it was many, perhaps a whole town full.

We have misunderstood the Gospel story. We all know that there was no room in the inn – as John says, ‘He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.’ But we have misunderstood. There is a word in Greek for a commercial inn – Luke uses it in recounting Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan. But the word we have translated as ‘inn’ at the nativity is another word, the word for a guest room, for lodging provided free-of-charge as hospitality to travellers. It is the word Luke will use later to describe the upper room Jesus and his disciples borrow to eat a meal on the night he will be arrested and tried and condemned to death: certainly, his own people, represented by the rulers and authorities, did not accept him. But John wants to tell us about all who did receive him, and though he does not tell us about Jesus’ birth in any detail, he is writing about his coming into the world.

The typical home in Bethlehem was essentially a one-room house, shared by the family, day and night. Almost every family kept a few animals, and these were brought into the house and penned-in at one end at night. This kept the animals safe, and their body-heat provided warmth for the humans. At the other end from the animals, or sometimes on the flat roof, there was a smaller room, provision for guests or travellers. Joseph and his pregnant wife Mary are staying in such a room, but it is too small - there was no room – for a woman to give birth, attended to by the women and girls of the house, and most likely a couple more women who acted as midwives to the entire community. So Mary gives birth to Jesus in the main room, the family room, and her baby is wrapped tightly and laid in a manger: in a confined space for comfort – the baby has been used to the womb – filled with straw, which is both an insulator and hypoallergenic: in other words, warm and clean. The manger is not making do with what is to hand; it is the best possible place there is.

And to all who received him – Mary, and Joseph, and their hosts (most likely relatives of Joseph, and quite possibly his immediate family), and the midwives, and the population of the City of David who had welcomed home this son of David and his wife and soon-to-be-born child – received power to become children of God, born of God.

To all who received him. And surely that includes you, who have come here this night precisely in order to welcome the birth of Jesus, to travel back through time and space to be present, to make sure that he is received. But what we find is not what we expected to find, for instead of a baby in the manger there is a whole nursery full of cribs, and one for us, newly born – again – in God’s house, room made for our birth, to receive us. We have been welcomed by God this night.

This is a story of being received. A true story, the truest story of all. So come, and receive Jesus in bread and wine on this most holy night, and find yourself received by God, through and with him. Welcome, honoured guest. Welcome home.