Midnight Mass, Christmas Eve 2022

 

Christmas Night: Hebrews 1:1-12 and John 1:1-14

Almost always, when I prepare a sermon, I look to engage with one or more of the readings we have just heard. But tonight, Christmas Night, is a little bit different, from other nights, other days. We have heard the readings, the opening lines from the Letter to the Hebrews and from the Gospel According to John, for their own sake, their beauty of form, as the writers of old reflected on the beauty of Jesus, come into the world. In the dark days of a Winter of Discontent, beauty matters, and most of all the beauty of Jesus.

I do want to draw your attention to the way the writer of Hebrews speaks of when God brings the firstborn into the world, not as a prophet, passing through, but as the rightful possessor of a throne that is for ever and ever, over and beyond the heavens and the earth the Lord founded. I want to draw your attention to the way in which John takes us back to the very beginning, to the creation of the world, and to the one through whom it was created coming to it, coming into it, coming to his people. But then I want to set those readings not quite aside and focus on a different part of the Christmas story. I want to read to you another verse, just one verse, from the Gospel according to Luke:

And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

Luke 2:7

There was no place for them in the inn.

The (Greek) word for place is topos, from where we get the word topography. A place, or region, or terrain, with its own unique features. Within the biblical imagination, a topos is the place assigned by God to every living creature. The great oceans, with their mountains thrusting islands above the surface of the waves, and their deep, dark canyons, the playground of migrating whales and turtles, and giant squid. The vast, flat grasslands, home to herds of bison and zebra, wildebeest, and gazelle. The rainforests, for tigers and tree frogs, lemurs, and little elephants. The mountains, for lynx and yak and snow leopards. The tundra, for the Arctic fox and Artic hare; and the polar ice caps for polar bears and penguins. We hear, in the first chapter of Genesis, how God made each topos and brought forth the firstborn of every form of life. We hear the echo of that momentous Word in the first chapter of John, and again in the first chapter of Hebrews.

And when Mary brought forth her firstborn son, there was no place for them in the inn.

The word translated ‘inn’ does not refer to a commercial inn, but to a room in any home in the time and place when Jesus was born. Families lived in one shared common room, with their animals corralled at one end at night, perhaps a little cow, or donkey, or a small family of goats, the animals’ body heat keeping the humans warm until the sun returned. The night-manger was a bowl, a feeding trough, carved from a stone slab. But any home had room to offer hospitality to a stranger passing through on their journey, in need of a bed for the night. It was said that some had entertained prophets, or even angels, in this way. The prophets through whom God spoke, the angels called to worship the Son, there in our reading from Hebrews. The ‘inn’ might be a second room, or as simple as a curtain that could be pulled across the far end of the common room, offering some privacy, rolled up like a cloak during the day. It could be a hut, or even a canopy on poles, up on the flat roof, accessed by steps on the outside of the house. A canopy that wears out, like clothing, and gets changed, replaced. But when Mary brought forth her firstborn son, there was no place for them in the inn.

There was no place assigned for them by God in the space set aside for travellers passing through for just one night. The place God assigned for Mary and her son was in the house of David, the shepherd and songwriter, renowned general, sometime outlaw, king. The topos was a kingdom (that threatened Herod). A throne for ever and ever.

Jesus is not the guest, passing through. But perhaps you are. Perhaps you are here because you happen to be visiting family, for a night or two. Perhaps your journey through life doesn’t bring you to the door of a church that often. Whatever has led you here today, and whether the path has been joyful or sorrowful, easy, or arduous, we’re glad you came, you are welcome. There is always room for travellers, in need of rest, of hospitality, before you journey on, whatever the road, whatever the destination. Whether you return this way on a frequent basis, or this will be the only time. There is a place for you in the inn. We welcome you, aware that you might be a prophet or an angel, sent by God.

Or perhaps you are lost and afraid and need to be found, by the shepherd-king? Or angry or sad or depressed and in need of a song to give voice to your emotions, a gift from the songwriter-king? Perhaps you are fighting inner demons and need a brother-in-arms who can give you the breakthrough, a renowned general-king who can slay your giants? Then again, could it be that you find yourself disillusioned and searching for a true cause, in the company of the outlaw-king? Perhaps you are wondering, could this babe in a manger really be a king? Could he really be my king? Perhaps it is not a place in the inn that you come looking for, but a place nearer the night-manger, in the heart of the family. A place with the mother and her son. If so, there is a place for you here, too.

Many years later, this Jesus gathered with his closest friends to eat the Passover meal in such an ‘inn,’ the upper room of a home in Jerusalem. That night, he was betrayed, arrested, tried, and in the morning taken out to die on a cross. His mother took her son, wrapped him once again in strips of linen, and laid him down on a stone slab to sleep, the sleep of death. But on the morning of the third day, he rose again, and reigns, exalted, over every terrain where life finds its place. All this, we celebrate, moments from now, friends and strangers welcome at the family table. Happy Christmas! God is with us. Alpha and Omega, the beginning, and the end, who was in the beginning and shall be beyond the end. Let all creation rejoice! Let all God’s angels worship him! Happy Christmas! Amen!

 

Fourth Sunday of Advent 2022

 

Lectionary readings: Isaiah 7:10-16 and Romans 1:1-7 and Matthew 1:18-25

As soon as Halloween is out of the way, Channel 5 starts showing wall-to-wall Christmas Rom-Coms. There is, it tuns out, an endless supply of forgettable feel-good fare — have we seen this one before? — all variations on perhaps three storylines. Plot 1: attractive young woman realizes that she is about to make the mistake of her life marrying her corporate Big City fiancé, returns home to the small town she grew up in for Christmas, bumps into her childhood sweetheart, and falls in love again with all she had thought she wanted to get away from. Plot 2: widowed father with teenage daughter in need of a new mother and a dog. Plot 3: the protagonist, who may be an attractive young woman or a ruggedly handsome widower, help a small town to rediscover what made it special in the first place. Throw in the helping hand of a matchmaking grandmother, best friend, bookstore owner, or Santa, and maybe a hardball antagonist awaiting redemption, and you get the drift. The course of true love never runs smooth, ploughs into the snow a couple of times, but always gets there in the end, just in time to set up the possibility of a sequel set next Christmas.

I want to suggest that the story of Mary and Joseph is a love story. Culturally, it would have been an arranged marriage, but let’s not make the culturally arrogant mistake of assuming that arranged marriages are forced marriages or loveless unions. Here is a young couple introduced to one another by family members, perhaps with wider input, as a likely good match. It is clear to me that theirs is a love story, which, like all good love stories, does not run smoothly but has obstacles to overcome, misunderstandings to get over, the need for help, an angelic advisor for Joseph, wise old cousin Elizabeth for Mary. All the elements of a Christmas love story are there, though this one is not so easily forgettable. This one culminates with God-is-with-us, and sets up the sequel, in which this God-with-us Saves his people from their sins.

I want to suggest that the story of Mary and Joseph is a love story. And I want to suggest that the story of Jesus and Paul is a love story too, not a Rom-Com but perhaps a Bromance. Listen to the way Paul writes about Jesus to the house churches of Rome, words tumbling over each other, on and on. This is how we talk about one whom we love. And when Paul does stop to draw breath, he calls those he is writing to ‘all God’s beloved in Rome,’ God’s beloved. And then he says, ‘Grace to you,’ that is, God reaching out to you, giving himself to you. A love story, between Jesus and the Church, the Prince and his bride.

And the question I want to ask this morning is, what first attracted you to Jesus?

What first attracted you to Jesus?

For me, it was that we grew up together. I don’t mean that I was born two-thousand years ago, or that Jesus was born in the early 1970s. But all of time and space bends back to Jesus. That is why when Paul paints his picture of Jesus, the Old Testament prophets are there, king David is there, people who lived and died many centuries before Jesus was born. That is why all the Gentiles are there, people who live across the whole known world. Time and space, folding back to wherever Jesus, the Son of God, is. And Jesus and I grew up together. In the home I grew up in, there was Mum and Dad and Jesus, and me, and, later, my brother and my sister. And Jesus was as real, as solid, as my parents, even if invisible to the eye or silent to the ear. That didn’t prevent me from seeing or hearing him, because, well, children have yet to be limited to such a narrow world. My world was his world, my timeline, my place, when and where I was folding back to him, my friend. We had adventures, got into (and out of) scrapes together. From before I have conscious memories, I have stories from my parents. One time, they were hosting a student house party, a house full of students due to be sleeping on the floors, and there was a flood in the neighbourhood. The water level was rising, up the steps, about to spill over, into the house, onto the floors. We were an inch from disaster. And, I am told, I stood in the doorway, in my nappy, and told the water to go down, in the name of Jesus. And it did. At that very moment, some streets away, some men managed to unblock a storm drain, and the waters ran away. That was the mechanics of the miracle. But it was a miracle, just one of the scrapes Jesus and I got into and out of again. Best friend ever.

It’s meant to be a love story. It’s meant to find us where we are, perhaps a life that hasn’t turned out as we had expected and sweeps us up in good news. There are plenty such stories around us, just ask those who have risked their lives to belong to Jesus. What about you? What first attracted you to Jesus? And, this Christmas, might you rediscover him all over again?