Christmas Reflection 2015

‘He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him’.

Corporately and individually humans persistently and consistently reject God. We are pretty good at choosing what is bad for us- being tempted by any number of false desires. We can become addicted to all sorts of bad behaviours, like alcohol, social media, pornography or self-hatred. The simple ways that we choose to spend our time every day determine the sort of people that we become; the minor details of our lives matter to God – he has given us each moment of every day. As a modern poet, Malcolm Guite puts it:

O king of our desire whom we despise,

King of the nations never on the throne,

Unfound foundation, cast-off cornerstone,

Rejected joiner, making many one

Take the Biblical tale of the rich man at his gate. He ignores the daily pleas of the poor and sickly man, Lazarus, and after a life of selfish indulgence he finds himself languishing in hell – from where he has a conversation with Abraham. He pleads with Abraham to go and tell his brothers to repent and serve the poor, but Abraham tells him that even if someone comes back from the dead to tell them, they would not believe.

We’ve just started reading the Christmas Carol to our children and it is a story about conversion – about someone learning what it is healthy to desire. Endless money and no capacity to be joyful is a dead end nightmare that leads nowhere. Scrooge is visited by a number of ghosts who reveal to him the bad choices that he has made that have closed up his heart. Most of us are not so lucky to have the reality of our falsehood presented to us at night by ghosts come to save us, (the rich man’s request of Abraham) – but conversion of heart comes less quickly than Dicken’s narrative allows us to hope. Conversion of heart is a painful exercise, not something that we necessarily have the courage for: can we face our demons, our inner battles, can we see the innocent face of God looking at us with love, dare we acknowledge the eyes that meet ours, not with judgment but with mercy?

Religion is despised by many, rejected, ill thought of, the reason for wars and the cause of the entire world’s ills – through the sludge of what man has corporately subjected God to, there is a different story. The dark drives and themes in our world try to drown out the discourse of love and hope that true religion and the one God communicate. Simple people, seeking to love God and neighbour are the humble little ones with whom God dwells; like Mary, like the poor shepherds, like the wise travellers who came from afar, like you and me, who come to this church tonight, seeking to worship the true and living God who brings love and peace and hope into our world.

The Advent season is about learning to long for God, which means learning to long for the things that are of true worth and value.

Throughout Advent we anticipate God’s coming.

But, God comes, always with an element of surprise – we didn’t quite expect this!

God’s emptying of himself into our world as a baby, is a story of how emptying, sacrifice, chosen vulnerability and weakness are the only ways to peace and love. God’s incarnation as a baby reveals the fragility and vulnerability of truth- God is not a violent warrior enforcing his power and control over people; he is a helpless baby, choosing the way of non-violence, who grows into the Prince of Peace. Seeking to be invulnerable is a human endeavour and it leads to hell: think of the way in which gun culture in America generates a violent culture, in the name of protection.

In a society which priorities fulfillment of any desire, good or bad, the Gospel of self-emptying love tells a different story of what makes for well-being.

God is everywhere for those who have eyes to see and nowhere for those who are blind. Heaven is a place we can enter through longing for the right things; hell is the place we make ourselves through our false desires.

Tonight we have an opportunity in which we are invited again to depend upon God, to be attuned to the ways in which he speaks to us and to repent of all that leads us away from him. He waits patiently for us, ever ready to welcome us, every ready to show us the face of his mercy and grace. And his promises are sure:

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