Midnight Mass for Christmas 2008
Christmas Eve: 24th December, 2008
Fr John Davis, Vicar of St Peter's, Eastern Hill
For so many of us, this is our favourite time of the year to gather for worship. Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve has such a wonderful sense of occasion. People gather in large numbers, the mood is festive, the music and the ceremonial special and particular to the day. This is a time of great celebration. This is the time that brings us out to church in the middle of the night.
I heard the Archbishop of Canterbury on the radio this morning urging us all to consider again the implications of this story we have received about the birth of Jesus. He noted that so many of our population, both adults and children, actually do not know the story at all — maybe more than one in ten. They actually have not heard in full detail all those things we sing about in our carols, all that we hear about in the Christmas Gospel. They do not know how it might connect with the story of their own lives. They do not know what bits are really important and what are not. At a time like this, in a place like this, we are certainly doing our best to remedy that situation. There is a story to be told, there is a message to be heard and there is a celebration to be had. We are all here to do just that.
Now that does not mean that we have to have it all clear, right down to the last feather on the last angel. Far from it. It doesn't really matter if all those things happened with all the details the medieval story-tellers so enjoyed. It doesn't matter if it was in December or July. What does matter is that lots of people were involved, both poor and rich, locals and foreigners — so this was a message for all. What does matter is that here we are honouring a remarkable young woman who said yes to God and wonderful things then happened. What does matter is that this was a real birth of a little child who has carried the hopes of the generations and the centuries with him. All the extra details in the stories are just multiple ways of saying one major thing; this is very special: take notice. This can mean something important and transforming for your own life.
At a time when we are all too much aware of the problems of the world, not the least being the ongoing financial crisis which is making for so much uncertainty, we are here to be reassured about one central truth. That truth is this. God is with us, where we are, who we are, as we are. That is the key essential of our understanding of the incarnation, where God became a human being: to live, to show us how to live, to die and to rise again. Christianity very specifically declares therefore that the Creator of all things actually also shares in the created order and in the process gives it a totally renewed life. It is God's identification with what it is to be human, including the confronting and defeating of that which is less than good, that has the potential to give us, each one of us, the hope that we need, tonight and always.
Right here then, in the middle of our major time for getting family and friends together, for exchanging gifts and hospitality and for enjoying a good time in a summer break, we pause to remember and to give thanks for the initial reason for it all. God has entered into our human situation through a young woman giving birth to a child. This event at Bethlehem in Judea over 2,000 years ago, we are still responding to with celebration, using all the resources at our disposal. How lovely that is!
That holy birth in Bethlehem represents God's decision to stand right with us and right beside us, where we are. It is God's affirmation to us that this world and this life are good things and very much worth being part of. That does not mean that there is not to be pain or suffering or trouble — as the life of the Lord was to show. But God is with us in those aspects of living too. But there is more to life than birth, struggle and death. There is a much wider vision and purpose and wonder. That is what the shepherds first glimpsed. That is what the wise men came to worship. And those angels were singing about. And Christians through the centuries have continued to celebrate and tried to live out the implications. So do we.
The faith and the simple response of ordinary people is at the heart of Christmas. These are the ones, we are told, who most readily were able to respond. People like shepherds and little children; uncomplicated people like the very old and the very young. We saw this once again earlier this evening at the Family Mass. There were 69 children — I counted them — and their eyes were out on sticks! These are people able to show most clearly that much-needed quality of openness to God.
The Christmas story of the coming of Jesus Christ, truly God and truly human, to be alongside us in this world, is a message then of great hope and great joy. It is very good to be sharing in this story once again. This is so, even if this story is heard again and again in a context that is anything but peaceful, anything but joyful. War, hatred, violence, injustice, disease, famine — or alternatively drought, climate change or international financial crisis: things we can change, things we cannot. Christmas is in the middle of all that too. God is therefore with us, in all of that; where we are.
May we go out from this church tonight carrying that simple message with us.
The Lord be with you.
|
Views is a
publication of
St Peter's Eastern Hill, Melbourne Australia.
|
