We are all used to party political agendas. We may be some years away from a General Election, but the leadership struggles in the Labour party and the new leader of the Conservative party, to say nothing of the struggles in the Liberal Democrats this year have kept party politics firmly in the news. All the parties have plans to transform our world, all their plans will be expensive and probably ineffective.
Even then, transforming a nation, and more so transforming a world, isn't easy. I remember coming out in the 1980s and going on various protest marches, marches against Section 28, gay pride marches, marches against racism, marches to support the miners. You name it, I marched about it! Yet these marches had limited success. When we invaded Iraq hundreds of thousands of people marched through London to protest, yet the war carries on. It's almost as if legislators, secular and religious, get their enthusiasms, struggle to get them enacted and then forget about them and go on to something more exciting. It's easy to become cynical.
On the wider stage, we look at the world as it is. We see wars, civil disturbances, bigotry, tribalism, disease, and starvation. Nothing seems to change. Countries promise aid and then don't give it. We can look at the most frightful things on television while eating dinner. It's easy to become cynical.
"Wait a minute" you say. "This is Christmas." So it is. The great Christmas story re-told through Word and song echoes in our ears. We have been singing it and have just heard it read to us. We may not understand the profundity of its theology, but on this beautiful night we reflect on the extraordinary truth about Jesus.
St John tells
us that the Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us. The idea of an eternal
Word tells us two things. The first is that there's a truth, an eternal truth
to which we have access. The second idea is that this truth is communicated
to us by God. "The Word became flesh and dwelt with us." St. John
here says something extraordinary. The eternal truth of God, God communicating
to us, is not a philosophical ideal for scholars, but a Person for us all.
Jesus is the Truth, Jesus is God communicating. Jesus embodies God's agenda
for the Church and for the world.
"The Word became Flesh." God entered into a human body. A young
unmarried woman became God's Tent, God's Temple, God's presence. In the Old
Testament we read about the Tabernacle or tent in which the presence of God
dwelt. Later Solomon builds the Temple in which, in the Holy of Holies, God's
Presence was to be found in a special manner. But now, through teenager Mary,
God became human in obscurity and weakness, in a stable, surrounded by farm
animals and filth. God became vulnerable and powerless.
It is easy for us to look at the manger and see glory. In reality the manger is an extraordinary symbol of God's identity with those who have nothing. The Holy Family, tired, homeless, Mary in labour, stumble into a dirty cave. The floor is covered with animal droppings; the manger with old food. It's one of those cold Middle Eastern nights. Perhaps Joseph takes off his coat and puts it in the manger. "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us."
God intends an end to all wars, bigotry, famine, and disease. God has started the process. True, God uses politicians and the powerful, often without their knowing it. But God uses you and me, for as God became human in Mary's womb, so God the Son, the babe in the manger, enters our humanity, changes us and sends us to change the nation and the world. That is what Baptism is all about. The transforming future is God at work in frail, powerless human beings who risk death, even the Cross in order to be reborn into hope.
We are those human beings. We become agents of God's purpose as we do as God wants us to do. We tell the Gospel story to others. We love one another. We work to transform the world by caring for the sick, the outcast, the starving, those in the midst of war and civil disturbances, those who know not God, and the drunk in the street, and the single mother abandoned by her parents. On this Christmas Day, accept with gratitude the abiding presence of the Christ child in your flesh and then, in him, go into the world to love and serve the Lord.
Amen.
This
sermon was first preached in the Metropolitan Community Church of Manchester.
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