Christmas Message ...... December 19th 2019

I must say that I was surprised to be given such a generous time slot for what I have to say. 

My normal time slot when I am preaching is 20 Minutes so today I have time for two sermons.

There is a definite connection between Christmas and Rotary International. According to St Luke on Christmas Morning the angels sang:

“Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth to people who enjoy his favour!”
Luke 2:13-14

Sometimes this Angelic message is rendered as Goodwill which of course is echoed in the purpose of Rotary which is: 

to bring together business and professional leaders in order to provide humanitarian service and to advance goodwill and peace around the world.

So Rotarians are almost challenged to ensure that around the world people of all races and colours and faiths experience as it were Christmas every day.

Whether now or whether in my preaching I find myself enfolded in what some call a ‘speech event’. 

Interestingly the Bishop of Europe, Robert Innes describes Christmas itself, the birth of Jesus as a ‘speech event’.

We might almost say that God is speaking to us by the Birth of Jesus which we remember each year at Christmas.

The Christmas Gospel is taken from St John’s Gospel, ‘In the beginning was the word’ the Greek is ‘Logos’ the word of God.

Of course we are surrounded by words, social media, the recent election are examples and there is often a dissonance between the word spoken and the lives and actions of those doing the talking and so we struggle to discern the truth from the lies and it is hard to find the foundation to allow us to trust what we are hearing.

What we are given at Christmas is a real family, journeying to register as citizens in order to pay their taxes. Joseph is puzzled by the situation in which he finds himself, Mary is ‘with child’ her pregnancy at an advanced state and so because there is no room at the inn they are shown accommodation in a stable, amongst the animals, where the Baby is born and placed in a manger.

Christmas and the Christmas message does not only inspire Rotarians of course. It also inspires poets and hymn writers. Sometimes the poems and hymns are themselves ‘speech events’  that sometimes explicitly celebrate the religious nature of Christmas and at times the social and community nature of the feast and the holidays.

For example one of my favourite poets e.e. cummings, an American who broke many of the rules of language both written and spoken has a poem called Little Tree:

Little Tree

little silent Christmas tree
you are so little
you are more like a flower
who found you in the green forest
and were you very sorry to come away?
see i will comfort you
because you smell so sweetly
i will kiss your cool bark
and hug you safe and tight
just as your mother would,
only don't be afraid
look the spangles
that sleep all the year in a dark box
dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine,
the balls the chains red and gold the fluffy threads,
put up your little arms
and i'll give them all to you to hold
every finger shall have its ring
and there won't be a single place dark or unhappy…

The Tree is almost human and shares both peace and goodwill with writer and reader.

Another extraordinary poem is by Christina Rosetti and is of course both a poem and a hymn in which peace and goodwill is shared as we sing it in company of other Christian folk:

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,

Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;

Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,

In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;

Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.

In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed

The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him, whom cherubim, worship night and day,

Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;

Enough for Him, whom angels fall before,

The ox and ass and camel which adore.

Angels and archangels may have gathered there,

Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;

But His mother only, in her maiden bliss,

Worshipped the beloved with a kiss.

What can I give Him, poor as I am?

If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;

If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;

Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.

Another poem written by T S Eliot as part of a series of Christmas cards at a time when he was converting from Unitarianism to Anglicanism and becoming a member of the Church of England.

Former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams remarked, “Eliot never wanted to present religious faith as a nice cheerful answer to everyone’s questions, but as an inner shift so deep that you could hardly notice it, yet giving a new perspective on everything and a new restlessness in a tired and chilly world.”

Journey of the Magi

'A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins,
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

Another poem written by Anne one of the Bronte sisters, could well be understood as describing a Christmas Morning in the Parsonage at Haworth before going as a family with her Father Patrick and her sisters Emily and Charlotte and her brother also Patrick to Church:

“Music on Christmas Morning”

Music I love -­ but never strain
Could kindle raptures so divine,
So grief assuage, so conquer pain,
And rouse this pensive heart of mine -­
As that we hear on Christmas morn,
Upon the wintry breezes borne.
 
Though Darkness still her empire keep,
And hours must pass, ere morning break;
From troubled dreams, or slumbers deep,
That music kindly bids us wake:
It calls us, with an angel's voice,
To wake, and worship, and rejoice; 

A final poem is by one of my favourite Poets, Emily Dickinson. She was born and lived in Amherst in Massachusetts rarely left the house and lived a quiet secluded life her poems were not published until after her death. 

She was a favourite writer of Ted Hughes the Poet Laureate and this poem captures something of the community of which she was a part only be hearsay and through the eyes of her visitors.

“Before the ice is in the pools” by Emily Dickinson

Before the ice is in the pools—
Before the skaters go,
Or any check at nightfall
Is tarnished by the snow—

Before the fields have finished,
Before the Christmas tree,
Wonder upon wonder
Will arrive to me!

As the Bishop of Europe expresses it, ‘amongst all the Christmas gifts, we prepare to celebrate the supreme gift – God’s greatest ever gift to the world. It is the gift of a person full of grace – of loveliness, goodness graciousness. And this is a gift, a person full of truth – reality, integrity, trustworthiness. In fragile flesh he comes and dwells, being born in a cave amongst the animals, laid in a manger. God who is outside space and time speaks into human reality to transform it from within.

However you are spending Christmas may I wish that it is for you and for your families a season of Happiness and Holiness and if you are travelling I wish you Godspeed and a safe arrival.