Midnight Mass 11
There’s a story told in
Northern Spain about a local saint from the tenth Century. At this time, in the
far north of Spain, in the Cantabrian mountains, the Christian faith was
unknown to most people. It was a remote area, and if there had been any
Christian influence before the collapse of the Roman Empire, it had long
ceased.
But there were Christian
communities elsewhere in Spain, and one monk who was part of one of those, decided
that he wanted to take the Christian faith to these isolated peoples. His name
was Brother Froilan. Full of faith and energy he set off alone, and built
himself a hut near a village high in the mountains. Surely, he thought, the
villagers would be as excited by the story of God’s love as he was and would be
eager to hear it, eager to know that God welcomed them, that they were part of
his family.
It was not so. Perhaps their
lives were too hard for them to want to consider any new ideas – it was enough
of a struggle just getting by, without having to think about the deeper things
in life. Perhaps they were suspicious of this newcomer, unused as they were to
anyone from the outside world showing any interest in them. Froilan met with a
wall of apathy; they just weren’t interested. In a culture where even the next
village might as well have been another world, what could some religion from
thousands of miles away have to do with them? They ignored Froilan completely,
treated him as if he just wasn’t there. He became very dejected. What was the
point? He might just as well go back down the mountain to where there were
people who wanted to hear his message.
The only people in the
village who really noticed him at all were the children. Unlike their parents
they were curious rather than fearful of this stranger, and often came and hung
about near his hut. Froilan was quite content to let them and sometimes, to
amuse them he would carve them small toys out of wood, something he was very
skilled at. He would take a piece of wood, whittle away for a while and then
suddenly, there was a bird, or a cat. One day, Froilan had an idea. When the
children turned up, he picked up a small piece of wood and his knife. He worked
away for a little while as they waited to see what would happen. Before long he
was finished, and there in his hand was a woman. He started to work again, and
soon there was a man to go with the woman. Then there were some sheep, and
shepherds, a strange winged creature he told them was called an angel, a
messenger from God, and some richly dressed strangers bearing gifts, and
finally a baby in a manger, just like the ones their own farm animals used. As
he carved he told them about the woman, called Mary, and her husband Joseph,
about their journey to Bethlehem, and the birth of the child who had to sleep in
that manger crib, about the shepherds and the wise men who came to visit. The
children were enthralled, and in the days that followed they came back,
demanding that he told them the story again and again. But every time he told
it they insisted that he had to carve another Mary, another Joseph and all the
rest. Soon Froilan had many sets of nativity figures in his hut. He couldn’t
give the children the figures because their parents were so hostile to his
message, so all those Marys and Josephs just piled up around him.
Christmas was coming near,
and suddenly Froilan had an idea. In the middle of the night on Christmas Eve
he crept out into the village with those figures and left them here and there
around the village. In the morning – a morning just like any other to the
villagers of course – as they went around their work they found that everywhere
they went they were coming across a tiny woman and man and baby or an angel or
a shepherd with some sheep or an exotic foreigner with a gift in his hands. What on earth was it all about? They had no
idea. But of course their children knew, and they explained to their parents –
this is Mary, this is Joseph. They had nowhere to stay, nowhere to have their
baby. These are shepherds, who heard a wonderful message. These are foreigners
from far away, who were made welcome. The children’s eyes shone with excitement
as they told the story to their parents. They had heard it so often from
Froilan that it had become their own story, about their own fears and hopes and
dreams .And as they told it, in their own words, from the heart of their own
lives, their parents listened, as they never would have done to Froilan, and
they heard its message of hope themselves. And before long Froilan found that
he and his message were welcomed and loved and respected in that village, and
he was never forgotten, becoming the patron saint of that region and is still
celebrated there.
Brother Froilan’s villagers
heard a story which was almost a thousand years old even then, and had happened
in a distant part of the world which they could barely imagine. And yet, once
they had opened themselves up enough to listen they somehow found themselves
within it – it was about them too. It came home to them with power and it changed
them. It is an odd thing, that, because another thousand years on, in our world
of the 21st Century, it still has power. It still resonates inside
us. It won’t go away. Even if we are sceptical, or downright disbelieving of
nine tenths of it, it still seems to speak to us.
And you don’t have to be able
to prove that there actually were shepherds or wise men, or a star or angels in
the sky to be affected by its promise of hope and peace and love. Why should
that be so? I don’t think it is just wishful thinking or the effect of too many
mince pies or too much booze.
I think the reason it is
still so powerful is that it is based on fact. Not the fact of a baby laid in a
manger and visited by an assortment of odd guests, but on the fact of the adult
Jesus and the impact he had on those he met. The stories of Jesus’ birth, told
only in Luke and Matthew, are a type of story known as midrash in Jewish
tradition. This sort of story doesn’t have to be factually accurate, but it
illuminates the essence of the matter. The stories of Jesus’ birth prepare us
for what is to come. They tell us about the person he’ll grow up to be, the
message he’ll teach and live. We’ll never know how true they are to the
historical facts, but we can know that they are true to the experiences people
had of him when he had grown.
The Gospel writers knew people who had known
Jesus, and it was their stories they wove into the Gospels, which were written
well within the living memory of Jesus’ ministry, within thirty or forty years
of his death, and circulated among his first followers.
Here were people who had been
fishermen, tax collectors, revolutionaries, prostitutes, housewives – all sorts
– but they’d been drawn together into a new and very different community of
faith, one where they were all equal, called to serve one another, where the
old hierarchies and assumptions had been swept away. The Gospels reflect that,
and the nativity stories prepare us for the story of how that community came
into existence.
So in the nativity stories we
meet Mary whose unexpected pregnancy puts her at risk not just of disapproval,
but of stoning. This reflected the experience of many vulnerable women who
found in Jesus an acceptance and a dignity which astonished them. There’s
Joseph, who has to summon every ounce of courage he has to make a choice to do
what is right and honourable for Mary rather than responding with the harsh
judgement that his society would have expected.
Jesus’ first followers often found themselves challenged to swim against
the tide in the interests of justice and love. They recognised themselves here.
There are shepherds, uncivilised, the bottom of the social heap, frankly a bit
smelly. The crowds that came to Jesus were full of people like this; amazed
that someone thought they mattered. Then there were those foreigners, the wise
men, outsiders to the Jewish faith, excluded from God’s family. But Jesus broke
down boundaries like that again and again in the Gospels. This good news of
God’s love is for everyone, he said, or it is not good news at all.
The stories of Jesus’ birth point
towards the story of his adult life. They say “this child is going to be for
you, whoever you are. This story is your story too”. They said that to the
people of the first century. They said it, through their children, to Brother
Froilan’s villagers, and they say it to us too, even in our sophisticated,
technological, globally connected world. We find our own hopes and dreams and
fears reflected here too. And lying in that crib we find the one whose life still
tells us that we are loved, that we matter, that we have something to give,
even if we feel that we are unlovable, insignificant or useless.
Tonight, as you think about
this story, I wonder where you find yourself in it? If you could take one of
our crib figures home – please don’t, by the way! – but if you could, which
would it be? Are you Mary, feeling vulnerable and facing something you’re
afraid you don’t have the strength to endure? Are you Joseph, knowing that you
have a challenge to rise to which will put you at odds with the status quo? Are
you one of those shepherds, feeling that you are just too insignificant to
matter, or too much of a mess for anyone to cope with? Or are you like one of
those foreign magi, an outsider who doesn’t fit in? Whoever you are, there is a
place for you in this story. Look carefully and you will find you are already there.
There is a place for you at the manger crib. There is a place for you in the heart
of God and among his family too. You are welcome and you belong. This is for
you.
Amen
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