Midnight Mass: The beginning of Christmas

I wonder what this moment feels like to you, on the cusp of the midnight that ushers in Christmas Day?  When we were small, we were probably full of excitement, dreaming of Christmas stockings, wondering what was in those parcels under the tree. Maybe now it is a bit more complicated, and feelings are more mixed – but whatever our experience, this is the moment when Christmas Day starts. Even if you are a real Grinch or Scrooge, a Christmas refusenik, it’s hard to resist the hopefulness of this moment when Christmas Eve becomes Christmas Day.

The problem is, though, that by this time tomorrow, this moment of expectation will be behind us. The wrapping paper you’ve so carefully applied will be rubbish for the recycling, and the Christmas meal you’ve lovingly cooked will be reduced to leftovers and washing up. In the space of twenty-four hours, anticipation is often replaced by anti-climax. Even if your family festivities have been full of joy and happiness, you may realise at that point that nothing has really changed, and your life will soon be back to the same old, same old.  The problems you had before Christmas will still be waiting for you after it. That’s as true for the world around us as it is for us as individuals. We may send each other cards wishing “Peace on earth”, but the earth will be just as war-torn on Boxing Day as it is now. We remember that famous World War 1 truce, when English and German soldiers played football and sang carols together, but we forget that the next day they all went back to shooting at each other.  

Christmas isn’t magic, no matter how magical we try to make it. It can’t cure the world’s ills, make people happy when they aren’t, draw together feuding relatives, or mend marriages that are crumbling. It can’t put right in a day what has taken months, years, lifetimes to go wrong. It takes more than a bit of glitter and a tub of Quality Street to mend a broken world.

Christmas Day can sometimes seem disappointing, but I wonder whether that might be because  we see it as an end, when it’s meant to be a beginning.  

When Jesus came into the world at Bethlehem of course there was a sense of fulfilment and achievement. After all the hardships and tensions of the pregnancy, and that unplanned journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, the child was born. Even if the only bed he had to lie in was a cattle stall, he was safe and well. Of course Mary and Joseph were relieved, and delighted by their new born son. But for them, just as for any new parents, this wasn’t the end of the story. This was where it started. Parents usually treasure their first moments with their new baby, posting endless photos on Facebook, spending hours just gazing at their little miracle, but they wouldn’t really want their child to stay like this forever. There would be something seriously wrong if they did. The joy of parenting lies in seeing your child grow up into the person they were meant to be. Along the way, there’ll be pain and challenge too – for any child, not just for Jesus, but growing and changing are what life is all about. Birth is a beginning, not an end.

There’s a lovely poem by a poet called Luci Shaw about the new born Jesus, which perfectly captures that moment when all his life lay ahead of him, unknown and unimaginable. It goes like this:  

In sleep his infant mouth works in and out.

He is so new, his silk skin has not yet

been roughed by plane and wooden beam

nor, so far, has he had to deal with human doubt.

He is in a dream of nipple found,

of blue-white milk, of curving skin

and, pulsing in his ear, the inner throb

of a warm heart’s repeated sound

His only memories float from fluid space.

So new he has not pounded nails, hung a door,

broken bread, felt rebuff, bent to the lash,

wept for the sad heart of the human race.

(Kenosis, by Luci Shaw)

It’s a poignant poem, which acknowledges that this child is going to have sorrows to face as well as joys.  But it also reminds us of the gift he will be to the world. He’s the one who will weep “for the sad heart of the human race”. He’ll share our sufferings and by doing so, he’ll transform them. His death and resurrection will show us that however dark the night, God can bring his light into it and give us a future with hope.  In him, God will break into our human experience, not so that he can understand what it feels like to be us – he knows that anyway – but so that we can understand how much we’re loved.

And it all starts here with this child cradled in a manger, not an end but a beginning;  a small beginning who reminds us of the small beginnings each of us is called to make, the journeys which start here and now.

Tonight we may cradle in our hearts a dawning hope that change is possible, for ourselves or the world around us. But what are we doing to feed that hope, to help it to grow, to become the reality we long for?

Tonight we may cradle in our hearts a tiny flicker of faith, a desire to pray, a new born longing for God. But what are we going to do to nourish it so that so it can be a source of strength to us for the rest of our lives?

Tonight we may cradle in our hearts a sense that there’s something we’re meant to be doing with our lives, a meaning and purpose we need to search out. But what are we going to do that will help us to listen to that calling and respond to it?

Hope, faith, purpose; these are the sorts of things that are born in our hearts tonight. They are God’s gifts to us, but just like a new born child, they are small, vulnerable, easily destroyed. They are just beginnings. It is what happens next that matters, and if we want to help those “children” of ours grow up, if we want our hope, faith and purpose to develop, it will take more than good intentions.

It will take time and patience and will sometimes come at a cost. It will take other people. It takes a village to raise a child, as the saying goes. Mary and Joseph seem to have been alone in Bethlehem, but God soon gathered some very unlikely people around him to form a family around them. There were shepherds from the hills, and foreign magi summoned from far away by a star. These aren’t the people you’d expect at the crib side – where are Jesus’ aunties and uncles, grandparents and cousins? Later on there would be fishermen and tax collectors and prostitutes, a strange “DIY” family to support Jesus and be supported by him. “Family” for him was never going to be simply about blood relatives – it was for anyone and everyone who wanted to be part of it.  That’s why Christian faith has always been a communal faith, one in which coming together is valued. We need one another - all of us - with our gifts and our scars, struggling to get along and learning to love and be loved as we do so.

That’s one of the reasons why you have all been given one of these pink slips tonight, so that, if you want to, you can let me know that you’d like to be kept in the loop, or maybe have a chat in the New Year. There are no strings attached to this offer; I just didn’t want people to go out into the night wishing they’d done something to take the next step. If you’d like to keep in touch, fill in the form and give it back to me, and I will make it happen.

It’s good for us to have our moment of wonder and joy tonight, but what God really wants is for us to have a lifetime of wonder, a lifetime of joy. It’s good that we can celebrate this child born in a stable tonight, but what God really wants is for Christ to be born in our hearts as well, and to grow and thrive there.

So, happy Christmas – it all starts here!  But let’s make sure it doesn’t end here too.

Amens, and foreign magi summoned from far away by a star. These aren’t the people you’d expect at the crib side – where are Jesus’ aunties and uncles, grandparents and cousins? Later on there would be fishermen and tax collectors and prostitutes, a strange “DIY” family to support Jesus and be supported by him. “Family” for him was never going to be simply about blood relatives – it was for anyone and everyone who wanted to be part of it.  That’s why Christian faith has always been a communal faith, one in which coming together is valued. We need one another - all of us - with our gifts and our scars, struggling to get along and learning to love and be loved as we do so.

That’s one of the reasons why you have all been given one of these pink slips tonight, so that, if you want to, you can let me know that you’d like to be kept in the loop, or maybe have a chat in the New Year. There are no strings attached to this offer; I just didn’t want people to go out into the night wishing they’d done something to take the next step. If you’d like to keep in touch, fill in the form and give it back to me, and I will make it happen.

It’s good for us to have our moment of wonder and joy tonight, but what God really wants is for us to have a lifetime of wonder, a lifetime of joy. It’s good that we can celebrate this child born in a stable tonight, but what God really wants is for Christ to be born in our hearts as well, and to grow and thrive there.

So, happy Christmas – it all starts here!  But let’s make sure it doesn’t end here too.

Amen