In the beginning was the
Word.
Every other day during this
pandemic, I’ve phoned my mother in Exeter, taking it in turns with my brother
to keep in touch with her. I guess many of you will have done the same sort of
thing. When she asks what I’ve been doing all day, more often than not I reply,
“shovelling words. Mother, shovelling
words”. Writing is a big part of a vicar’s job at the best of times, but like
many other people, my job has been even more desk-based over the last nine
months. I’ve often felt like one of those old-fashioned firemen on a steam
train, whose job is to pitch coal constantly into the firebox to keep the
engine running, except in my case, it’s not coal but words that have been the
fuel. I did a rough calculation and worked out that just the weekly newsletters
and sermons during the pandemic have added up to 120,000 of them, let alone everything
else that needs to be written, recorded, broadcast. Podcasts and videos, zooms,
and social media posts. It’s all been about communication. And of course
there’s been a lot to read too – mostly ever changing government guidance…
Words, words, words. How many
words have we spoken, or heard or read today? And how many of them really
mattered. Some of the words we speak are life-changing. ‘Will you marry me?’
‘You’re hired – or fired’ ‘I’m sorry, I have bad news for you’. Words like
those are never forgotten, and can’t be taken back, but often, if we’re honest,
we just talk for the sake of talking.
Our readings today have lots
of communication in them. In the Old Testament reading there are messengers
announcing peace and sentinels lifting up their voices. Even the ruins of Jerusalem sing for joy, and
in the Gospel there are angels – angel means messenger, so they are
wordsmiths too, delivering their important news – and then there are shepherds
bubbling over with excitement as they share what they’ve seen, probably fairly
incoherently, because they don’t understand it any more than we would.
But at the centre of all this
noise, all these words, there is a speechless baby, an infant. Infant literally
means ‘unable to speak’ – fans is Latin for speaking, so “infans” means not
speaking. He can’t even move his hands to use sign language – he’s wrapped in
swaddling bands. All he can do is cry or not cry, and as every new parent knows
a baby’s cry could mean a whole host of different things. And yet John’s Gospel
tells us that this infant, this unspeaking one, is the Word, God’s definitive
communication of himself to the world, the loudest and clearest thing God can
think of to say. He has no words, this little child, but he is the Word.
When he is grown he will
preach and teach, but now he has nothing to say for himself, no way of
explaining himself, no way of defending himself against the oppressive rule of
Rome and the murderous rage of Herod. One tenth century writer, Alan of Farfa,
described Jesus as “unspeakably wise . . . wisely speechless; filling the
world, he lies in a manger; guiding the stars, he nurses at his mother’s bosom;
he is both great in the nature of God, and small in the form of the servant.” Later
on, Jesus will be wordless again, falling into the silence of death on the
cross, and lying speechless in the tomb.
I don’t think it is any
accident at all that these two, silent, speechless moments at the beginning and
end of his earthly life are the ones which seem to speak most profoundly to us.
They are the ones which inspire the best art and music, and which seem to draw
people most readily into prayer. Why is that? Perhaps it’s because birth and
death are mysteries that we know can never fully be explained.
If you have ever witnessed a
birth, or a death, you’ll know that it’s often very difficult to find words to
describe them. Words fail us – quite rightly – at these moments when a unique
human life begins or ends. Birth, and death – anyone’s birth and death - are moments
to be experienced, not explained. They may be times of unspeakable joy, or
unspeakable sorrow, but the fact that we often find we have no words in the
face of them is a sign of how much they matter to us, not how little.
At the heart of the Christmas
story there is a deep silence, a speechless child, who, like all babies, takes
us as we are. We don’t need to explain ourselves to him, to make excuses, to
think clever thoughts about him, any more than we do any other baby. We just
need to be where he is, and know that he is where we are. What is distinctive
about Jesus, though, is that it will always be like that with him. There will
always be unconditional love, unconditional welcome. He will tell his followers
that unless they “become like little children” they will never be able fully to
see and understand and share what God is doing in the world.
The child in the manger
reminds us that, in the end, it probably won’t be any of our words, yours or
mine, which will make the greatest difference to others as we pick our way
through the challenges and tumult of this time of crisis, however clever, or
prolific those words might be. It will be the tiny, silent acts of kindness
that we give and receive; the time taken to check that a neighbour has what
they needed, and if they don’t, to find a way of providing it, the time taken
to listen, just to listen, to someone who is feeling sad or hopeless or afraid;
the little acts of creativity, like our Advent windows around the village, which
spread good cheer and keep people’s spirits up. Even the everyday acts of
wearing a face mask, washing your hands, giving people space, which say to
others “you matter, even if I don’t know you” communicate reams without
a word being spoken.
In these small acts of love,
Christ is born again, and the Wordless Word speaks loud and clear. In these
small acts, a small as a baby, new worlds of hope, new possibilities open up
for us, and for the world, just as they did for Mary and Joseph, shepherds and
wise men so long ago in Bethlehem.
Amen
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