Midnight Mass 2022
2 Corinthians 1.18-22, Luke 2.1-20
If you want to waste a lot of time on the internet, and you’re fed up with watching videos of kittens, can I recommend taking a foray into the wonderful world of marriage proposals – quite a lot of people seem to propose at Christmas, so it’s even a bit topical. But many things can go wrong with marriage proposals, and you can be sure they will find their way onto YouTube. For example, and it’s just a hint, if you’re thinking of doing this… If you are going to present your beloved with a ring, don’t do it on a bridge, at the end of a pier, or in a waterfall. Online evidence suggests that the ring is bound to end up in the water, never to be found again…
But the major trend in marriage proposals seems to be the public proposal which pulls all sorts of unsuspecting strangers into the enterprise. Some people organise flashmobs. Some choose to pop the question at half-time on the pitch at a sporting fixture. Some propose over the tannoy system at a train station, or go down on one knee in a shopping mall. According to studies 45% of proposals are now deliberately made in public places. It all sounds very romantic, and if it worked for you, that’s lovely, but it’s a risky strategy. Things don’t always go to plan. In particular, it’s always possible that the proposer may not get the answer they hope for, and if they don’t, everyone will know about it… Apparently a public proposal is twice as likely to be rejected as a private one, perhaps because not everyone appreciates being put on the spot in quite such a visible way.
“Will you marry me?” is a risky question, but it isn’t the only risky question we can ask, of course. There are all sorts of questions which are difficult to ask because we really want and need the answer to be yes, but fear it might be no. Maybe we need to ask our bosses for a pay rise, or a change in working conditions, and know we are putting our jobs on the line by doing so. Maybe we need to ask for help when we are in trouble, but we fear we’ll be judged or rejected for doing so. Asking makes us vulnerable. It means wearing our hearts on our sleeves, putting ourselves, and our need, out there. If we get too many “noes” we may decide it’s better not to ask at all.
“Yes,” and “No”. Two little words that can make a huge difference to us, lift us up or cast us down, tip our world one way or another, alter the course of our lives.
St Paul was thinking about Yesses and Noes in the passage we heard from his letter to the Christians in Corinth earlier. The background to it was that there was some possibility that he might have come to visit them, but as it turned out, he couldn’t. Had he let them down? Had he said “yes” when he meant “no”? Maybe, maybe not – it probably doesn’t matter much to us. But it launches Paul off on a wonderful theological tangent. Whatever our human “yesses” and “noes”, he says, Jesus is God’s Yes to us, the fulfilment of his promises. “In him every one of God’s promises is a Yes!” And because of that we can say yes to him, Paul says - Amen is simply the Hebrew word for Yes.
Paul suddenly seems to have a vision of the “yesness” of God, of God’s all-embracing, undefeatable love, love which lights up the darkness and the “the darkness does not overcome it.” Even the great “No” of death can’t put out the light of God’s even greater Yes.
This isn’t a passage that’s often read at Christmas, but I think it ought to be, because, in a way, it sums up the message of the nativity story, a story in which many, surprised people hear God’s “Yes” to them.
There are Mary and Joseph, an ordinary couple from a backwater town in Galilee, who probably never imagined that their lives would have any real significance in the world. And when Mary was found to be pregnant, and not by Joseph, it looked like she would be better forgotten anyway. Disgrace loomed. Explanations about the child being “from the Holy Spirit” were all very well, but I don’t suppose that cut much ice among their nosy neighbours – to most people the whole situation just looked like a complete mess.
If God was going to choose a family to bring up his Son, the Messiah, would he really choose one like this? That was the question.
Most people would have expected to hear a No, but instead the answer they heard through his birth to them was Yes, he would!
Those shepherds we heard about in our Gospel reading today heard God’s “Yes” too. Surely, they must have thought, the angels had come to the wrong address, that the angelic satnav had malfunctioned. Would God really want them to be the first to hear the news of his Son’s birth, rather than the rulers or the religious elites? Yes, he did! This is the God who turns the world upside down, and inside out.
And the Magi, foreigners, from a different culture and faith, complete outsiders. Did this story have anything to do with them? Could they be part of it? Yes, they could! It was their story too. They were welcome, even if they didn’t know the right words to say, the right places to go, the right rules to follow, what any of this was all about. The answer to them was Yes,
And the child they came to worship would go on to live out God’s “Yes” when he grew up, making a beeline for the messiest situations, the people others avoided, the prostitutes and lepers and collaborating tax-collectors. He would even choose to love those who betrayed him and forgive those who crucified him, saying “yes” to them, to their worth and belovedness even as he suffered.
If you’d asked any of these people whether they thought their lives mattered in the eternal scheme of things, they would probably have laughed at you. But the message of the story, the message of Christian faith is that each one of us is loved, chosen, vital to God. Each one of us is called to hear God’s Yes in answer to the painful, deep questions we sometimes ask, even if only to ourselves in the privacy of our own hearts.
Do I matter? Yes , you do.
Am I loved by God? Yes, you are.
What if I mess up? Does God still love me? Yes.
What if I’m angry with God? Am I still loved? Yes.
What if I am useless in the world’s eyes, if I can’t do the stuff others do, if I feel I have nothing to give? Am I still loved then? Yes.
Can I be forgiven? Yes
Can I start again? Yes
Is there hope for the future - for my future and the future of the world? Yes, yes, yes, there is.
The child in Mary’s womb, the child in the manger, and the man he grew up to be, is God’s Yes to us. As we come to him this Christmas night, God invites us to hear that Yes in our own hearts, to trust it, and find in it the courage to say our own Yes in return; yes to life, to hope and to love.
Amen
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