24.12.2013
Incarnation and Resurrection the Lifeblood of our Faith – Archbishop Says in Christmas Day Sermon
The Archbishop of Dublin, the Most Revd Dr Michael Jackson, delivered the sermon in Christ Church Cathedral on Christmas morning.
In his address the Archbishop (pictured) talked of the need to grapple with the word incarnation. While he acknowledged that most people today have little appetite for ‘big words’, he argued that at Christmas we cannot avoid a word like incarnation.
“Incarnation and resurrectionare the lifeblood of our faith and the core of our belonging to the God who came to earth,” Dr Jackson said.
He said incarnation is about change and making new things happen as tradition strains to keep up and about beginning. However, he added, a religion which is defined by beginnings is not one which chases every novelty under the sun.
“Christianity is concerned with second chances, with fresh opportunities and with real experiments. At a time of the year when we enjoy our traditions, when we indulge our nostalgias and when we are all too often saddened by the past as it goes before us into the future, we do well to remember that beginnings genuinely are possible and indeed encouraged by God through incarnation at Christmas,” the Archbishop said.
He concluded by saying that incarnation offers human and divine goodness in the face of institutional evil and corruption.
Archbishop Jackson’s sermon is reproduced in full below:
Christ Church Cathedral, Christmas Day 25th December 2013
Readings: Isaiah 9.2–7; Titus 2.11–14; St Luke 2.1–20
A sermon preached by the Archbishop
Titus 2.11: … The grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all …
Most church people today have little appetite for what we sometimes call: ‘big words.’ Words like redemption and eschatology make people glaze over, as do words like incarnation and resurrection. Let’s just leave other people to look after boring things like this. We have plenty to keep us going, we’re plenty busy and, sure in any case, we’re grand as we are; we don’t really need this sort of stuff, do we? What is the point of delaying over the things nobody really ‘gets’ any longer? What most people tell me is that this is exactly the sort of thing that puts people off going to church.
And yet, now that Christmas is upon us and we have gathered to be in the presence of the God who has come to earth for the first time in human form, we cannot sidestep a word like: incarnation because it is the incarnation that we are experiencing here and now. Incarnation and resurrection are the lifeblood of our faith and the core of our belonging to the God who came to earth and, in the words of Titus: has appeared, bringing salvation to all. (Titus 2.11) The purpose and the power of such incarnation, such enfleshing, is to bring everything that is good – the grace and the love of God to earth. It gives us a personal life in which to believe and has the power to give back to us a proper and unashamed self–belief.
Incarnation is a word not to cause us fear or flight. We all know in our own lives and in our own families that the flesh needs to be protected and nurtured; if a child falls and tears her or his skin, our instinct is to stop the flow of blood and to clean the wound and then to protect it from further harm or infection. If an older member is weak and frail, then we rush to protect that person: in case … Often we read the language of sin itself as telling us all that can possibly be known about the flesh. This has clouded and overpowered our understanding of the body as a very significant part of who we are and, at its worst, has turned us into people of the mind rather than people of the soul. Body, mind and soul go together. The wilful separating out and pushing away of the body, as an essential component of our God–given personality, is a genuine mistake and mischief.
Incarnation is a word about The Word of God. St John tells us buoyantly and brightly that The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth. (St John 1.14) The grace, the quality of giving, in the person and the being of God, is the friend and the helper of the truth. And it is the truth which sets us free. Incarnation is about the mind, set in the context of the human body and the human person living the life of God. Incarnation is about change; incarnation is about making new things happen as the inherited tradition strains and stretches to keep up with these new phases and fresh expressions of the love of God; incarnation is about finding God present in the words, the ideas, the principles and the passions of others. Together we are called to work towards a God–given accommodation and advancement of the Kingdom living and moving in the everyday things of life, as life is fleshed out, incarnated, day by day. And so The Word incarnate has a very powerful role to play in the personality of the Christian as she and he live the life of faith, of hope and of love.
Incarnation is a word about beginning. Incarnation, as we celebrate it at Christmas, draws and holds together the beginning of creation and the beginning of a specific human life, that of Jesus Christ. Religiously, the opening chapters of Genesis place the beginning of life in the presence and the protection of God. Many have made this understanding compete with the revelations of physics and of science and have failed, doing religion a dis–service in the process. It is the same God, if we have the confidence and the humility combined to travel with God. Religiously, The Birth of Jesus in Bethlehem in Judaea, as we find it in St Matthew and St Luke and the celebration of The Word made Flesh as we find it in St John, point the way to the new life which awaits each of us as we commit our lives – our personalities, our minds and our bodies – to the God of grace and salvation. This is the God whom Titus recognized as having been the gift of God’s own self to all humankind. A religion which is defined by beginnings is not, however, one which chases every novelty under the sun. This is not what this means! Christianity is concerned with second chances, with fresh opportunities and with real experiments. At a time of the year when we enjoy our traditions, when we indulge our nostalgias and when we are all too often saddened by the past as it goes before us into the future, we do well to remember that beginnings genuinely are possible and indeed encouraged by God through incarnation at Christmas.
Incarnation is a word about light and this brings me back to my opening remarks. Nobody today wants faith to be cluttered by ‘big words’ or so–called ‘intellectual ideas’ any longer. So, the same people don’t really need to grapple with the language of light and darkness, I can only presume. Light is only the flick of a switch away and every iPhone 5 now incorporates a little torch. So, what is the problem? Advent began with an invitation from Isaiah: O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord! (Isaiah 2.5) We have travelled spiritually with the light and into the light. And so light is about another of those big words: revelation. God gives us the light that is the person of God to walk with us, to remain among us and to be one of us – for God and for others.
The Christmas Collect invited us to engage with the proper and changing relationships between darkness and light, in life as we live it under God. Incarnation offers us human and divine goodness in the face of institutional evil and corruption. Incarnation gifts us with a new relationship between two irreconcilables: life and death by opening up the pathway to the new life of resurrection. Incarnation takes us where God has not gone before.
St Luke 2.9: Then an angle of the Lord stood before the shepherds, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.