25.12.2014
Christmas Day Sermon by the Archbishop of Dublin, the Most Revd Dr Michael Jackson
“…we need to remember in silent grief and in staggering alarm that a man has died in a doorway in Dublin in the same month in which we celebrate God’s stooping to be one of: the poor. And we need to act…”
The Archbishop of Dublin, the Most Revd Dr Michael Jackson, delivered his Christmas Day sermon in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, during the Cathedral Eucharist on this morning (December 25).
In it the Archbishop spoke of the increasingly distant relationships between people, driven by market forces which mean that we touch, make direct contact with, know and engage with fewer and fewer people in the chain of production, distribution and delivery of things we buy. He compared this to the gap which has opened up between us and God in the modern world.
“The chasm has opened up between our getting something instantly and the range of people who get it to us in all the stages along the way. The gap between us and God in the modern world is not actually all that different. It is based on the fact that we have let the gap open up between us and our neighbour and thereby have failed to see God in our neighbour,” he stated.
The Archbishop said that the political system works to keep ordinary people out of power but at Christmas God came to earth to empower humanity. He observed that Jesus bent low to identify with the nameless masses – the helpless and the harassed anonymous who are so angry with the way things are that they want change – bringing their indignation to the heart of public discourse.
Archbishop Jackson said that Christmas is a time which is troubled for many people – the ill, those with little money with which to celebrate, immigrants, refugees, the homeless, Christians around the world who are facing persecution. He added that we are right to be joyous at Christmas but wrong to be complacent.
“The Market, even when it is functioning, does not create a society of dignity and of welcome. The Market Forces which we tend to worship every day have brought about an inhumanity which now lies at the heart of what it is to be human – until you are rejected, homeless, hungry, persecuted and find yourself joining the anonymous non–persons whose Agenda Jesus Christ has brought to the heart of this world’s agenda: the poor, the homeless, the refugees. We all make choices; not all of us can see them through; not all of us can change them when they unravel as the wrong choices. We need to spare more than a thought on the day when we mark the baby born in a manger in Bethlehem; we need to remember in silent grief and in staggering alarm that a man has died in a doorway in Dublin in the same month in which we celebrate God’s stooping to be one of: the poor. And we need to act,” he concluded.
Archbishop Jackson’s Sermon is reproduced in full below:
Christ Church Cathedral, diocese of Dublin Christmas Day 2014
Reading: St John 1:1–14
A sermon preached by the Archbishop
St John 1.14: And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.
Just as The Season of Advent was about to shed its grey and steely light upon us at the end of November, I found myself part of a Porvoo Consultation on Ethics and Economics in the Lutheran Evangelical Academy in Bad Boll near Stuttgart. The Academy had begun its life as a caring institute in the nineteenth century, a pioneering place to support and give dignity to those suffering from bereavement and depression. It subsequently flourished as a centre for writing and the visual arts including theology and, after World War ii, began a new life as a place in which German Youth, following the ravages of The Third Reich, might learn all over again politics and citizenship. It was a place which had, in and of itself, responded to what the hymn–writer calls: all the changing scenes of life.
The first formal contribution at the Consultation was from a Spanish Anglican. He is a pathologist and a priest. He drew us to St Luke chapter 7 where Jesus visits the town called Nain and, on entering the gate, meets the funeral cortege of a young man. The point which the speaker highlighted was that Jesus physically touched the coffin, to the consternation of all, and commanded the young man in the coffin to live. The speaker told us of his own passing through Madrid Airport to the Consultation earlier that day and finding that an African person had died some hours earlier; and, of course, nobody had touched him in that intervening time because of the alarm and threat of Ebola. The instinct of all who passed by was that they should live and not impair the life that was in them or contaminate the life of others. And, ironically, as I re–entered Ireland through Terminal 1 of Dublin Airport at the end of the Conference, the only piece of Welcome Literature was a series of leaflets warning about not bringing into Ireland the same Ebola. I am not in any way naïve about the distinction between Biblical times and the times we live in; nor again about the relationship and non–comparability of Jesus and modern medicine. But I still find the issues around death in these two stories interesting. And I cannot but ask if the default setting of reaction today has finally and definitively become, in the words a friend once offered me: the containment of contamination.
In the context not only the pre–Advent Consultation, but even more specifically of Christmas itself, the point was comprehensively made. Our world is an economically–driven world not a world driven by care of The Other. The Market and its voracious forces mean that we touch, make direct contact with, know or engage with fewer and fewer people in the chain of production, distribution and delivery as these increasingly distanced relationships and transactions relate to more and more of the things which we buy and on which we depend in everyday living. The chasm has opened up between our getting something instantly and the range of people who get it to us in all the stages along the way. The gap between us and God in the modern world is not actually all that different. It is based on the fact that we have let the gap open up between us and our neighbour and thereby have failed to see God in our neighbour. My friend’s phrase that I used before: the containment of contamination has its flip side in another phrase: the allure of alienation. Much political effort today centres on keeping so–called ordinary people on the outside of power – power for good. At Christmas God came to earth to em–power humanity.
There are of course many other examples from other aspects of life. What is referred to quite openly as Fortress Europe’s Graveyard, the area of water off the coast of Italy where rescue vessels no longer patrol to lift out of the water refugees who are freezing and drowning as they fall from overcrowded vessels, is one such example. And this situation obtains while Syria alone has three million refugees seeking to find new life, new home and new dignity following one of the worst humanitarian crises in living memory. The repeated delaying of Western intervention has in fact rendered every intervention more difficult and less effective.
The gap of which I spoke is a willful gap of decision–making. It is the decision to de–spiritualize oneself, one’s relationships with nature and with the rest of humanity and to turn both nature and humanity into commodities of convenience and, therefore, of disappointment. The poetry of the creation story in Genesis 2 modulates into the social conscience of the prophets: destruction of the environment and neglect of the vulnerable – widows, orphans and strangers – are of a piece with one another. And it does so because the connection between the humans and the rest of creation comes from the inescapably theological vision that we are made of the same substance as the creation.
At Christmas we celebrate creation. The Prologue of St John’s Gospel makes clear that creation is the first gift of God to us. To creation we owe life itself and creation is given to us from and through Christ Jesus. Once we tie in this understanding of God with the understanding of Emmanuel (God with us) from St Matthew, we are brought right to the heart of the Christmas Story as we know and love it and we are brought forward into the earthly ministry of Jesus Christ. The stooping down, the bending low, the self–emptying has always been seen as the guiding star and the leading light of the ministry of Jesus. Jesus bends low to identify with the nameless masses, the helpless and the harassed anonymous who are so angry with the way things are that they want change. He brings their humiliation and their indignation to the centre of the public discourse. He relentlessly and prophetically acts and speaks of the Kingdom of God. This kingdom is not only counter–cultural; it keeps forcing the world of self–serving expectations to recognize greed, disease and discrimination and it keeps forcing this same world which God has created to go instead for growth in the areas of reconciliation, wholeness and flourishing. These are the components of the value–system which God wants to replace the values of the kingdom of this world. The birth of Jesus Christ gives hope to the vulnerable that both he and they will rise together. The church on earth is called to a prophetic ecumenism. God’s own economy is built and based on the ethic of mutuality and accompaniment of the vulnerable, the destitute and the homeless. They are what Jesus does.
If the first gift at Christmas to us is creation, then there is at least one other gift which features strongly in the Prologue to St John’s Gospel. This is the gift of presence. Christmas, as all of us know, is a time which is troubled for many people, as well as being joyous for many more. It is a time of absence as well as a time of presence. Such people may be ill, they may have very little money to contemplate enjoyment, they may be away from their homeland for longer or shorter periods. And in this year they may be refugees and exiles who will never see home again. And in our city there are people whom we have made anonymous by calling them: the homeless and their numbers are rising daily. St John’s Gospel recognizes that we are part of this presence and that Jesus comes to us and abides with us. The question now is: Who is absent from whom? In our day and on our television screens we see persecution and martyrdom worked out in terrifying and unimaginable circumstances. We see it hammered out against the old and the young, against women and children – the widow, the orphan and the stranger – so familiar to us from our own Scriptures. We see it destroying maybe for ever Yazidis in Northern Iraq, as IS sweeps forward and closes down anyone who is different from the new self–styled caliphate which is fast establishing itself in the crucible of faith itself, the Middle East and Mesopotamia. We see it in the many, many people who sit all day long in our streets – looking at little else than the passing shoes of other people, at bags of shopping and at people preoccupied with preoccupation itself. We are reminded at Christmas of what incarnation itself is about – flesh and blood, you and me and all the others wherever they are whom God has created in God’s image and likeness. We are told of the birth of joy and the life of service to the purpose of suffering and solidarity. The same Jesus Christ came to abide, to pitch his tent and to locate among us the glory of God and to be a sign of a different life on earth as it is in heaven.
We are right to be joyous at Christmas. After all the Word became flesh and lived among us. We are wrong to be complacent at Christmas. The Market, even when it is functioning, does not create a society of dignity and of welcome. The Market Forces which we tend to worship every day have brought about an inhumanity which now lies at the heart of what it is to be human – until you are rejected, homeless, hungry, persecuted and find yourself joining the anonymous non–persons whose Agenda Jesus Christ has brought to the heart of this world’s agenda: the poor, the homeless, the refugees. We all make choices; not all of us can see them through; not all of us can change them when they unravel as the wrong choices. We need to spare more than a thought on the day when we mark the baby born in a manger in Bethlehem; we need to remember in silent grief and in staggering alarm that a man has died in a doorway in Dublin in the same month in which we celebrate God’s stooping to be one of: the poor. And we need to act.
St Luke 7.14: Jesus stepped forward and laid his hand on the bier; and the bearers halted.
ENDS