25.12.2022
Christmas Day 2022: A new beginning – Sermon by the Archbishop of Dublin
The sermon preached by Archbishop Michael Jackson at the Festal Eucharist for Christmas Day in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, on December 25 2022.
Readings: St John 1.1–18
St John 1.1: In the beginning the Word already was. The Word was in God’s presence, and what God was, the Word was.
IT IS NEVER TOO LATE TO START A NEW BEGINNING
It is with good reason that we go back, again and again, to the beginning of The Gospel according to St John for sustenance and for inspiration on Christmas Day. The early signs may not seem promising. There is no manger, no ox and ass, no sheep and shepherds, no sign even of an earthly mother or father. Yet, there is a very majestic sense of God with us. That too is the heart and soul of Christmas. We need both approaches, both perspectives on Christmas. Why? Because we are called, as disciples of The Incarnate Son of God, to be the carriers and the ambassadors of this Gospel, as our lives become more crowded and more empty at the same time. It is easy for us to find that Christmas itself passes us by all too quickly. December is always a busy month, whether we are part of that busyness or whether we have no option but to watch it pass us by. We often have difficulty in making Advent a priority. In this way, we miss out on the excitement of preparation, the expectation of presence as a gift in its own right. We then find ourselves swept into a New Year – and it is all over for yet another year. It is hardly surprizing that many of us struggle to work out what it is all about or, at least, what all the hype is all about. The more sparse, the more theological Gospel for Christmas Day does us no harm at all. It may even do us the power of good by decluttering our mind and refocussing our priorities. It is never too late to start a new beginning.
CHRISTMAS DAY – GOD AND US
Today is Christmas Day. Maybe, in these few moments of togetherness before God and one another, in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin we can look again, from the beginning, at what is to be found in this Gospel and, by doing so, see what can help to centre our thoughts, our hopes and our response on God and on ourselves working together, as God becomes one of us who knows our ways. I say this because Christmas is where we and God come together in the Incarnation of God. It has always been this way at Christmas. I say this to you prompted by what I heard recently a Lutheran bishop say:
It is not that we need more of the Holy Spirit; it is that the Holy Spirit needs more of us. Where, then, are we to find ourselves in the presence of God in The Gospel for Christmas Day? And what are we to do with the presence of the God of the Gospel in our lives?
THE WORDS OF CHRISTMAS
Let us have a look at some of the words of Christmas that, even in a Gospel Reading so stark and so evocative as St John’s Gospel, can point us towards the essential connection between ourselves and God, between the everyday and the divine, the connection that lies at the heart of Christmas itself. These are words of discipleship and of leadership in the manger of Bethlehem, in the way of the Cross and in the road to Emmaus. They point us to Jesus Christ and lead us into the world of today cleansed and revived.
BEGINNING
First, there is the word: beginning. Here, bright shining in its Gospel–setting, the word beginning takes us back to the foundation of creation. It is creation not as contemporary science understands it. It is creation as the Jewish and the Christian perspective take to its heart all that is and all that lives in the totality of the worlds that surround us as their inhabitants. It is matter infused by God. Had it not been for the unchallenged dominance of a particular religious view over any other view for centuries, and had it not been for the self–satisfaction of religion to luxuriate in this dominance, there might now be a different relationship of opposites. The use of the word beginning here points us to the continuity of responsibility that God has for the created world, the created order of mutual responsibility, and sets in this flow the events of Christmas as part of that total response. In this way, there can be new beginnings for each one of us in our unearthing the presence of God in the world, however oblique, however partial, our understanding and in the invitation we offer to God into our own lives and worlds.
Today’s Gospel is very specific and detailed regarding the nature of the relationship that Christmas establishes for us. It is not a relationship issuing from dynastic inheritance (therefore, it is for anyone and everyone); nor is it a relationship issuing from the coming together of man and woman (therefore, it is of a different order of being, not a fusion of existing genetic matter); it is a relationship that gives the right to become children of God in a way that approximates as closely as possible to the way in which Jesus, the Son of God, became a child of earth. There is no sentimentality in this. Rather, there is pain and suffering, a dynamic combination of energy and capacity that go far and away beyond anything we can know, and even more important, anything we can control. This is the beginning that we take with us from today’s Christmas Service.
WORD
Secondly, there is the word: word itself. Here it has a very particular purpose, and we also need to harness this energy, catch this vision. The Word is more than a mouthpiece, more than a spokesperson. The Word is personal. The Word is the content of God, the true gift itself, rather than the wrapping paper. The role and purpose of The Word is to dispense the glory and radiance, grace and truth of God in and for the world. In this way, The Word is a new beginning every Christmas and every day, a new beginning of the goodness of creation. While words are held in common within families of languages, and some words overlap in different languages, words carry communication, content, meaning, personality and relationship. They also shape thinking and decisions. Words, in and of themselves, are voices that carry good and evil. The new beginning that happens every day in the world that is God’s and our’s needs our personal and living word out and about to commend, to persuade, to correct, to prophesy, to lead onwards to redemption. Every Christmas we are called and commissioned to be theological actors in life around us. We do not watch the glory, the grace and the truth of The Word of God on television or on our mobile telephone. We live it in our lives and for our community.
TESTIFY
The third word is: testify. Today we might name it advocacy or witness. And here is something we all too often forget. The way Scripture is written, there would be no Christmas without John the Baptizer. There would be no glory, grace and truth without the call to justice, the resonance of integrity and the self–understanding of humility. We have had the whole of the Season of Advent to get to terms with John, so we ought not be surprized to meet him in The Christmas Gospel. He was not himself the light; he came to bear witness to the light. This is what The Gospel for today tells us about John the Baptizer. In a world of social media, often driven by self–promotion and by self–delusion, it is refreshing to find in someone such as John the repeated instinct to deny such seductive suggestions of vanity and self–satisfaction and to say: I am not; I am not; No! We, who are Christian adults, need to apply the skills and the capacities we have been given as adults to take up the ethic of John and to testify today. And to what might we testify? To the rightness of care over neglect; to the need for inclusion of those at the margin in the centre of friendship, dignity and provision; to the redemption of those who are wrong and who have done wrong into full membership of community; to the suppression of self–first and to the elevation of the instinct for community–first. You may wonder why I say little about church itself. It is because both John and Jesus were doing their work before there was any sight or sound of what we call church. They lived and acted in the time of incarnation before institution.
Time and again, we speak of third parties, people who move forward an agenda, people who change a perspective, people who open up new pathways, people who bring to bear on an impossible situation an enlivening perspective of righteousness. We all have our favourite person who has inspired us by her/his gifts and guts. We are to be these people because John was one of these people as was Jesus. Like John, we are not the Messiah, nor are we Elijah or the Prophet. So, then, who are we? It does not sound scintillating to the Facebook generation, but we are, like John: a voice crying in the wilderness …This is not a voice crying out in vain. It is a voice crying in a living wilderness, in a wilderness of pain and of tearing, calling out to gather people to loving action in order to make straight the way for the Lord. Recently I was in Tampere in Finland. In the city square there is The Old Church. It has been there for more than 200 years. Those who currently worship there told us that they never ring the bell. Why? ‘Because this is a wasteland,’ they said. Such an understanding of the failure of the church institution, however unpalatable, brings adult Christians to the heart of who we are and what we do: make the road that everyone travels the highway of the glory, grace and truth of The Word of God.
I have suggested three words that are looking out at us from the pages of Holy Scripture on Christmas Day: beginning, word and testify. All three make a particular person when expressed in the belief that The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. This understanding connects us with the most direct of words from a Christmas Carol:
He came down to earth from heaven …
The words of Christmas take on our nature, our flesh and live among us. In this way St John’s Gospel equips us to be adult Christians with adult values for adult faith. We are invited to make a new beginning, to set in train the trickle–down effects of these words as we look up and see stars, angels, shepherds and sheep, ox and ass and mother and child.
We are invited to show the characteristics of the Word Incarnate in a new beginning on Christmas Day in the morning. All the clues surround us. War in Ukraine along with humanitarian brutalities and atrocities that seem never to leave the human heart. Starvation and emaciation in Yemen along with the increasingly irreversible impacts of climate desecration. Fuel and food poverty for everyone, but first and last for poor and old, immigrant and refugee. These words must meet the words of Christmas that we have found in The Gospel: beginning, word and testify. An innocent place like Creeslough one day in 2022 tells a story of human solidarity, grief and loyalty that gives us a sign of incarnation and new beginning. It saddens and inspires as did The First Christmas with all its complexity and its compassion. It also gives hope that humanity can testify to something that enlightens the darkest and the coldest corners of human experience.
Titus 3.6,7: This Spirit God poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Saviour, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.