CHRISTMAS DAY

CHRISTMAS  DAY

“Oh little town of Bethlehem,

how still we see thee lie.”

That’s how one much loved carol begins. Today we can make an imaginary journey to  the Bethlehem that we sing about at Christmas.  As you enter the town, you are greeted by a large banner across the road. In Hebrew it says “BERUCHIM NABAIM”  --  “Blessed is He who comes”;  and in Arabic another banner proclaims “AHALAN  veSAHALAN”  --  which means “My tent is yours.”  What a graceful welcome home, because this place is where our Christian family had its beginnings. Then there is the Church of the Nativity. It stands in the centre of the town. It was built more than 1600 years ago, i.e. third century.  It was built over the cave which the early Christians venerated as the place where Jesus was born. The solid wooden beams which you will see above were put in a thousand years later, i.e. in the 14th. Century. These beams are made of English oak donated by King Edward III.  The main entrance of the Church was solidly walled up; that was to stop soldiers from riding in on horseback. So now the only way to enter into the vast church is through a tiny postern gate. You have to bend almost double to avoid banging your head.

It is a sort of parable, it has seemed to me, that no one can come to see the place where Jesus was born without bowing low, making this act of humility and submission. It is as if the very stones were saying to you: “You’ve got to stoop here, pilgrim, in this place where God has stooped so low for you.”

Because it is a very strange thing that we Christians have to preach to the world:  that you can no longer look for God where people mostly look  -  up there, out yonder, up in the heavens.  No, he is here, in something as utterly human as the birth of a baby.  “But that doesn’t look like God,” we can hear ourselves saying.  And the reply comes back: “Who knows what God looks like ?”  Then again you say, “Well, this is nothing like my  idea of God !”  And the reply comes back:  “Very likely, and it  is your  idea of God which has to go.”

How odd that our way of thinking should always have insisted that God is power, domination, infinity, and awesomeness. Why is that odd ?  Because when we actually reach the moment of truth, what we find is weakness, helplessness, powerlessness and dependency.  For us, the birth of Christ means that the indescribable mystery we call God can only be found in someone as utterly human as you and me.  And as utterly open to hurt, disappointment and failure. A new-born baby is one of the weakest forms of animal life. It is so easy to kill a baby.  Mere neglect will do that. (God forbid !)  God has put himself into our hands.

Today, what we are saying to God is, “We believe in you.”  Today, what God is saying to us is, “And I depend upon you. “ 

Finally, there are some people who say sadly that they would have better appreciated the birth of Christ had they lived 20 centuries ago. This is rubbish.  Even those who will live at the end of the world will not have been born too late.  Jesus is always with us, always asking for room in our hearts.  John Betjeman stresses the same point in his carol:

“No love that in a family dwells

No carolling in frosty air,

Nor all the steeple-shaking bells,

Can with this single truth compare

That God was man in Palestine

And lives today in bread and wine.”

I wish everyone a Christmas filled with joy and a life as gentle as only a four year old can picture it.  Do remember, though, this advice of a sage:

“Peace is so much more than a season

It’s a way of life and a state of reason.”

PRAYER poem  of Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 - 1889)

Moonless darkness stands between

Past, O Past no more be seen !

But the Bethlehem Star may lead me

To the sight of him who freed me

From the self that I have been,

Make me pure, Lord, Thou art holy;

Make me meek, Lord, Thou wert lowly;

Now beginning, and alway;

Now begin, on Christmas Day.