The Nativity of the Lord

Isaiah 9.2-7; Titus 2.11-14; Luke 2.1-20

First of all I'd like to take this opportunity to wish each and every one of you a very happy and peaceful Christmas. This is my thirteenth Christmas sermon at St. Andrew's; not that I'm counting, but I just thought that it was a significant number not an unlucky number but it just happens to be the number of men sat around the table at the last supper. And I say that not to cast us ahead of time, time passes quickly enough, but just as a gentle reminder that what we celebrate tonight (today) is just the start of the whole drama of what theologians might call the 'Salvation event', of the incarnation, death and resurrection of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. And so tonight we hear the beginning of the story again. It's the same story, told in the same way, surrounded by the same music and same words. And we repeat it all year after year, unchangingly. In these days of choice and variety and relentless change, it can feel a bit strange to do that and you might ask why we keep on doing this thing, telling this story in the same way time after time after time, year in, year out? Why don't we change it, perhaps to make it more interesting, make it more attractive to people? Make it 'edgy'? I think that's the terminology used these days to describe grabbing attention and provoking peoples' interest.

Well there are a number of reasons why we don't change the way we tell the story. One of them is because we are doing it in a way commanded by Jesus and interpreted by the Church, and reaffirmed as such repeatedly down the centuries as the best way of telling the story. It's the best way because it contains all that we need to know. In that sense we do it according to our Tradition, according to the Holy Tradition, the Tradition of the Church and not the tradition of men. We stick to Holy Tradition and do it that way because it's a sacred story telling us of the fact of God's coming to humankind for our salvation. And it's not open to any other interpretation, but the Church's interpretation, because the Church is the place where the story resides and is played out in time. It belongs to the Church because the Church is the Body of Christ and it's Christ's story. It's not open for individuals to come and decide what the story of Christmas means to them. It's for us to take on what the story means to the Church and as part of the Church, part of the Body of Christ, what it means for us.

The story contains everlasting truth about God, to be handed down generation to generation in this same way, because it is sacred and contains the Truth of God. And if we've lost the sense of anything in the Western world these days it's the sense of the sacred, of what is sacred. And that's because we seem to have to bring everything down to our own human level and make it understandable to our human reason. The trouble is that when we use our reason in this way, when we try to make everything understandable, when we subject everything to the 'light of reason', we tend to also reduce everything to ordinariness and everything has a similar value. And if we have difficulty understanding something with our rational mind we do our best to reinterpret it and reframe it so that we can give meaning to it, give our meaning to it and lose its own meaning in the process. And always when we do that we devalue whatever it is we are trying to understand. And when we do that with the Christmas story especially, not only have we missed the point we've missed the power of the story and the glory that could be ours.

God doesn't change. God is as He has always been, is now and always will be. We affirm that truth time and time again. It's we that change, you and I. In the thirteen different sermons I've preached, I've said something different every time, not because God has changed but only because I've changed. My own understanding of God has changed. My mind has seen Him in different ways and different lights, like a kaleidoscope if you like, slowly turning with the years giving different colours and patterns. And you know, because of that there's a sense in which it gets harder all the time. It gets harder to accept, with my rational mind that what I was told as a boy about God is the Truth. And no matter how much I change and my understanding changes, the Truth never does.

But what I have learned in all these years is that there comes a point where we have to put our rational mind to one side and then just look, look into the mystery of God. Because God is a mystery. He can never be understood with the rational mind. And isn't that the biggest stumbling block for we sophisticated 21st century affluent, rational, wise men? We don't like to admit that our mind lets us down. But if we do admit it then we can see that what we have to bring to God from that point onward is our heart, that centre of our Being that's been described down the centuries as the heart. And with the heart we move into a different kind of understanding, into the kind of understanding that is about love and faith. And it's here that we start to make real progress with God. An unknown English Priest of the 14th century wrote a little book which was given the title 'The Cloud of Unknowing' and in it he wrote on this very point we've come to now. He said that 'God can be known through love, but with our understanding, never.' And so it's the heart that we have to bring to this unchanging story that we hear again tonight (today) because we can only glean the story's real meaning and depth of meaning with the heart. We make that real and living connection with the God in this story, not with the mind but with the heart. And with the heart we bring our love and our faith. It's a totally different way of living, never mind, understanding. And one that we find so very very difficult in this day and age. It's always been difficult and never more so than now. So when we bring our heart to this never changing story, to this eternal, everlastin and unchanging God, what do we find?

I've been trying to encourage people here at church over the weeks of Advent to look beyond the busyness, present giving, and partying, to look beyond even the school nativity presentations to what is within and beyond them. All of those things, the present giving and partying and the children doing their nativity presentations are delightful and bring us a sense of joy. But it's what's within them and beyond them is what we are meant to be giving our heart to at Christmas. And that is what those things point us toward - God being born as a baby in a stable in Bethlehem; the uncreated God, becoming a creature; the immortal becoming mortal; and not for Himself, but for us; so that we might have salvation, that is, His healing and peace, now in this life; so that we might have the life Adam had before he and Eve fell from grace. And what it means is that God becomes man and earth is lifted up to heaven. And THAT, when we bring our heart to it is where and when we find the real joy of Christmas, because our heart has at last found God. It was the great St. Augustine that said 'our hearts are restless till they find their rest in God.' And that is Truth.

One of the biggest delusions of the Christmas season and one reason why people, most of whom have been so disappointed by it in the past, why they try to take Christmas from us is that real joy isn't to be found in the family coming together, eating together, exchanging gifts, having a party. Very often those things just lead to more frustration, disappointment and heartache, that's why there are more divorces and suicides at Christmas than any other time of year. Those things tend to enhance or raise what has been buried before and all the emotion that goes with it. No, the REAL joy of Christmas is to be found in the REAL meaning of the Christmas story, which we can only understand with the heart and then live in faith.

God comes to meet us at Christmas and offers us the blessing of new life, of salvation, of resurrection so that even though the body dies, we know by faith that that isn't the end of the story, that like what we celebrate tonight (today) it's just the beginning. And we can't know and understand this with the mind, but the heart leads us into the joy of knowing this to be true, so that with St. Paul we can say 'I know whom I have believed'. Not, I understand, but 'I know.'

And this is as true for us now as it was 2,000 years ago, so much so that tonight is as if there has never been a Christmas before, as though this is the first time that God comes to us as and in the baby in the stable. God comes to meet us now, at this moment. Will you bring the understanding of your heart to him tonight (today)? Will you lay aside your reason, make that sacrifice and in faith bring your heart to him tonight (today)? And give yourself a real chance of finding and experiencing some real joy?

I'd like to conclude by recounting some words of St. Gregory of Nazianzus, one of of the great Fathers of the Church. This is what he said about the meaning of Christmas some 1700 years ago:

'Christ is born: let us glorify Him. Christ comes down from heaven; let us go out to meet him. Christ descends to earth: let us be raised on high. Let all the world sing to the Lord: let the heavens rejoice and let the earth be glad, for his sake who was first in heaven and then on earth. Christ is here in the flesh: let us exult with fear and joy - with fear, because of our sins; with joy, because of the hope that He brings us.... This is the solemnity we are celebrating today: the arrival of God among us, so that we might go to God - or more precisely, return to God. So that stripping of our old humanity we might put on the new; for as in Adam we were dead, son in Christ we become alive: we are born with Him, and we rise again with Him....For this is the feast of my being made whole, my returning to the condition God designed for me, to the original Adam. So let us revere the nativity which releases us from the chains of evil. Let us honour this tiny Bethlehem which restores us to paradise. Let us reverence this crib because from it, we who were deprived of self-understanding, are fed by the divine understanding, the Word of God himself,'

Christ is born, glorify him, find your joy the Lord this Christmas.