An army of angels, not men - Homily for Christmas Night

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

To save you from waiting any longer for the Christmas cracker jokes at the dining table, here are some to have you groaning now.

One you can use any year:

Many people will stop everything at 3pm on Christmas Day to listen to Her Majesty’s annual address to the nation. But what does the Queen call her Christmas Broadcast? The One Show!

 

Here’s one with perhaps a certain generational appeal:

 

Why did Harry Styles fail at being Santa?

Because he can only use the chimney in One Direction.

But here’s the most vicious I’ve come across yet:

Father Christmas is forced to have an official from the Aviation Authority check his sleigh to make sure it’s airworthy. The official checks out the sleigh on the ground then sits beside Father Christmas for a test flight. Suddenly Father Christmas notices the official has a revolver in his pocket. ‘What’s that for?’ he asks. ‘You’re not a hijacker are you?’ ‘No,’ replies the official. ‘But we have to see how you handle this craft when you lose an engine on take-off.’

The Christmas story begins with a call from officialdom:  

In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered.

 

The Emperor proclaims that everybody within his dominions has to take part in a census. Count your subjects and you can tax them more efficiently. The Gospel reading tonight tells us this is how the birth of Jesus came to take place in Bethlehem. Mary and Joseph might have been living in Nazareth but that’s not the original family home - so off they go to Bethlehem. And there Jesus is born, as the angels proclaim to shepherds in their fields:

To you, in David's town, this day
is born of David's line
a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord;
and this shall be the sign:

There’s a certain irony in this - or a sense of history not going full circle but entering into a spiral. Joseph is descended from King David whose home was Bethlehem - so to Bethlehem he goes with Mary to be counted in for the census. Read the story of King David in the Old Testament and you find that almost the last thing he did was to declare a census throughout his lands of Israel and Judah. Not everyone thinks it’s a good idea, but David gets it into his head that it’s God’s will to count his people. Not only does it tell him how big his Kingdom is. It tells him of the power at his disposal: 800,000 soldiers able to draw the sword in Israel and a further 500,000 in Judah.

It’s rather frightening to think that in such a small country so many men could be mobilised for war. The Emperor Augustus wants to know how many subjects he can tax. King David wants to find out how many he can call on to fight. In fact David comes to regret what he has done as an act of self-aggrandisement. He’s putting his own power and prestige above the honour due to God. He’s forgetting that his authority and power come ultimately from God - they are not his to use in just any way he might decide for himself.

But don’t these actions of a Roman Emperor and an Israelite King tell us so much that’s true of our world today? Without revenue - without tax - how is a government to provide for its people?... though most of what we’re hearing in the news these days is of how our political leaders plan to reduce the deficit, rather than meet the cost of health and social care. And the numbering of King David’s troops has its echoes in all our concerns for national security in a world where so many people suffer from capricious violence and oppression fomented by those who possess the weapons of force and are able to direct people willing to use them.

The censuses called by King David and the Emperor Augustus are reminders of the ways of earthly rulers. They get their way because of the temporal powers they possess. But born in the line of David’s descendants - born in Bethlehem because of Emperor Augustus’s command - Jesus enters the story to reveal a new sort of Kingship. The hope of the Jewish people was that a Messiah would rise up amongst them as their leader - and that he would be born of David’s family. One King had led them for a short time to be a united people, victorious on the battlefield. Another King, they hoped, would lead them to bring freedom from being a captive people. Now Jesus is born - one whose name translates into a promise that he would save his people.

But Jesus comes as a Saviour with a difference. Born in the poor town of Bethlehem with an animal trough for his first bed, he has no trappings of royal kingship. When wise men come from the East looking for a King whose birth has been heralded by a new star in the sky, they go to Herod’s palace in Jerusalem. But he is not there. They need to travel on to humbler surroundings in a village on the city’s outskirts. And while the Emperor Augustus allowed himself to be proclaimed a god, Jesus comes - the Son of God - but laying aside his divine prerogatives to be born as any one of us, the son of Mary.

Wise men will visit the child of Bethlehem - in due course. But the first visitors to the new-born king are not royal courtiers, but shepherds, called from fields where they had tended their flocks. Shepherds were the outsiders of their day - not only economically poor but spiritually on the edge as well, unable to keep the ritual requirements of their religion. But they are the ones who first hear the message of Christ’s birth - and hear it from an angel, a messenger of God. They might be the last people who would expect to receive a divine revelation…  And then there’s a whole host of angels before them. The Bible’s word for “host” perhaps translates better as “army” - an army of angels; and they bring a call to follow a new King.

It’s a call that we need to hear as well. God has touched this world in a way that had never been done before. He wants to establish his ways not by force but by the changing of hearts. Because in Jesus we see how divine power can make itself able to enter into the fullness of humanity:

Welcome, all Wonders in one sight!
   Eternity shut in a span.
Summer to winter, day in night,
   Heaven in earth, and God in man.
Great little One! Whose all-embracing birth
Lifts earth to heaven, stoops heaven to earth.

God looks on us now with the eyes of a child. The manger is at such a height that kneeling shepherds may look into the eyes of God. May we too look - and learn what it is to be his people, and he our King.

 

Christmas Near You!

Our Christmas entry from "A Church Near You" - the site itself is worth a look!

 

Christmas Eve Carol Service

An all age service - carols, readings, candles & handbells!

Wednesday 24th December 2014 at 6:00 PM for 1 hour

 

Midnight Mass of the Nativity

Welcome the Christ Child at St. Cuthbert's

Wednesday 24th December 2014 at 11:30 PM for 1 hour and 10 minutes.

Sung Eucharist of Christmas Day

An all-age service with Holy Communion; this service replaces the usual 10.30a.m. Sunday Eucharist

Thursday 25th December 2014 at 9:30 AM for 1 hour

 

Eucharist for New Year's Day

Thursday 1st January 2015 at 11:00 AM for 40 minutes

 

 

Read all about it!

Sorry there's been a delay in getting the November issue of our Parish Magazine online. It's now up in the ether and you can find it here. Lots of articles, much to look forward to, a record of events and this month's Calendar - and you get to see it in colour.

There have also been updates to the pages which accompany this Blog. Please take a look!

Loss and thankfulness…

Last month I wrote about my father’s final prolonged illness and death - and the support I’ve found in our parish. Sadly sickness and bereavement are an ongoing part of pastoral life - or rather they are part of life, not something to be hidden away but taken together with life’s richness and its causes for thankfulness.

In September our congregation has had cause to mourn - first the death of Jean Burt, then Irvine Macnair, and (as we go to press) Olive Booth. These are real causes for sorrow and we share their families’ sense of loss. Each of them had been ill for a long time before they died. We have to acknowledge the reality of suffering.

But with it goes thankfulness too. Bereavement brings grief - but it’s important not to let go of all that is a cause for gratitude in the lives of our loved ones. As I stood by Olive’s bedside just a couple of days before she died, I was struck by the memory of how she had gone with me to sit by the bedside of another parishioner month by month as we had shared in Holy Communion - and how that went along with healthy doses of laughter enriched by her particular sense of humour. So much she had brought into the lives of other through the long years of her life - we mustn’t let it go when our loved ones need all our care and caring, and seem to recede from us.

So too with Irvine. The last time I spent with him was not only a time for prayer but an occasion for a quick check on the practicalities of getting the Parish Magazine distributed! We know how much he brought into the life of our church from being Treasurer to mowing the grass through organising after-church coffee - and much more, but above all by being there. His life in the community touched so many - professional work as an anaesthetist but also voluntary work for hospital and hospice, enjoyment of music with the Gramophone Society - or just being out and about with the dogs! Most of us knew less about his army service, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel; that he had his “wings” as someone who could parachute in to give aid as needed - or his gift for improvising in the field.

At a funeral I’m always aware there’s so much more we could say. We need to be in touch with the richness of life - and that includes our own. When things seem bleak, we need to recognise the cause for gratitude. Then we might see life as a gift - and the Giver is God.

Martin Jackson

From the October issue of our Parish Magazine - find all its content here

From the heart…

Over the last few months I’ve had real cause to be so grateful for so much support from people at St. Cuthbert’s during a time when my father has been critically ill in hospital and finally died during August. I’m quite touched by all the cards, messages, prayers and practical demonstrations of support following his death - and my mother joins me in saying just how much we have appreciated all of these. It was good that quite a few of our parishioners were able to join us for the funeral at St. Luke’s, Hartlepool - and that they stayed on to help consume the refreshments (the local side turned out for the service but amazed us by largely disappearing before the eats and drinks - obviously something we could teach them about!).

 

Now I’m back in the parish - and as I write I’m just back from the first visit I’ve made to arrange a funeral for someone else. What can I say? The human condition is one of mortality. As the American theologian Stanley Hauerwas roughly puts it, “None of us are going to get out of this life alive.” But the difference Christianity makes is in what we encounter on our journey - and the hope that awaits us at its end. And the Christian hope embraces the whole human condition. It was a privilege to be able to be a priest to my father with prayers, anointing and commendation - remember they are there for anyone in need! But as I said at the funeral there was a certain priestly ministry in just being able to be his son. We can all share in that for those to whom we are close - I found it most deeply holding an ice lolly for him to eat on a hot July day. Something about a father and his son…

 

Earlier in the summer I read a couple of books that our Reading Group have been sharing - see their article in this magazine to learn more about their future plans. The books I read were Stoner  by John Williams and The Hare with Amber Eyes  by Edmund de Waal. The first about a fictitious life but brilliantly related; the second the story of the author’s own family. I was struck by the absence of God in the entirety of Stoner from birth to deathbed. And the story of the Ephrussi family was of Jews who were set apart only as people who would suffer discrimination and finally persecution - their Jewishness not only eschewed the practice of faith but even cultural reference. Yet strangely God comes in with a daughter of the Viennese branch of the family converting to Christianity and becoming an Anglican - in Paris and as she marries a Dutch Mennonite! And then she rescues her parents from the Nazis.

 

Where do we find God? Let’s give him a place in our lives.

Martin Jackson


From the September issue of our Parish Magazine - find the whole issue here

A sower went out - and what grew...

At its last meeting on Sunday13 July, our Sunday School created a model of Jesus' Parable of the Sower. What many of us didn't realise is that they had planted real seeds - which are now pushing up their shoots. Interesting to see where the... plants are growing... The birds must have missed one or two of the seeds which fell along the path. Seeds which fell amongst the thorns / weeds are definitely struggling. Those which fell on rocky ground are shooting up still (but remember Jesus' warning). Thankfully those planted in good ground are in the lead.

Sunday School (and Messy Church) now take a break till the new school term in September. But remember that all ages are welcome at our Sunday Eucharist - 10.30a.m. each week!

 

 

Online house-keeping

We've just been doing some up-dating on the blog and our website...

Use the tabs above to find new homilies and our calendar for the next two months.

And our new Parish magazine is now online - just a click away!