Sermon preached at the Christmas Eve Midnight Eucharist in St Paul's Church
I found myself the other evening with two parents whose son had died suddenly and unexpectedly a few weeks ago. And as we talked they spoke to me about they had come to understand something of the risk involved in being a parent. There is a risk. There is a risk about what will happen to the children. There is a risk that you may be hurt. There is a risk that all that you have tried to do as a parents may end up seeming a total waste of time.
And of course as our newspapers have shown only too clearly recently, there are risks for children too. There is a risk if you are a child that you will be abused or abandoned. There is a risk that you may grow up to a future that appears to have no hope and no direction. There is a risk that you will fall prey to a terrible illness.
Being a parent and being a child is a risky business.
And tonight is all about risk. Any self respecting Jarrow midwife would throw up her/ his hands in horror at the baby lying in the feeding trough. Has it been properly disinfected? she will ask ”Where are the sterile dressings?” “How is baby going to keep warm?” Mary may look alright; she seems a good respectable and devout woman but who knows how she may treat the child in years to come!
And Luke, who tells us the story tonight about the shepherds, tells us another story some twelve years later when Jesus goes off on his own from his parents who are worried sick about him. In the end it all turns out alright, but children do wander off and sometimes they get hurt and worse.
There is a lot of risk around tonight – risk for mother and risk for the child.
And we do not like risk. We have some strange idea that life can be risk free and so when a child is hurt, when a gas explosion threatens the Christmas dinner, when the train breaks down, we feel affronted and want to know who is to blame. We expect the world to be risk free and yet here tonight in a feeding trough in Bethlehem God the creator of heaven and earth chooses to take a life that is full of risks from the very beginning. And one of the reasons that he does this is because he knows that for good or ill, there is no such thing as a risk-free life.
Imagine if you will two friends who are out one night in a strange country. Suddenly one of them, unable to see in the dark, falls into a deep pit. His friend manages to stop himself in time. He calls into the darkness to make sure that his friend is not too injured and calls out that he will go for help. Some while later the man in the pit hears somebody walking above. He calls out to tell this new person to beware of the pit. He hears the noise of scrabbling and in the dark at the bottom of the pit can just make out that this stranger has also fallen down into the pit. “What is the point of this you foolish person? He asks. “Now there are two of us to be rescued”. “Do not worry” replies the stranger “Now that there are two of us, we can help each other out of here to safety”
Perhaps the hardest part of this life that is full of risks and therefore full of mistakes and muddle s letting God into the mess. “What is the point of you being here?” we ask. Perhaps we are afraid to see him in the mess; embarrassed that He will see that we have been stupid enough to fall into the pit. But what we discover is that God is quite at home in the mess. In a strange way he loves to be there. And so rather than be embarrassed about the mess, rather than trying to pretend that it is not there and we are not there, we can rejoice that God -the God who made the heaven and the earth – is indeed in the mess with us. And he is there in the mess and the muddle and the terrible riskiness of it all because He is love and that is what love does; it takes risks because it knows that without risks there can be no life and no love.
Many centuries ago, when Bede’s church as already old, there was a woman in Norwich who was the first woman to write a book in English. We call her Julian. She tells the story of a loyal servant who is given a task to undertake by his master. He rushes off to do his master’s bidding and in his great haste falls into a ditch and lies there miserable in his foolishness and sad that he has failed his master and lord. And Julian says to us that the greatest sadness about this loyal servant is that he does not look upwards. Because if only he did he would see that his master is looking at him lovingly and longing to reward him for all his pains.
Perhaps the Good news of tonight if only we will look at the baby in the manger we shall see that indeed he is down in the pit with us, in the muddle and the uncertainty and the ambiguity of it all. In all that mess we shall never ever be alone – and that is our joy. O come let us adore Him.
Back to menu