Homily for Christmas Day
You are welcome once again to Christmas Mass here in the Augustinian. We don't see most of you that often, but I suppose, 'what's seldom is wonderful!' Welcome in particular to those of you who have come back to your families to celebrate the festival. Such homecomings are so much part of Christmas. It is good to see those of you who were ill in recent times back on your feet and with us again. Welcome also to our regular faithful, those of you who sustain us throughout the year. Without your very active support, our presence here would not only be impossible; it would be irrelevant.
Christmas is pre-eminently a season of welcomes. Because we welcome a God who came among us as one of our own. Over the years we have grown used to this truth: we are no longer shocked by 'God made man'. But it truly was a shocking claim to make in the ancient world. The Greeks and the Romans kept their gods at a distance.
They remained stoical, unmoved, indifferent to the plight of humanity. Or, worse still, some ancients regarded the gods as malicious. Gloucester voices this conviction in Shakespeare's King Lear:
"As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods;
They kill us for their sport,"
But at Christmas we Christians welcome a God who made himself entirely vulnerable in the human condition. He came among us in the most vulnerable form imaginable: as a new-born baby. He is the Word Made flesh, as St. John puts it in today's gospel. This is how God chose to express himself. This is nothing short of a recreation. In the original creation of Genesis God created mankind in his own image, the author tells us. In the new creation of Christmas, he takes that creation a step further: he becomes one of us.' The creator of the world himself becomes a creature. The all-powerful infinite God comes into the world as a powerless, vulnerable baby. And he did it so that we might be saved from the meaningless morass into which humanity had sunk.
The child who was born on this day grew up to show us the way. The child who was born on this night invited us to walk along a new path, a path that would humanise those who accepted the invitation. The child who was born on this night dignified every human being. Every human being that walks this earth is precious. He or she is so precious that our God considered us worth dying for. This is the good new that we human beings bask in this holy night: 'God became man so that man might become God.'
Christmas is a time when we celebrate our humanity. Many of you have come back to your families for the festival. You will have a great few days. In celebrating with your families you are truly celebrating your humanity. Humanity cannot be celebrated in the abstract; it not an idea; it is an experience, primarily. Christmas can only be celebrated properly in your own Bethlehem, among your own people, with the people who formed and fashioned you, who made you what you are (for good or for ill)!
Christmas is not all cheer and happy memories. For those of you who lost family members during the year, this is a sad painful time. But that too, unfortunately, is part of the human experience, part of the human condition. All that connects us to them now is memory, and the memories of the Christmases we shared.
I'm sure we all know John Betjeman's poem, Christmas, in which he pokes gentle fun at some of the silly things we do at this festival:
- loving fingers tying strings
around those tissued fripperies,
the sweet and silly Christmas things,
bath salts and inexpensive scent
and hideous tie so kindly meant.
But in the middle of the poem he asks this startling question:
And is it true? And is it true,
this most tremendous tale of all
seen in a stained-glass window's hue
a baby in an ox's stall?The maker of the stars and sea
become a child on earth for me?
What difference might it make if it were true? We not only matter to God but he is prepared to do something about what is wrong in the way we relate to each other, the way we treat each other. Instead of being somehow aloof from the human condition, God enters into it without reserve. He becomes a child on earth for me.
This is why we have reason to celebrate today. Shepherds and stables, the ox and the ass, stars and wise men all enrich the story, but at its heart is the child in whom God chooses to live among us - to teach us by word and example, and to die for us.
Betjeman concludes his poem:
No love that in a family dwells,
no carolling in frosty air,
nor all the steeple shaking bellscan with this single truth compare -
that God was man in Palestine
and lives today in Bread and Wine.
The poet brings us back to the Eucharist which we celebrate today and in which we receive Jesus Christ in bread and wine. For if this most tremendous tale of all really is true, then it isn't just a tale of long, long ago, but a story which impacts on how we live day by day. God who was man in Palestine has taught us that love for God and neighbour sums up all that religion or philosophy can hope to teach us about being human. Such a simple message. Yet it challenges us every day of our lives. Because it is a challenge that will never exhaust itself or go stale, Christmas will never go stale for us. Have a lovely, happy Christmas.