25.12.2020
“Seize the Chance to Build a Shared Society” – Archbishop of Dublin’s Christmas Day Sermon
In a very different Christmas Day, the Archbishop of Dublin, the Most Revd Dr Michael Jackson preached his Christmas Day sermon during the Festal Eucharist at Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, to an online congregation only.
The service, which featured the Cathedral Choir, was livestreamed via the cathedral’s webcam and is available to watch again on the cathedral’s Facebook page. The service was led by the Dean, the Very Revd Dermot Dunne who greeted people who were tuning in online with the prayer that we would overcome the virus, that the vaccines would be successful and that we would learn to live in freedom again. The Gospel was read by Dean’s Vicar, the Revd Abigail Sines and the prayers were led by Lay Reader Bernard Woods.
In his sermon, the Archbishop said that we must not ease up in our vigilance or in our compliance and we must learn from and with the coronavirus.
“Too many of us, until only this week, seemed to think that it was beginning to be all behind us, now that there is a vaccine, a process of vaccination and indeed a range of vaccines. We must never forget that, in the distribution and the application of the vaccine, there are substantial justice issues of which we, in our own eagerness, might lose sight. We have neither permission nor entitlement to ease up in our vigilance or in our compliance. We and countless millions live in an unburst cloud of grief and loss and bereavement. Countless people suffer daily, indeed hourly, from human separation. We can never forget those who have died in the time of the coronavirus. They are built into our Christmas memory and will remain there. This is part of our mal–being right now,” he will say.
Archbishop Jackson suggested that a new sense of neighbourliness and understanding of the other has emerged during this crisis and the invitation now is to grasp the opportunity to build a new and shared society.
“The invitation, the urgency for us right now is this: following the overwhelmingly careful and compassionate responses to Covid–19, the world has no need to return to the way it was. In so many ways it is better that it does not do so. I say this in no way to diminish or lessen your sense of devastation, of grief and of compassion for the sick, the dead and the bereaved, both those who have died as a direct result of Covid–19 and those who have died in other ways during these long, long months. I say it not to sweep aside the best of our inherited and cherished traditions. I say it as an invitation to seize the chance we have to build together across the Christian Denominations, across the Faith Traditions and across the belief systems of integrity, to build a new society, a sharing and a shared society for Ireland,” he said.
He concluded by noting that Christmas is a time of celebration, reflection, understanding, refreshment and generosity. Christmas is a time of memory. “While Christmas is different this year, everything is different this year. I wish you and everyone with whom you gather safely, along with all others with whom you would love to gather safely but cannot, a very Happy Christmas 2020 and everything that is best in the New Year 2021. Caution and care are part and parcel of generosity at Christmas 2020,” he said.
You can watch the service here. The full text of Archbishop Jackson’s sermon is below.
Sermon by the Archbishop of Dublin, the Most Revd Dr Michael Jackson
Livestreamed from Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin
Christmas Day, 25 December 2020
And the Word became flesh and lived among us …
If we are to learn from the coronavirus, then we are going to have to learn with the coronavirus. Too many of us, until only this week, seemed to think that it was beginning to be all behind us, now that there is a vaccine, a process of vaccination and indeed a range of vaccines. We must never forget that, in the distribution and the application of the vaccine, there are substantial justice issues of which we, in our own eagerness, might lose sight. We have neither permission nor entitlement to ease up in our vigilance or in our compliance. We and countless millions live in an unburst cloud of grief and loss and bereavement. Countless people suffer daily, indeed hourly, from human separation. We can never forget those who have died in the time of the coronavirus. They are built into our Christmas memory and will remain there. This is part of our mal–being right now.
We are not asked to be individual Public Health Experts; we are not asked to be Covid–police of the actions of others in our community; we are asked to watch out for each other carefully and positively and kindly and to do the same things for ourselves as for others by continuing the simple things:
Keep our distance
Wash our hands
Wear our masks
Limit our contacts
Opt for ventilation.
It is some time now since someone said that we need to learn to respect the virus. This may seem a strange and a defeated phrase. It is no such thing. It is the voice of realism, because neither we nor the coronavirus is going away.
… and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son …
While Christmas and Christmastide are a general season of goodwill, there is a particularity about Christmas as a Christian Festival when it is celebrated by Christians. And that particularity is contained in the word: glory and in the event: childbirth. This combination of words is not the experience of all parents and for many throughout history and today children are associated with sadness and loss, with grief and tragedy inside and outside the relationship of the home. St John points the contemporary Christian to a pride in service of others and a pride in response to new life in his opening chapter. The Son of God is given new life in order to serve the needs of wayward and sinful humanity. We are not capable of repairing our frequently torn and tearing relationships with God and with others through our own strength and through our own will. The prayer associated every year with Christmas Day speaks confidently and unashamedly of our being children of God by adoption and grace, that is we who once did not belong now do belong; and we do so by free gift and open invitation. It is now – here and now – for us, through the vehicle of individual response to individual circumstance, to share that free gift of divine love in earthly form and in practical generosity of inclusion and dignity of those who are other and to whom we are other. For Christians this is the Christmas spirit.
… full of grace and truth …
Where do grace and truth lie today? One of our Covid–19 learnings has to be that of interconnection. Within a very short time, first and foremost through organizations such as the GAA, neighbourhoods came alive and neighbourliness found fresh energy. But Covid–19 enabled us to ask a deeper question than perhaps Scripture itself had ever posed to us. The question was not: Who, then, is my neighbour? but: Who, now, is not my neighbour? Those of us who live by any belief system beyond ourselves and our individual aspirations and goals have found that we can no longer live within the horizon but we must live on the edge. And: Why on the edge? Because what is the edge to us is the centre of someone else’s world. It is very precious to them. It gives them their identity. Because we now know this, we have to respect it and them. This new sense of neighbourliness takes us beyond the sense of neighbourhood neighbours and into the twin realms of reconciliation and ecology. If you have seen your neighbour’s need, if your neighbour has met your need as never before, a joint concern for peace and for justice and for restraint and for distribution will have come to the fore in these interchanges. These are reconciliation and ecology.
THE JIGSAW OF THE COMMON GOOD
The invitation, the urgency for us right now is this: following the overwhelmingly careful and compassionate responses to Covid–19, the world has no need to return to the way it was. In so many ways it is better that it does not do so. I say this in no way to diminish or lessen your sense of devastation, of grief and of compassion for the sick, the dead and the bereaved, both those who have died as a direct result of Covid–19 and those who have died in other ways during these long, long months. I say it not to sweep aside the best of our inherited and cherished traditions. I say it as an invitation to seize the chance we have to build together across the Christian Denominations, across the Faith Traditions and across the belief systems of integrity, to build a new society, a sharing and a shared society for Ireland.
If we can lift up the simple, straightforward learnings during the time of the coronavirus – which, let me remind us all, is still with us – and use them, they, in and of themselves, by their own integrity and example, introduce our imagination and our energy to the values that right across the whole of Ireland build up the jigsaw of the common good: peace and justice, reconciliation and ecology, community and diversity. Before the onset of the coronavirus, our young people confronted us with the jogging juggernaut of climate disintegration. I sense that the day is coming when they will have to do so again.
JESUS CHRIST CAME INTO SUCH A WORLD AS THIS
As Christians, we hold that Jesus Christ came into such a world as this; that Jesus Christ came into our world, yesterday, today and tomorrow. In no way am I suggesting that we live today with a Christendom mindset – which is: that the Christian church by any entitlement is centre stage in a secular society – by no means. I am suggesting that, while the world changes in its expression, it does not necessarily change in its instincts. Too often its instincts are for self–interest rather than for other–interest. Perhaps we get closer to the heart of such a need for change if we, any of us, open our eyes to the definition of sin offered by Pope Francis in his recent book: Let us dream: The Path to a Better Future: ‘Our sin lies in failing to recognize value, in wanting to possess and exploit that which we do not value as a gift. Sin always has this same root of possessiveness, of enrichment at the expense of other people and Creation itself.’ This definition and this description extend far beyond those of us who call ourselves and are called by others religious. This definition is not about self–righteousness; this response is about self–giving. We are all in this together. We live in a very special time when Greta Thunberg and Pope Francis are singing from the same hymn sheet – by social distancing.
Christmas is a time of celebration. Christmas is a time of reflection. Christmas is a time of understanding, refreshment and generosity. Christmas is a time of memory. While Christmas is different this year, everything is different this year. I wish you and everyone with whom you gather safely, along with all others with whom you would love to gather safely but cannot, a very Happy Christmas 2020 and everything that is best in the New Year 2021. Caution and care are part and parcel of generosity at Christmas 2020.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God … And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. (St John 1.1 and 14)