25.12.2021
Reflection for Christmas Day by Archbishop Michael Jackson
“The Christmas Story requires of us, as Christians who carry The Tradition today, to live imaginatively and to be known for this way of living. We are followers of The Way, Truth and Life itself after all.”
Based on Galatians 4.4–7
There is no simple answer to the question: When does Christmas begin? The formal and religious preparations for Christmas Day begin on Advent Sunday. It is then that our ears and our eyes begin to be attuned to that wonderful and majestic spiritual journey of expectation leading through to fulfilment within the Christian tradition and culminating in the birth of the Christ–Child in Bethlehem. Once this progression was so utterly predictable in our society; we all seemed to know about it. However, as things have changed from the root up, Advent has now all but disappeared except for what we might call the religious specialist. You cannot be unrealistic in your expectations of a secular society, however. Religious specialism is not its metier nor should it be. There is little that any of us can do about this other than enjoy, learn and teach; and by our enjoyment, learning and teaching of the content of The Season of Advent commend such a beautiful and positive human and divine progression as expectation–and–fulfilment to others and with expectation in little things a special component and a special treasure. It has nothing to do with greed or acquisitiveness but has everything to do with giving and receiving. In this combination, there is nothing but grace, mercy and peace. Our primary call is that this journey be something glad and something gladdening. After almost two years of Lockdown, gladness attracts most of us I suggest.
Many of us might today point to the moment when first we saw Christmas things in the shops as the day when Christmas began commercially. For me, this year it was on September 4th that I saw Christmas cushions and candles for sale when I was not looking to buy them. But, were I thinking Scripturally and liturgically, rather than commercially, I would nudge us on just a few days from September 4th and offer a point, still in September, at which we might reasonably argue that Christmas does begin. It is to be found in the short Epistle for the Feast of The Birth of The Blessed Virgin Mary on September 8th. It is so short that I can read it in its entirety, Galatians 4.4–7, and thereby give you the full picture of what I mean to convey:
When the fulness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children. And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then an heir, through God.
This, I would suggest, is in a very specific way, a Christmas Message for grown–ups. While there is nothing to be found in this passage of Holy Scripture about the little town of Bethlehem or any of the other familiar anchor points of Christmas, it does set us firmly in the forward march of Christmas, in the events to which such a strong message of hope points us: liberation from slavery, adoption as a child of God, a status of which we might never otherwise have dreamed, a Spiritual connection with the God whom we can indeed now with full confidence address as Our Father; and, of course, a word as out of fashion as Advent itself: redemption. But, like it or not, redemption is important for a 360–degree picture of what Christmas is and what Christmas does. While September 8th of course is about Mary, it is also about the child of Mary born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law … It is a different type of story from The Christmas Story as conventionally told. But, at the same time, it is the ever–versatile, ever–welcoming story of childhood and inheritance through adoption and grace for all of which we hear in The Christmas Collect, as that very prayer sheds its light through our Christmas worship year after year. One year we may catch one glimpse, one shaft of light, another year we may catch yet another glimpse, a different shaft of light, but they are shafts of light of the divinity and of the humanity of The Christ–Child. Both are precious and holy to us. None of us can take it in all at the same time, nor are we meant to. It is why we return to Christmas year after year and why we are always refreshed by its messages of humanity transformed and divinity shared.
Our faith today, riding on the back of history and tradition, has the further advantage of being able to read on rather quickly in the life and times of Jesus Christ through the pages of The Bible as we have received it. And, every year as we come back to Christmas, we have the unique advantage of knowing that Incarnation, quite a big word in anyone’s reckoning, makes sense best through Resurrection. But this is The Christmas Story for grown–ups, after all. The overarching purpose of God’s coming to earth is to redeem and to restore the whole of creation and to open pathways of divine childhood for all human beings. Creator and creation meet, combine and unite. St John chapter 1.1–14 sets before us both the cosmic purpose and the human purpose of Incarnation through the prophetic testimony and witness of John the Baptizer. John is one of those special people in that he knows both who he is and who he is not. In a world of babbling and increasingly vindictive social media, to grasp this distinction is indeed a blessing, to live by it is yet another blessing, not in disguise but in plain sight.
And are we not fortunate that there are at least three differing Christmas stories in the Gospels – in St Matthew, St Luke and St John? There is no need for me to go into the intricacies of each of them here and now but it is important to note them. It is part of the richness of Holy Scripture that we have a range of perspectives on the definitive event of God for Christians as this news is presented to and embedded in each community of faith and settles in for us as The Tradition. I do, however, want to ask you to do things that you may not often do and that is to imagine the voice of light and the brightness of sound.
The Christmas Story requires of us, as Christians who carry The Tradition today, to live imaginatively and to be known for this way of living. We are followers of The Way, Truth and Life itself after all. (St John 14) While most of us will have been hoping that, like Christmas Decorations, we would be packing COVID–19 away early in the New Year, it is entirely unlikely that this will be the case. While many of us count our blessings as being coronavirus survivors, relatively unscathed by a global pandemic thanks to strong Governmental Guidance along with significant public compliance and personal self–discipline and a sophisticated Western and Northern Hemisphere medical system that has come to meet our needs, not all had these options and not all were so fortunate. Many carry the heavy rucksack of grief and of shame and of fear – and for them this continues hard. Many have no vaccination on the horizon worldwide.
We need the voice of light and the brightness of sound. We need also this Christmas to make one more effort, one more big push to try to think of others before we think of ourselves. Many people need their confidence restored. Many people need others to give them time to tell their story and indeed their story of COVID–19 times and experiences in order to work through them and to live again in new ways. Now that we can meet a little more safely, but always with caution, now that we are entering a period of almost a fortnight when conventionally very little new happens, can we not take up the word of an earlier Minister of Health, Minister Simon Harris, that is the word: kindness and let that be our voice of light and brightness of sound – for others and for ourselves? And, holding in mind the connection between Incarnation and Resurrection, we might add to: kindness the word: accompaniment. Those of us who are in a position to do so might do well to walk with those we know who are faltering in these times when everything looks bright and brassy for everyone else and everywhere looks as if it has no room or need for people like us who may well feel we have nothing of consequence or worth to add to the world of COVID–recovery. We do. We have our humanity to offer to the world of divine presence and to the totality of the creation.
Let us take heart then from the sparkling words of St John 1.14:
So the Word became flesh; he made his home among us, and we saw his glory, such glory as befits the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth.