26.12.2025
The Archbishop of Dublin’s Sermon for Christmas Day 2025
Archbishop Michael Jackson delivered his sermon for Christmas Day during the Festal Eucharist in Christ Church Cathedra, Dublin, on Christmas Morning.
St John 1.10: The Word was in the world; but the world, though it owed its being to him, did not recognize him.
St JOHN’S GOSPEL FOR CHRISTMAS AND EASTER
Every year, we read and enjoy the accounts of the birth of Jesus and the resurrection of Jesus from The Gospel of John in this cathedral church, the one on Christmas Day and the other on Easter Day. This constant rhythm of The Gospel of John, washing like the sea against the shoreline of our souls, helps to set our rhythm of spiritual life and our expression of public responsibility for the whole of the year as children of God. It is as children of God that we gather here today in concert with children of God around the world. The tide of eternity interacts graciously and critically with our best efforts for our lives among the lives of others. It does so because, when the accounts of both the birth and the resurrection of Jesus Christ are taken together, they combine the cosmic and the human (the universe at its vastest and us at our tiniest) perspectives on what is and what is yet to come. This paints a picture of proactive and compassionate divine interaction with the creation in its totality that is unique to Christianity. Christmas is special.
This places us firmly in the field of vision of the God whom nobody had seen at any time until God came to earth, visited us and joined us physically by being born as one of us, Emmanuel. And it has been the work of Francis and Bartholomew, combining the energy of the church of the West and the church of the East, who have refreshed for us the essential Christmas connection of ecology and theology in the simplest of ways. We are all responsibly part of the creation for the whole of creation. It is out of this shared recognition that Francis left us the arresting image of the church as a field–hospital. Chaos and care simply have to continue dialogue in 2026. We move from manger to field–hospital via cross and empty tomb. Each and all are places of being and belonging.
At Christmas, The Son of God comes to earth and is born in human being of a conventional mother Mary. On Good Friday and at Easter, The Son of God dies on earth as a conventional criminal and cannot be touched conventionally even by his loyal friend Mary of Magdala – because he has not yet ascended to the Father. Ascension is the completion of Incarnation. This is why Christ the King Sunday, which recalls for us The Ascension, is so important for a proper understanding of Christmas. It falls immediately before Advent Sunday and sets the scene for the frail fulness of the being of God born at Christmas. Taken together, Christmas and Easter give full voice to the Christian vision of hope, of connection, of belonging and of new beginning. These are ways of living that God gives to his children to share with the world generously on a daily basis.
CONVENTIONAL BELIEF
They also are a marker and a pointer to what I unashamedly call: conventional belief. It is conventional because it grasps in both hands, it brings together in one place, the two predictable pillars of redemption and salvation as the purpose of Christmas. It is the binding knot where these two come together (Latin verb: convenire, the word from which we derive the English word conventional); it is where redemption and salvation – the expression of new birth in Christ – take root and take shape. Convention is about predictability, but it is not about boredom. And we have all become tired of predictability because of its sameness. Redemption and salvation are not a work of ours. They are a gift of God to the cosmos in St John 1. We celebrate them today and embrace them eagerly.
BELIEF
I use the word belief, rather than indoctrination or information, because a confident expression of belief in word and sacrament, in music and prayer, presents to an established community and to countless generations of cherished visitors to Christ Church Cathedral a perspective of faith on changing reality as lived through the personality of the cathedral itself. Its treasure is the people who come and see and who go and tell; this is the perennial rhythm of Christian witness, the same sea on the same shore. This is its convention. It is a changing constancy, hence its conventional nature. Our lives are lived out in the pendular movements between sorrow and joy, between need and gift, between hope and rejection, between health and illness. These realities affect us all in many different ways – whether we live in Gaza, in El Fasher, in New York or in Dublin – and still their interweaving makes up the fabric of our individual lives and the tapestry of our lives lived together. The cathedral has borne witness to this spirit, this ethos for over one thousand years of peace and war, growth and decline, plenty and dearth, and always the politics that go with these. The cathedral connects faithfully and conventionally with the life which surrounds it and with the people who embrace it. The effectiveness of belief derives from the fact that it is something of cherished conviction presented and shared freely with all–comers in the spirit of open discipleship and service.
FAITH AND THE OUTSIDE
If that sounds smug, it is not intended to be. It is descriptive and honest. Belief is a delicate, circuitous and exhilarating journey. It can solidify and strengthen over time; it can be blown off course by any number of outside factors; and here to my mind is the key to unlocking belief – it is to be found in the word: outside. The outside is important for stress–testing faith. Faith, while a personal thing, is not an insider thing. Faith functions as gift and response. The gift is tested and strengthened by exposure to a life that will happen in any case. Faith flourishes in a world of incarnate, embodied life because this is where the questions and answers, the personalities and the systems of redemption and salvation are found along with the circumstances of evil and wrongdoing that ask for God’s response. And we see this right at the start (incarnation) and right at the fresh start (resurrection) in the person of Jesus Christ, the iconic life of God on earth. There are witnesses to the birth and there are witnesses to the resurrection. When you stand back from it, it would indeed be strange were faith not to get a rough ride precisely because what connects Christmas and Easter is what we call: Cross and Passion, crucifixion and suffering. This is what lies ahead of Christmas and behind Easter. This realism is what brings true happiness into Christmas because Christmas is not really for the optimist; Christmas is for the hopeful.
LIFE, LIGHT AND VICTORY – BRIGHTNESS AND DARKNESS
verses 4 and 5 tells us this: In him was life, and that life was the light of humankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has never mastered it …
Here we are offered a clear chain of connection, involving three important gifts of Christmas to us: life, light and victory. We are assured that the darkness has never mastered, or overcome, the light. This inspires countless people around the world to continue to do what they do for their families, for other people and for those they do not know every day of their lives. This gives us confidence and hope in our own endeavours as children of God in our connections with all others who live where we do when together we act for the good of everyone. It is what we refer to as the common good. It is our motivating force in civic and political engagement. It is the Anglican way as we seek to bring to bear the goodness of God on situations and places of need, poverty and injustice particularly concerning women, children and the elderly. In a very special way, this triad of life, light and victory is a backdrop to and an engine room of another triad which comes from our daily and everyday engagement: energy, hope and love.
WAS
How often do we hear the word: was in The Prologue of St John’s Gospel? It is in the word: was that our hope is founded. It points us to the purpose and the purposefulness of God namely, to give the self of God to the universe. We are back in the world of Francis and Bartholomew, and it is entirely conventional. This runs counter to the irritation that so many people voice about what is conventional, about what is repetitive, about what asks of us a structured patience to curb the selfishness which each of us brings to bear on words like inclusion and diversity. Inclusion and diversity are not about seeing more of ourselves as an end in itself, in any given area of life. If this is what we understand, then inclusion and diversity are at loggerheads. And we need to go elsewhere. We are presented with the ingredients of mature belief here: what already existed brings what will next exist into existence; it also brings to the creation that follows it the responsibility of sustaining more rather than less of what it inherits. In such a way as this, nothing, nobody is wasted within the love of God and the life of God. Incarnation itself sustains and cares for what was and, in this way, introduces us to a new and dynamic perspective on what is conventional. The conventional is something to treasure because we are not going to invent it out of nothing or out of what is left over. ‘was’ introduces us to the concepts of care, love, belonging.
WHAT ARE WE TO MAKE OF ALL OF THIS?
Conventional religion matters because it holds together the edifice, the tent of meeting. That tent is the church. It holds in little space the way of believing and the way of belonging to what God is building on earth as it is in heaven in our time and with our participation. On Christmas Day, we need to shake off the ever–so attractive idea that conventional means only boring. Repetition is our friend, not our foe, if we want the rhythm of God as the heartbeat of life to move us forward together. The obvious is much more accessible than the novel to the tired insider as well as to the curious outsider because the wholesome obvious has stood the test of time and of change.
Cathedrals matter because they are places which give space for such conventional religion to flourish within the squash court of lived history. They do this by way of their liminality, by way of their sacredness, they do this by way of their attitude long before anyone say anything, sings anything, switches anything on or off at any act of worship. They speak from the was to the is to the is to come.
Christmas matters because we matter to God and to one another. Christmas matters because God cared to bother at a defining point in world history and still matters and bothers in the daily defining points in world history today. Through Holy Baptism we are incorporated into the Incarnate Christ and through Holy Communion we are incorporated into the body and blood of the same Christ risen from the dead. The ebb and flow of St John’s Gospel connect and consolidate this comprehension as faith in our hands.
For the present, let me release you this year as last year into the range of festivities you have prepared for Christmas 2025. Let me give you scope to review the cards you have received this year in the light of theology and ecology, of redemption and salvation but, most of all, in the light of friendship and happiness. And let not my preaching stand between you and the holiness of The Eucharist on this Festival Day when Christ came to abide on earth in our life and to give us his life and light and love in great humility.
St John 20.18: Mary of Magdala went to tell the disciples, I have seen the Lord …
so also have we on this joyous Christmas Day.