It might seem quite naval gazing but on the contrary it's all about connection and how I relate to the world around me, how I am in the world and processing the bits I'm not doing brilliantly at. As a priest I'm no holier than anyone else, I'm no more loved and no more "special" but I recognise my longing for God and my wish to help other folk with that longing.
For those of you who take time to read this- I'm amazed and thank you! I hope it's of some use, I love to share what I read and discover. Below is my Midnight Mass sermon. Have a blessed Christmastime- it's only just beginning!!
There’s a prayer that we say towards the beginning of most services called a Collect, it basically means prayer of the day or prayer of the week. There’s usually a couple to choose from but this being Midnight Mass we could have a choice of 6; those for Christmas Eve, Christmas Night or Christmas Day. One of them goes like this:
in the stillness of this night
you sent your almighty Word
to pierce the world’s darkness with the light of salvation:
give to the earth the peace that we long for
and fill our hearts with the joy of heaven
Now I don’t know if any of you have spent any time with a baby recently but they don’t really do much. How could all that promise be tied up in this no doubt hungry, wriggly, red faced bundle in a Palestinian outhouse?
I had the joy last Thursday of spending some time with 3 of my colleagues currently on maternity leave, and their 3 beautiful babies; Alex, Roman and Adele. And they were lovely! I’m not a broody person, having teenagers can put you off the whole thing, but they really were cute.
I had lots of cuddles, helped with feeding and even had the badge of honour of Roman being sick on me, but apart from cooing and sleeping, pooping and being generally being adorable they didn’t give me any clues as to what they might become, what their might futures hold, although they were definitely 3 very distinct personalities.
And yet there’s something very special, even powerful about a baby, especially your own. When I saw my mum for the first time after giving birth to my eldest child, Faith, who’s now nearly 16 the first thing I said to my mum was “sorry”.
There was something so powerful about that experience of holding my daughter for the first time, of getting to know her in those first hours and feeling such an overwhelming sense of love and of wanting to protect her that I finally realised just how much my mum loved me. I realised that every emotion I was feeling for Faith my mum had and did feel for me, and in that realisation, I understood just how much pain I must have caused her over the years, especially watching me be hurt or unhappy and being powerless to help.
I think that sense of overwhelming love is what still brings so many families here for Baptisms, to thank God for the wonderful gift that their child is, there perhaps not being any secular way of doing this that feels right for them. Baptism also invites that child, that family, into a community of faith, promising to be faithful to Jesus, who at this point is a small, vulnerable newborn baby with an overwhelming destiny to fulfil.
What did Mary think as she held him in the night? Those feelings of love and worry on top of the exhaustion of childbirth, as she looks at her son is she wondering how can it all be true? And how does Joseph feel? Knowing this is not his child but having the weight of his part to play in this.
I always find Joseph a bit overlooked, which I guess might be the experience of many new dads. There’s an adorable child to coo over and a mother whose body has nurtured that child for 9 months and then gone through childbirth, rightly so the focus is mostly on them, but dads, and Joseph are an important part of the story too. Jesus and Mary have Josephs name and therefore his protection. With Mary, Joseph creates a home and a family in which they go on to welcome further children.
Mary and Joseph’s wonder at their new son must have far surpassed that of each of us welcoming a new baby. Whilst we have so many dreams, expectations and hopes at what our children may become they already kind of know, through their supernatural visits 9 months earlier.
The angel Gabriel has told Mary “He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end…the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God.”
Joseph has been told “the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins”.
How could they have known what that would mean, what it would entail, and that Mary would one day have to watch her son die. I think almost all of us would find that unbearable.
How did they bear any of it? For such a young woman to have the strength to say “yes” to what was asked of her, for Joseph to say “yes” when he was told not to abandon her, even though it would damage his own reputation. I think it all had to come down to trust. They trusted God, even when what was asked of them seemed way too much. They trusted wherever it would lead them, because of the promise of what it all meant.
To be living occupied and oppressed, to be part of a people whose narrative history is one of continuing exile, occupation and oppression, they were offered hope, the fulfilling of a prophecy which promised peace and freedom and would allow all people to flourish to pierce the world’s darkness with the light of salvation: to give to the earth the peace that we long for
and fill our hearts with the joy of heaven.
Hope in a small bundle, swaddled in cloth and held by his mother, the same hope we long for and seek each Christmas and the same hope...the same potential of what each new life can bring into the world- that we see in each new baby.
The life Jesus went on to live was unexpected, subversive, challenging and tragic but at the same time inspiring the hope we still have now, his story is still a spark for the marginalised, oppressed and occupied, and a mirror to our more comfortable lives about how we should treat one another in this world.
Above all his is a story of love. The old carol goes “love came down at Christmas” and that love pierced Mary’s heart as she first held her son, that love I felt when I first held my daughter and that love I realised my mum has for me, this is the love God has for us, the love God gave to us. The hope each of us has that our children live a love-filled, fulfilling life is the same hope God has for each of us.
That helpless baby who held the weight of all that promise is how God gave us hope by showing what love is, what it can be, that love is always an option if we choose it. Our lives can be love-filled and fulfilling, and it all starts tonight, in that Palestinian outhouse.
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