Among the most well-known opening lines of any novel, certainly in the English language, is the opening sentence of L.P. Hartley’s 1953 novel, The Go-Between. I don’t know if anyone here has read that book, I haven’t myself but I’m certainly familiar with how it begins, and I think many other people might be in that same position. Perhaps many people know the opening lines but don’t know where they come from. And for those who don’t know the lines or aren’t sure, the novel begins,

“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”

Notwithstanding that sentence comes from a novel, a work of fiction, I don’t think there have ever been any truer words written. Things were different in the past, they weren’t the same as they are now, and so things were done differently in the past than they are now. And that’s something we always have to be aware of when we’re studying the past, including the Scriptures.

One very great mistake that people make when they study, or even simply read history, is to view it and judge it from the perspective of their own time. And so they view and judge the people in historical times as though they’d acted in modern times. But we simply can’t do that. Actions are linked to thoughts, and thoughts are always conditioned by the world and society we live in. And so, because the world of the past was different to the world we live in now, people in the past thought differently than we do now, and so they acted differently than we do now, or would do now. I’ll give you an example of what I mean.

It’s not too many years ago that the idea of driving an electrically powered vehicle was a joke. The only people who did that were people who delivered milk and drove milk floats. But, in those not-too-distant days, hardly anyone gave a thought to the environment, global warming had never been mentioned and the only people who cared about climate change were scientists who studied the Ice Ages of tens and hundreds of thousands of years ago, or mass extinctions tens and hundreds of millions of years ago.

But all that’s changed now. In today’s world, people do know about global warming and climate change, and most people do care about the environment. And so, electrically powered vehicles aren’t a joke anymore, in fact, it won’t be too much longer before vehicles powered by petrol or diesel fuel will be the joke, and a very bad joke at that. And how long will it be, I wonder before we start to see people like Nicolaus Otto, Gottlieb Daimler, Wilhelm Maybach, Karl Benz  and Rudolf Diesel, people who are credited with inventing the various forms of the internal combustion engine being demonised and start to hear calls for statues and monuments to them to be torn down and for their names to be obliterated from streets and buildings, for their names to be expunged from history for the crimes against the world that these evil men committed?  I’m sure that will happen, perhaps in our time, just as I’m sure that, in their own time, these men really believed they were acting in the interests of humanity.

The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. That’s something we always have to remember, and if we can remember that we’ll understand the past and things that were written in the past so much better. And that’s very important for us, and to us, as Christians because the Scriptures were written in the past and the people we read about in them lived in the past. So, if we’re really going to try to understand them, we need to try and read them on their own terms, rather than through modern eyes and from a 21ts Century perspective. We can adapt them to our own situation after we understand them, we have to do that so that we can apply what they teach us to our own lives. But we have to understand them properly first, before we adapt them.

This is yet one more example that we’re set by the Blessed Virgin Mary. In a number of places in the Scriptures, when unusual or miraculous things happen, we’re told that Mary stored these things up, pondered on them and tried to discern what was going on. We find the same thing in Joseph too, but especially in Mary.

So, as we go through the stories from the archangel Gabriel’s visit to Mary to the time the young Jesus is found by his parents in the Temple in Jerusalem, we read that, when Gabriel spoke to Mary,

“… she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be.” 

When he hears that his betrothed is expecting a child, that clearly isn’t his, before he decides what to do, Joseph,

“… being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly.  But … he considered these things …”

And, as he considered these things, an angel appeared and told him that his initial response wasn’t the right one.

Then, after Jesus had been born and the shepherds told their story about the angels and what had been said about the child, we read that

“… all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart.”

And then, 12 years later when, after 3 days of searching for him, a young Jesus is eventually found by his distraught parents in the Jerusalem Temple and he simply dismisses their worries and concerns with a response that, in modern parlance, amounts to,

‘What’s your problem? Where else did you think I’d be?’

Instead of the clip round the ear we might expect Jesus to get from his parents, we read that, even though Mary and Joseph

“… did not understand the saying that he spoke to them. … his mother treasured up all these things in her heart.”

When we read these stories, perhaps especially when we read about Mary storing or treasuring these things in her heart, we might get the impression that Mary was kept these things as nice, warm, happy memories. That’s because we think of the heart as the place of love and emotion. But to ancient people, the heart was a person’s centre of thought and reason. We get an inkling of that in the story of Jesus’ Presentation in the Temple when Simeon says to Mary,

“Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.”

So what these stories are really telling us is that Mary, and Joseph too, did some really hard, serious thinking about these things before they decided what to do. Today, we think of the brain, or the mind as the place we do our discerning and pondering don’t we? So when we have a decision to make, we might say,

‘The heart says this; the head says that.’

And what we usually mean by that is that, emotionally, we’re drawn to one course of action, what the heart says, but logically, we’re drawn to a different course of action, what the head says. But even so, we still do use this old-fashioned way of speaking at times. When we’ve got a hard decision to make, we sometimes say we’ve had to do some real heart-searching or soul-searching, before we made a decision, don’t we? We don’t mean that literally because we think about it in our heads. But for the people we read about in the Scriptures, it really was all about searching the heart and the soul for an answer.

So when we read the Scriptures, we do have to try and look at them through the eyes and with the mindset of the people we’re reading about. If we can do that, we can get a much better understanding of what the stories are about, and then we can go about trying to apply the lessons the stories teach us to our own lives.

Once we understand that Mary and Joseph put some serious thought into the dilemmas they were faced with before they came to a decision, that, even after he’d come to a decision, Joseph was still open to other ways and different answers, and that Mary, in particular, didn’t simply go with her heart, her emotions, but did some real heart-searching, some very deep thinking, in these situations, we can see another aspect of the example they set us in these stories. As well as examples of faith and obedience, these stories are also examples of our need to put some serious though into what we do, especially in difficult situations. They’re examples to us that going with our initial instincts isn’t always the right way to go, and that we shouldn’t make knee-jerk responses to problems and difficulties but should always think about what the best, and right thing to do is before we make a decision and act. And for us, as Christians, the best and right thing to do always means the most Christ-like thing to do.

Amen.

---

You will find the Propers for Holy Family Sunday / Christmas 1 27th December, 2020 here.

Earlier on this week I was watching a programme on the TV called Charles Dickens and the Invention of Christmas. I don’t know if anyone else here saw it, but what the programme was about was the way in which what we now regard as Christmas traditions and the way we now celebrate Christmas were, to a large extent, invented by the Victorians. The Charles Dickens connection in the programme, was to suggest that one of the major influences on the way the Victorians came to think Christmas ought to be celebrated, was Dickens’ book, A Christmas Carol.

As the programme said, and as anyone who’s ever read the book will know, concern for the plight of the poor and needy, and the necessity of caring for them by doing something to improve their situation is very much at the heart of A Christmas Carol and it was very much at the heart of Christmas for the Victorians too. But whilst that concern for the poor is very much what we might call a Christian virtue, what the programme made clear was that, on the whole, the way the Victorians celebrated Christmas, what have become our Christmas traditions, actually have very little to do with Christmas as a Christian festival. There’s much more in A Christmas Carol, for example, about eating, drinking and making merry at Christmas than there is about celebrating the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ at Christmas.

If we think about our Christmas traditions, I think it’s quite obvious that the programme’s makers had a point. Much, in fact most, of what we regard as Christian traditions don’t really have very much, if anything at all, to do with the birth of Jesus Christ do they? And that’s a situation that seems to become more marked as the years go by. At one time, for example, it would have been quite common to hear Christmas carols playing in shopping centres and stores at this time of year but that’s not the case now is it? This year, I’ve not done any Christmas shopping on-line, I’ve done it all in shops and I can’t recall a single instance of hearing Christmas carols being played anywhere I’ve been. Instead, what’s been played are things such as White Christmas, Merry Xmas Everybody, I Wish it Could be Christmas Every Day, and such like.

But then, these days, most people regard songs like this as traditional Christmas songs. Anyone who has music channels on their TV will probably have noticed that, for the past few months now, there have been lots of Christmas music programmes on. Things with titles like, The 50 Greatest Christmas Songs Ever, 25 Christmas Classics, and so on. But all of these great Christmas songs and classics have been taken from pop music over the years, there’s hardly a traditional Christmas carol to be heard in any of them. But apart from the odd one or two that do have some Christian content, what do the vast majority of these songs actually have to do with Christmas as the celebration of the birth of Jesus? They might be very festive with their lyrics about stockings and cards and presents, about Santa and reindeer, sleighs and sleighbells, about snow and snowmen, Christmas trees, parties and so on, but what do any of those things actually have to do with the Incarnation of God’s Son, the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ? Very little, if anything at all, I would say. But there is one song that’s been featured on a lot of these programmes, usually towards the top end of these top 50s or 25s or whatever the number’s been, a song that, on the face of it, has nothing to do with Christmas except that it’s set on Christmas Eve, a song that isn’t even very festive, but a song that I think does have something very meaningful to say about Christmas and what Christmas is really all about.

The song is called Fairytale of New York. I’m sure those of you who know that song will be surprised by that choice. I’m also sure that some of you who don’t know the song will be too because you may have heard it mentioned this year when the BBC caused some commotion about it by deciding to only play an edited version of the song because they have decided that the original lyrics are too offensive to be heard in these days of political correctness. But it’s actually those original lyrics, set as they are against the backdrop of Christmas that, in my opinion, make the song so much closer to the true meaning of Christmas than so many other so called Christmas classics.

Fairytale of New York is a song about two people who meet on Christmas Eve, that’s the Christmas setting. It’s a song about a relationship that’s gone wrong. It’s a song that speaks about alcohol and drug abuse. It speaks about people who are in prison and in the depths of despair. It’s a song in which people speak about each other in very derogatory ways, and this is why the BBC have decided not to play the original version of the song. It’s a song in which, amongst other things people call each other, bums and punks, scumbags, maggots and cheap, lousy savoury ducks. (Let the reader understand, as it says in the Scriptures!). It’s a song about broken dreams and lost hopes, about the ugliness and bitterness that life can bring, and the hopelessness and helplessness that people can feel and experience as they go through life. And throughout all this brokenness and ugliness and bitterness and hopelessness and helplessness of life that the people in the song are experiencing, the bells ring out for Christmas Day. And if we take a step back from the way Christmas is usually described in songs, where everything is wonderful and jolly and bright and all is joy and happiness, and think a little more deeply about that image from Fairytale of New York, of the bells ringing out for Christmas amidst the problems and troubles of life, isn’t that closer to the reality of Christmas? Isn’t that what Christmas is really all about, rather than the festive traditions we wrap it up in?

What Christmas is really all about is God entering into the harsh reality of human life at a definite and definitive moment in human history. It’s about God coming into the world so that the brokenness and bitterness of the world can be healed, so that the ugliness of the world can be changed into something more beautiful, it’s about God coming into the world to bring help to the helpless and hope to those without hope. It’s about God coming into the world so that all the brokenness and ugliness and bitterness and helplessness and hopelessness of human life and of individual human lives can be transformed and lifted up to heaven through the Incarnation of God’s Son, the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ.  And so, Christmas is very much about the bells ringing out in celebration of Christmas Day amidst the reality, and sometimes very harsh reality, of human life. 

In the programme Charles Dickens and the Invention of Christmas, Dickens, and the Victorians generally were credited with saving Christmas because, it was said, until they began to celebrate it in the way they did, Christmas was in danger of dying out. I assume by that, it was the festive celebration of Christmas that was in danger, not the Church’s celebration of Christmas as a Christian festival. That may well be true, and I’m sure the Victorians meant well. But what we’ve inherited from them is a celebration that’s become, and is increasingly becoming, devoid of real meaning. 

The image of Christmas we’re given in what people now seem to regard as traditional Christmas songs is of a festive occasion that’s all about eating, drinking and making merry. An occasion that’s all about decorating our homes with trees, baubles and lights. An occasion that’s all about Santa and reindeer, sleighs and sleighbells and presents. An occasion on which everything wonderful and everyone is happy. That might be a very jolly image, but it’s not real is it, because real life isn’t like that. And if we take the birth of Jesus Christ out of Christmas, then what’s it all for and about?

So, whilst it might not be a traditional image of Christmas, and it’s certainly not a particularly nice or comfortable image of Christmas, the image we get from Fairytale of New York is a much more valuable one to us because it reminds us of what Christmas is really all about, the bells ringing out for Christmas amidst the harsh reality of human life. And if some people think that’s offensive, I wonder if they’ve ever stopped to consider how offensive our traditional way of celebrating Christmas might be to some people? How offensive the amount we eat and drink, or perhaps particularly how much food we waste at Christmas might be to those who are starving? How offensive the amount we spend on decorating our homes for Christmas might be to those who have no homes to decorate? How offensive the amount we spend on presents might be to those who have nothing to give? How offensive saying everything is wonderful and everyone is happy might be to those who have lost all hope and are in the depths of despair? 

But today is Christmas and it is a time of celebration, so I don’t want to be too downbeat. So let’s celebrate Christmas and enjoy our traditional way of doing that. But let’s also remember that there’s much more to Christmas than our traditions and traditional ways of celebrating it. Let’s remember what Christmas is really all about and make sure the bells do ring out in celebration of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ amidst all the festivities and traditions of Christmas. And let’s remember too, why the Son of God came to earth and do all we can to make sure that those Christmas bells ring out in the lives of all people, and especially in the lives of those who need to hear them most, and not just on Christmas Day, but every day.

Amen.

---

The Propers for The Nativity of the Lord 24th December 2020 (Midnight Mass) can be found here.

The Propers for The Nativity of the Lord 25th December, 2020 (Christmas Day) can be found here.

We’ve just heard what must be one of the most well-known of all Bible stories, the story of the archangel Gabriel’s visit to the Blessed Virgin Mary. It’s a story we know by different names, The Annunciation, Mary’s Fiat, which means ‘let it be’ or perhaps as Mary’s ‘Yes’ to God. But by whatever name or title we know this story, I’m sure we do all know it.

But although this is a particularly well-known example of someone saying ‘Yes’ to God, it’s by no means the only one. In fact, the Scriptures are full of stories about people who said ‘Yes’ to God. Joseph, Mary’s betrothed, for example, said ‘Yes’ to God. So did the man we heard about last week, John the Baptist. The Patriarchs and prophets whom we read so much about in the Old Testament, they all said ‘Yes’ to God. And of course Jesus himself said ‘Yes’ to God, as did his disciples through their faith in Jesus. And of course, that’s something that’s continued to the present day, we wouldn’t be here in church today if it weren’t for all those who’d said ‘Yes’ to God throughout the Church’s history. That’s obvious really because the continuance of the Church and the Christian faith depends on people saying ‘Yes’ to God and being obedient to his will through the ages and passing their faith on to the next generation. I’m sure we all know that. But if we all do know that, and by all, I mean all Christians, why is it that so many people in the Church seem to say ‘No’ to God?

I don’t think many people say ‘No‘ to God explicitly. I’m sure very few people who call themselves Christians would, knowing what God wants of them, actually say ‘No, I’m not doing that’ but lots of them do say ‘No’ to God because the way they try to practice their faith makes it virtually impossible for them to do what God wants them to do.

One of the things we know that we’re all called to do as Christians, is share our faith. We have to do that if we want the Church and the Christian faith to survive, as I’ve just said. Doing that is part of the Great Commission that Jesus gave to his disciples before his Ascension, so we know it’s something we’re all supposed to do. But lots of Christians don’t do that. They can’t do that because they keep quiet about their faith and try to keep their faith to themselves.

There are lots of reasons people do that. For example, during my last few weeks at work, before I went to Mirfield as an ordinand, I told people at the various timber yards I used to visit that I was leaving the timber treatment company to go to theological college to train for the priesthood.

When I told people that, there was a bit of the mickey-taking that I expected, but I was surprised by the number of people who took me to one side and said something along the lines of, ‘I go to Church myself, but I don’t like to say anything about it because this lot will just take the mickey out of me.’

I think the worst example of this kind of thing I’ve ever come across happened while I was at Mirfield and I went on a two-week placement at a hospital chaplaincy. I was absolutely appalled by what I found there. The chaplaincy manager was an Anglican priest, but he forbade me, and everyone else in the team too, from speaking to anyone on the wards about the Christian faith unless they’d specifically requested that we did. He even told us not to pray with them unless they asked us to. Not only that, but he also collected all the chaplaincy literature from the wards and had it reprinted with any specific references to Christianity removed. He even started removing the Bibles from the bedside cabinets on the wards, until he was told to put them back by the Head of Nursing at the hospital. When I asked him what he was playing at, he said that he needed to do all this because any references to Christianity were offensive to non-Christians. Well, it was a multi-faith chaplaincy so there were quite a few non-Christians on the team, and they were completely mystified by it all. In fact, the Muslim chaplains asked me if I knew what was going on. They asked me, “What’s his problem? He acts as though he’s ashamed of his faith.” But I couldn’t answer them because I was just as mystified as they were by it all.

Thankfully, not everyone is as bad as that, but lots of Christians do act as though they’re ashamed of their faith, or at least as though their faith causes them some embarrassment. I think, at least in part, that’s what lies behind much of the current trend in the Church to change the Christian faith so that it’s more in line with the values of the world. But when we do that, we can’t fulfil the Great Commission Jesus gave to his disciples because we’re making the Church and its people disciples of the world rather than making the people of the world disciples of Christ. And so, in effect, we’re saying ‘No’ to God.

The most common way we say ‘No’ to God though is by privatising our faith. And people do that for all sorts of reasons. They do for the reason I’ve already mentioned; that they think people will make fun of them if they find out that they’re Christians. Some people think that Christians are a bit odd, or stupid, or even pathetic, at times. One person once told me that Christianity is for sad, inadequate people who can’t cope with real life and so they need the ‘crutch’ of God and religion to lean on.

People sometimes keep quiet about their faith simply for the sake of a quiet life; they do it so that people don’t start having a go at them about all that’s wrong in the world, those who say, ‘How can you believe in God when such and such is going on in the world?’ I’m sure we’ve all heard that one at times. Or it might be the ‘Religion has caused more wars in the world than anything else in history’ brigade who are having a go at them. Sometimes it’s because they think other people’s attitude towards them will change if it’s known that they’re Christians and they’ll be treated differently than they were before. That often happens because people don’t know how to behave around Christians; people aren’t always at ease around Christians because they think they have to be on their best behaviour when a Christian is around.

And so, for all these reasons, or perhaps a mixture of these reasons, people hide their faith. They hide their faith so that they can fit in with everyone else, so that they can be treated as ‘normal people’ and have an easier time than they think they would have or might have, if other people knew they were Christians. But when we do this, we say ‘No’ to God.

But is that really the way we should repay God for what he’s done for us? As Christians, shouldn’t we find a better way of thanking God, than saying ‘No’ to him for the sake of an easy time?

What if Abram had said ‘No’ to God and never left his home in Ur? What if Moses had said ‘No’ to God and stayed in Midian tending his sheep instead of returning to Egypt? What if the prophets had said ‘No’ to God and let the faith of Israel die out? What if Mary had said ‘No’ to God and refused to bear his Son, or Joseph had said ‘No’ to God and divorced Mary? What if John the Baptist had said ‘No’ to God and decided that a nice, comfortable priestly life was more important than preparing the way for the Lord? And what if Jesus had said ‘No’ to God? What if Jesus had given in to temptation in the wilderness or decided that it was better and safer to stay at home in Nazareth than to carry out the mission and ministry that God wanted him to carry out? What if Jesus had said ‘No’ to God in Gethsemane and done what he must have so desperately wanted to do and ignored the Father’s will and saved himself?

But those people didn’t say ‘No’ to God: they said ‘Yes’, and they did what God asked of them. The ‘Yes’ to God of the patriarchs and prophets, of Mary and Joseph and John, led to Jesus, and thanks to his ‘Yes’ to God, we’re here today 2000 years later as his Jesus’ disciples.

A disciple, of course, is a follower and Jesus is an extremely hard act to follow. But surely, we can at least try to follow the example of some of the other people who said ‘Yes’ to God through the years? Surely, we can at least try to follow the example of Mary, a young girl who risked everything to do what God asked of her?

We think Mary might have only been about 14 years old when the archangel visited her. For such a young girl to become pregnant today would be something of a scandal, how much more scandalous it was in Jewish society 2000 years ago. Mary was a betrothed young woman. That’s sometimes likened to being engaged but betrothal was much more than what we mean by an engagement. Being pregnant, who in their right mind would have believed that Mary was still a virgin? No one. So, as a betrothed woman, she would have been regarded as an adulteress, even though she wasn’t married. The very least she could have expected was for Joseph to divorce her and having to spend the rest of her life with a stain, a black mark on her character. She risked the possibility of being stoned to death. Mary could have taken an easy way out of all this and played it safe: she could have said ‘No’ to God, married Joseph and led a normal life Yet, knowing the risks she ran, knowing all that might happen, Mary’s response to Gabriel, and to God, was to say, “Let it be with me according to your word.”

Mary said ‘Yes’ to God, and so should we. Perhaps we can’t ever fully live up to Jesus’ example of complete obedience to the father’s will, but surely, we can at least try to follow the example of a young girl who risked so much for God, and put up with a little bit of trouble and discomfort on account of our faith?

Amen.

---

You will find the Propers for Advent 4 here.