Well, here we are once again at the start of another new year. Traditionally, this is a time for making new year’s resolutions, so it’s a time for looking forward. But the turn of the year is also a time when we tend to look back too. A time when we look back over the old year, to think about what’s happened during the year that we’ve just left behind, to take stock of the year, perhaps to think about what we could have done differently or better, so that we can make that new year’s resolution and resolve to do or be better in the coming year.

But, as we look back over 2020, regardless of how the year has been for us personally, I think all of us will see it as a year unlike any we’ve ever known before. The coronavirus pandemic meant our lives were very different during 2020 than they have been in any other year we’ve known. Our freedom was restricted because of lockdowns and tiers, and all these things caused tears of a different kind too as people were separated from their families and friends and the pain and suffering that caused, not to mention the pain and suffering caused by the illness and death that the virus brought into the lives of so many people. So I don’t think 2020 will be a year that many, if any, of us will be sorry to see the back of. But even as we head into the new year of 2021, we know that we can’t really put the past year behind us properly, just yet, because coronavirus is still with us, our lives are still restricted, and so many people are still suffering and dying because of the virus.

If we were to look at the past year as a journey, certainly since the first lockdown in March, we’d probably see it as a journey with lots of twists and turns. It’s been a journey that we seemed on a few occasions to be coming towards the end of, only to find that we weren’t and that we still had a long way to go to the end of the journey. That’s been true generally, and it’s certainly been true of our journey through the year as members of the Church. When we were told we had to suspend services in March, I’m sure we were all hoping it wouldn’t be too long before we could be back in church to worship the Lord, together, again. But, when we were allowed back, it was to services that were very different to the services we had before the lockdown. Then, a few months later, we were right back to the start of the journey because we had to suspend services again.

We’ve had to cancel baptisms and weddings. We couldn’t have funerals in church. And even though we can do all those things again now, we’re very much restricted in how many people can be in church for them, and in how we actually do the services. And it’s the same story for our worship. We only need to look around to see how different things are. It’s almost 9 months since we’ve been able to sing during our worship. And all this seems set to carry on well into this new year. When all this started, I don’t think anyone thought we’d have to celebrate Christmas in Covid-19 secure churches and in services without singing, but now, I think we’re all just hoping that we can at least celebrate Easter in church this year, however we have to do that, because we couldn’t do that at all last year. So it’s been a long journey with lots of twists and turns, and it’s a journey that isn’t over yet, we still have some way to go before we reach our destination which is a return to something like normal life both in church and in our daily lives.

And in this, I think we’re very much like the Magi, the Wise Men, who followed a star to bring gifts to the Christ-child. We don’t really know too much about the Magi, but we can tease a few things out of the little that we read in the Gospel. The name Magi suggests that they were from Persia, modern day Iran. They followed a star that they’d seen rising so we think they were astronomers or astrologers, and unlike today, there was probably no difference in those two terms at the time of the Magi. That suggests they were from Babylon which is in modern day Iraq. The gifts they brought, especially frankincense and myrrh, suggest they came from Arabia. So they were probably Parthians because the Parthian Empire covered all of those areas, and many others, at the time. So they made quite a long journey to find the new-born king of the Jews. We also know that they didn’t know exactly where the new king would be born. So their journey was broken as they made enquiries and tried to find out where to go, and what their final destination was. We know from the Gospel that, from the time they first saw the star rise, it took the Magi two years to reach Herod in Jerusalem before they finally found their way to Bethlehem where they could present their gifts to the Christ-child. So just like us, as we journey through the coronavirus pandemic, the Magi made a long journey, full of twists and turns, a journey they must have thought they were coming to the end of, but weren’t, before they finally got to where they wanted to be. 

When we think of the Magi, we perhaps think most easily about the gifts they brought to Christ. We see these gifts as gifts fit for a king, and we see their spiritual significance. Gold as the gift for a king, frankincense as an offering to God, and myrrh as an ointment for embalming the dead, symbolising Christ’s destiny to die on the Cross. And we often think about the way we can offer similar gifts to Christ in our own lives. The gold of our time and talents, not to mention our financial support of his Church. The frankincense of our worship and our prayers. And the myrrh that symbolises our faith in him as our Saviour, the one who died and rose again from the dead for us, and the healing his life and resurrection brings to us and to the world, and that we’re called to bring to the world in his name. But today, as we journey on through the coronavirus pandemic, whilst not forgetting those gifts, I think we should really think about something else that the Magi offered to Christ.

In one of the seasonal blessings we end our services with during the Christmas season, we pray for a number of things associated with the story of Christ’s birth. We pray for the joy of the angels, the faith of the shepherds, the obedience of Mary and Joseph and the peace of the Christ-child. But when it come to the Magi, we pray for their perseverance, and their perseverance is something that I think we really do need at this time.

I don’t think these past months have been the best time of anyone’s lives, but some people have found them very difficult indeed, and difficult from a point of view of their faith. Speaking to people, I know that some don’t want to come back to church until things have returned to normal, but we don’t know when that will be. Some have decided, for various reasons, that they won’t return to church even when things return to normal. Some people have struggled, and are struggling, to keep their faith. Some have struggled, and are struggling, to pray. Now, I’m not denying that things have not been easy on this journey, and they’re still far from easy as we continue on the journey, but it’s now that we need to show the perseverance of the Magi so that we can keep going and make it to the end of the journey.

We might not be able to do what we usually do in church or for the Church at this time, but we need to persevere in doing all the things we have done, and would do again, in better times. We need to persevere in giving our time and talents the Lord, and our financial support to his Church, in whatever way we can, and to whatever extent we can through these hard times. We might not be able to worship the Lord in the way we want to at this time, but we need to persevere in worshipping him, however we can, at this time. We might find hard to pray as we, and the world goes through this difficult time, but we need to persevere in prayer, nevertheless. And it doesn’t matter if we can’t find the words to pray at this time: don’t the Scriptures tell us that at times like this, the Spirit who knows the thoughts of our hearts, will intercede for us with sighs too deep for words? We might find it hard to see the end of this journey, but it will end. And amidst the pain and suffering that the world has gone through in the past year, and is still going through now, we might find it hard to understand where God is in all this. But we have to persevere in faith that he is with us, that Christ, who endured the pain and suffering that human life can bring, and died for us, will never abandon us; that he is true to his promise to be with us always, not only along this hard road and to the end of this hard road, but to the end of the world itself.

One of the signs that we’re on a difficult journey at the moment, is that we’re keeping this feast of the Epiphany of the Lord on 3^rd of January rather than on the twelfth night of Christmas, the 6^th of January, which is when we usually celebrate it. What that has done is moved the celebration a little closer to the turn of the year, to that time of looking backwards and looking forwards. So, as we look back on a difficult journey through 2020, and forward to an uncertain journey into 2021, perhaps today is a good day to make a new year’s resolution. And perhaps a good resolution to make would be a resolution to persevere in faith regardless of what lies behind us on the road or may lie ahead of us on the road.

A resolution to travel on, with God, towards the end of this hard journey and onward into the better times ahead that will come.

Amen. 

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You will find The Propers for the Epiphany of the Lord here.

 

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.

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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.

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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.