Christ Church Cathedral

Isaiah 52:7-10
Hebrews 1:1-12
John 1:1-14

…The Word became flesh and lived among us…

John’s gospel, which we always read at this First Eucharist of Christmas, sees the incarnation, the Word being made flesh, as the central interpretative element of the Christian story, and it has remained so ever since. It means, to put it in more colloquial language, that in Jesus, God chooses to get involved in this messy world of ours. This was not a totally new insight by John. A major theme of the whole of Hebrew Scripture is that God is known through history, indeed, through all the contingent and ambiguous events of history. God chose the people of Israel, liberated them from slavery in Egypt, brought them to the Promised Land, fought with their armies and enabled their conquest of country promised to Abraham. In our Bible, this story is set in the context of a narrative which tells that God created the physical world in the first place and then set in motion life within it. What John adds is that God’s involvement in the world becomes known through the life of Jesus, both his historical life and, more importantly, through his risen presence in the church.

The more familiar Christmas stories told in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, which we read at the Carol service this evening, present a similar understanding in a more concrete and specific way. Matthew sets his story of the birth of Jesus in relation to the reign of Herod, the cruel king of the Jews. The slaughter of the children of Bethlehem may not be historically verifiable, but it presents a picture of Herod’s cruelty historically well known to us through the work of the Jewish historian Josephus. Luke sets his gospel story in an even wider context. Luke tells us the story of the birth of Jesus in relation to the history of the Roman Empire, the world of its time, and specifically in relation to  the reign of Augustus. Augustus claimed that he (as Jesus later followers were to claim about Jesus) was the Prince of Peace. But we need to know that the Augustan peace was the result of military victory and the suppression of all dissent.  Matthew and Luke then pose the question: who is really in charge of history? Is it Herod and Augustus or is it the risen Christ. They continue in their gospels, as Mark had before them, to show what kind of peace, what kind of justice could be expected when God was in charge. Matthew and Luke were writing their gospels at a time when not only had Herod  long since died, but also after the whole Jewish state had passed into oblivion, destroyed by the might of the empire. They were also writing at a time when the seat of power in Rome had passed into the hands of the Flavian or perhaps the Nervan-Antonian Dynasty, depending on how we date the writing of these Gospels. But they were writing at the time when the question of who was really in charge of history was at the heart of the long struggle of the Christian community, first for survival and later for dominance, in the Roman Empire.

Later on in history, as Europe emerged from the dark ages, which followed the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and moved into what we call the Middle Ages, that struggle became one between the power of the state and the power of the church or of religion. The pendulum swung between one and the other, and continues to swing in our own day. At the extreme points of the swing (both, in my belief, strenuously to be avoided) are, on one side, the autocratic state in which religion is denied or controlled, and, at the other end, the theocratic state in which the leader claims to be the direct agent of God. In recent years we have seen the disastrous results of two theocracies, of different religions facing off against each other.

I have so far tried to show that the Christmas story at the heart of our festival is not just a cosy fireside narrative, but a story which stands at the heart of the politics and history of western civilisation. But, is it possible to move forward from the power struggles of the past, with their cost in human freedom and human life, to a more compassionate understanding of the Gospel?  First, I believe, from a Christian perspective, we must understand that the power of God, as made known in the presence of Jesus in the world, is not the power of compulsion by the sword, nor manipulation by means of economics or propaganda. It is the power of suffering, love and justice. In the words of John our gospel writer:

The Word became flesh and lived among us… full of grace and truth.^[1]

That re-understanding of the nature of God’s involvement in the word must begin in the church. As I was studying and beginning my ministry four decades ago I visited on several occasions the Taizé Community in France. There, Roger Shultz, a man of great compassion, who was sadly murdered as a result of his care for all who came to him, spoke of a vision he had of “a springtime for the church, a church devoid of the means of power”. I hoped at that time, and continued to hope through my ministry, that I might see something of Prior Roger’s vision becoming a reality. As I come to the end of my ministry, I feel a good deal of disappointment that so little has changed. The churches of the Christian community across the world are still places of political power, economic power, patriarchal power and manipulative power. The present struggle in our Anglican communion between (for want of better words) conservative and progressive elements in the church is but one example of power rather than compassion in action.

In the present meltdown of the financial and economic systems of our world, based as they ultimately are on the power of greed and the inerrancy of the Market, we should be witnessing to the need for sharing, justice and compassion to be built into our systems. But how can we so witness, when these very qualities are so absent from our own life in the churches?

But in today’s world there is, I believe, another great need for change in our church and in our faith. For we can longer speak about the state and its systems only in relation to the teachings and ethics of Christianity. Today, whether in our own countries or across the world we have to recognize the existence of many religions. There are the stories, (which share many common elements) told by Jews, Christians and Muslims. There are the stories of the Indian religions of the Hindus, Buddhists and Sikhs. There are the stories of the oriental religions, and the spiritualities of the chthonic peoples. There are the stories of those who choose to live their lives without reference to any supernatural power or existence. As we try to build a new world, all have to be heard. In the words which stand as the epigraph in Ondaatje’s novel In the Skin of a Lion:

Never again will a single story be told as though it is the only one. ^[2]

If we are to build a world of peace and justice (and I am trying to suggest that our Christmas storied invite us to do just that), we need to hear all these different stories and understand how they have been interwoven in the histories of the peoples who tell them. But then there is an added complication. I look on sacred scriptures as narratives about life and humanity, stories which enable us to understand ourselves and our history in relation to that ultimate reality we call God. But there are those in several of the world’s religions who claim different things for their faith. They claim to have hold of absolute and total truth and in so doing they deny others’ understanding of truth. How can we pursue the struggle between fundamentalists and those who hold a broader view of faith in the different religions, without resorting to the tactics of power?

I have been looking, in these Christmas meditations, at the question of how we can understand the nature of God’s involvement in the world, as the word made flesh. I have also been looking at the difficulties that the history of the church and the multicultural nature of post-modern society throw in the way of that understanding. But the Christian task is not only to understand, but, even more to be part of the compassionate and just presence of God in our world. Let me end with what I believe are some of the key problems we face in our world today.

Undoubtedly at the top of my list is the problem of the accelerating degradation of the biosphere, fuelled by ever increasing world population and the centering of human endeavor on the ever growing creation of wealth. Closely linked with this is the growth of inequality and poverty in our world. As these problems become more and more apparent, I am sure that we shall see increasing threats of all kinds of violence as we all seek to defend our claims to the riches we have or think we should have. Behind this stands, I believe a key human problem of fear of otherness, and the need always to define ourselves over against the other. Not of this is helped by the widespread flight from reason and denial of science by so many religious people of the different faiths.

In our reading from scripture this evening Isaiah proclaimed:

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation…^[3]

That message of peace, good news and salvation is our Christmas message, but the good news can only become a reality in our world if we become its bearers, and if we commit ourselves to struggling with our world’s problems, doing so, I have tried to suggest, in a way which is very different to that espoused by the church in history and by many of our fellow Christians today. The Birth of Jesus is both an offer and a demand for a new birth in ourselves and a new birth in our society, our civilization and our world.

I share these meditations with you in the name of God, creator, mediator and sustainer and I wish you a happy Christmas and a hopeful New Year.

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[1]  John 1:14
[2]  In the Skin of a Lion Vintage Canada 1987. The epigraph is quoted from John Berger.
[3]  Isaiah 52:7a

 

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