Getting ready for Christmas
Only nine days to go to Christmas Day – and only six shopping days, if you’re the last minute type! Our readings and the psalm this morning reflect hopeful expectancy; a waiting for something to happen; something momentous; something immensely important. But do they infect you with hopeful expectancy? Or is that sense of expectation, of excitement at the approach of Christmas Day, somewhat dulled these days? Well if it is, then my purpose this morning is to re-awaken it. First, to our readings. Isaiah writes at a moment when, for Israel, all is wilderness and the land is dry; hands are weak and knees feeble; hearts are fearful; eyes are blind and ears deaf. And yet, he proclaims, this will not last for ever. The desert will rejoice and blossom; hands will be strengthened and knees firmed up; the blind will see and the deaf will hear; ‘the lame shall leap like a deer…waters shall break forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert…A highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Holy Way… [which] shall be for God’s people’. Does that sound a note of hope for you as you survey our sorry world, riven with conflict and bereft of the sacred? It does for me. St James uses a different image; that of the farmer who drills his crop in the hope and in the expectation that the rain will fall and the sun will shine so that his livelihood will be assured and famine avoided. He doesn’t know it for sure but he trusts that it will happen; and, in hopeful expectancy, he waits for the skies to darken and the seed to be swelled by rain. But he can’t make it happen. Like the first Christmas, it will come when it does by the grace of God and in God’s own time. St James tells us that we too must wait like the farmer, strengthening our hearts, as he puts it, ‘for the coming of the Lord is near’. And so to our reading from Matthew’s Gospel. The moment foretold by Isaiah and awaited by Israel, and, if it did but know it, by the rest of humanity, has arrived. Jesus is already about his mission in Galilee. But his cousin, John the Baptist, can’t quite believe it after such a long waiting. Jesus re-assures him, echoing the words of Isaiah and fulfilling the promise of Psalm 146, that, ‘the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news’. Christmas really had arrived at last.
And now, you and I are waiting for Christmas to arrive again. The church is decked in purple, symbolising the night before the dawn; on Christmas day, the colour will change to white, the colour of light; like Israel, we wait in darkness; but will the dawn come? It will, by the grace of God and in God’s own time. But when it does, what will it mean for you in 2007? If, like me, you have seen many a Christmas come and go, there is a risk of hardly marking its passage. That would be a big mistake. So, how should we be waiting for Christmas in 2007? Let me re-awaken in you the tremulous expectation with which you awaited Christmas when, like Christopher Robin, you were very young. What were you waiting for then? For Father Christmas of course! Just for a moment, re-live going to bed on Christmas Eve, bursting with excitement but in an agony of waiting; waiting for your awaking in the wee small hours to feel the weight of a stocking full of presents at the foot of the bed. Did you next rush downstairs to gaze at the Christmas Tree, now miraculously surrounded with presents? Do you still believe in Father Christmas? You should do, for Jesus tells us; “Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” [Mt. 18:3]. Mystery lies at the heart of our Easter faith and Father Christmas is a mystery; but he is real enough; a Christmas parable. When we are little, he brings us tangible gifts, opened in a frantic scrabble before we rush into our parents’ bedroom to exclaim – Yes! He’s been! We never see him, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t exist. When we are older, he still comes to us, but with intangible gifts; the gifts of the Spirit; we don’t see the Spirit, but the Spirit is real enough. Just as our gifts are real enough, although we cannot see them; gifts of healing; gifts of teaching; gifts of preaching; gifts of caring; gifts of parenting; gifts of tongues; gifts of creating; gifts of marketing; and so on.
But now, a change of focus. I invite those of you who have left childhood behind – perhaps, like me, far, far behind – to remember another moment of hopeful expectancy; your first date with someone new; someone you want to be with. You have taken the risk of inviting him or her to come and be with you; and now you are waiting; on a street corner; in a café or a pub; perhaps even under the clock in Charing Cross station. Will she – or he – really turn up? You glance at your watch, but you cannot advance the moment. She or he will come, if at all, in her or his own time; at her or his own pleasure. Remember how it was? How you felt? Nervous anticipation mixed with hopeful expectancy? I hope you do because I invite you to re-capture that feeling over the next nine days. Why? Because, what you were waiting and hoping for then was love; and a future to be shared with another person; just as we do at Christmas. At Christmas, we are waiting for gifts, for love, and for a future to be shared with another person; with Jesus Christ, the Messiah. But how we should wait for Christmas Day only half answers the question: What will Christmas Day mean for you in 2007?
As Christians, we believe that we are made in the image of God; that Jesus Christ, the risen Lord, dwells within each one of us; and that, through the Holy Spirit, each of us has been endowed with gifts; gifts to be employed in the service of the Father; to ‘do his will on earth as it is in heaven’. Just as men and women make war, so men and women make peace. Just as women and men oppress, so women and men liberate. It’s no good waiting for God to wave a magic wand to heal the sick, to give good news to the poor, to give sight to the blind, to open the ears of the deaf, to free the oppressed. That’s not how it is. It’s down to you and to me to do all that. So when at Midnight Mass or on Christmas morning you sing, ‘Yea, Lord we greet thee, born this happy morning’, treat those words for what they are: a wake-up call. A wake-up call to greet Jesus Christ, re-born in us. A wake-up call to un-wrap the gifts the Spirit has renewed in us. And a wake-up call to use them to build the Father’s kingdom on earth. So, over the next nine days, re-capture that sense of excitement, of tremulous expectation that something momentous is about to happen! Father Christmas is on his way to you, laden with gifts; your lover is just about to come around the corner. Greet Christmas Day joyously for what it really, really, is. The day when Jesus Christ comes to remind us that he is with us until the end of time. The day when we are given a fresh chance to use our gifts in 2008 towards the building of the kingdom that Jesus came to proclaim is at hand; at hand for you and for me to grasp and to fashion if we have but the courage and the will to do so. Amen.
Peter Morrell, December 16th, 2007
