Sermons

Christmas Day
Saturday 25 December 2004 at 8am

Simon Cowling
Readings: Hebrews 1. 1-12; John 1. 1-14

Welcome, all Wonders in one sight!
Eternity shut in a span.
Summer to winter, day in night,
Heaven in earth, and God in man.
Great little One! Whose all-embracing birth
Lifts earth to heaven, stoops heaven to earth.

Last Sunday, during my sermon at 10.00am, I referred to a remark of the current Bishop of Knaresborough, who said recently: 'If we have no taste for paradox, we have no stomach for Christian truth'. For Christians this great festival of Christmas is a time when paradox is especially evident. Theologians and poets from the earliest Christian centuries to the present day have delighted in expressing this paradox in prose and verse, as the passage quoted at the start of this sermon shows. It comes from a longer poem by the seventeenth century metaphysical poet Richard Crashaw and conveys the great mystery of the event we call the incarnation: the enfleshing of God in human form. Leo the Great, the fifth century Pope, describes the paradox of the incarnation in another way when he speaks of how "(Christ's) majesty has taken on humility, (and) strength has taken on weakness," while another seventeenth century poet, Robert Southwell writes of the place of Jesus' birth that:
This stable is a Prince's court,
The crib His chair of state.

But the paradox of the incarnation is not simply an opportunity for poets to engage in a range of literary conceits. The incarnation is a theological truth that allows Christians to dare to believe that, in Christ, God has indeed come among us, is one with us, and enters our human experience so as to free us from all that separates us from him, from the 'sin that clings so closely' as the writer of the letter to the Hebrews says towards the end of his letter. This entering of God into human experience is a defining feature of our faith. The fourth century theologian Gregory of Nazianzus wrote that 'what is not assumed is not redeemed', meaning that unless God in Christ had indeed become fully human, flesh blood and bone, he could not have redeemed us, could not have 'called us out from darkness into his marvellous light' as we read in the first letter of Peter.

But as the great prophets of the Old Testament realised - Amos, Hosea, Isaiah - theological truth must not simply be accepted. For its power to be conveyed fully it must be enacted. Christians down the centuries have realised this: St. John Chrysostom running hospitals in fourth century Constantinople; St. Francis of Assisi commending the Gospel in thirteenth century Italy by his embracing of poverty and simplicity of life; William Wilberforce winning over public and political opinion in his fight against child labour and the slave trade in nineteenth century Britain; Mother Theresa and her legacy of helping the impoverished millions in twentieth century Calcutta. In these and in countless others we see the Gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ the Word made flesh, being made real, living and active. May that Good News continue to be real, loving and active in us and through us this Christmas and beyond. Amen.

© St Edmund's Church, Roundhay - Charity Number 1131904