Diocesan News25 Dec 08

Christmas Day Sermon from the Archbishop of Armagh

ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH'S CHRISTMAS DAY SERMON,
ST PATRICK'S CATHEDRAL, ARMAGH, 2008

I hear a voice echoing down the ages which yet speaks to us of present things. The voice is loudest and most insistent in the story of the Incarnation – the Nativity – but it is present throughout the biblical record and it is not reserved for the Christmas season alone.

Yet, just as in the events of the nativity, there is a sense that there was no place for Holy Family in the frantic, chaotic world of Palestine under Roman occupation – no room at the inn. So there is a sense in which the insistent voice, speaking to us still, finds present day society equally inhospitable.

I speak of two things that are inherent in everything that God has spoken of through the ages and spoke specifically to us through the birth of the Christ-child. As the writer to the Hebrews so magisterially expressed it:

In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son… [Heb 1.1,2a]

Two things were inherent in all that God said to us through the prophets and finally in his Son: he spoke to us of risk and he spoke to us of trust. It is those two related things that I want to speak of today/night.

We live in an excessively 'risk averse' society. We institutionalize it in legislation, health and safety regulations, risk assessments, impact assessments and the whole panoply of risk avoidance. We do it, largely, to avoid the further risk of prosecution or litigation.

Pastoral care in schools, hospitals, care homes and institutions and, not least, in parish life, has become seriously problematical. Teachers may not physically comfort the distressed or show anything beyond a modicum of caring engagement with the children for whom they must nevertheless act 'in loco parentis'; no driver can safely offer a lift to anyone of any age for fear of allegations of improper behaviour; no incumbent or curate can, with safety, visit parishioners in their homes, although we still do, ignoring the risks of accusation or innuendo.

The result of this spills over into every other area of life so that the first thought to come to any organizers mind is 'Are we covered for all insurable risks?' This is what I call 'the bouncy castle syndrome'.

How stifling all this aversion to risk is in the whole spectrum of human relationships! Even the institution of marriage is corrupted in the completeness of its commitments by the unwelcome phenomenon of the pre-nuptial agreement.

This is not the way we are meant to live. Living is about being bold in seizing the potentiality of life; it is about freedom to succeed and freedom to fail. It is almost scandalous to realise the extent to which God did not seek to eliminate risk in the incarnation; indeed it almost seems that he deliberately embraced it. The choices he made were right at the high end of the risk spectrum.

The mother of God’s Son was unmarried both at conception and birth. In traditional societies the degree of stigma and risk attached to pregnancy and birth out of wedlock I saw for myself in Bethlehem this year. There unmarried mothers give up their babies secretly because they are fearful of their own future, the future of the child and the wrath of the family and community.

Then again, there was a very high risk that the man to whom Mary was betrothed would reject her, or reject her baby, or both. No one would have blamed him or held it against him; he could easily have found a more suitable wife, one less likely to present a risk to his reputation.

There was an immensely high risk in the physical circumstances that surrounded the birth of Jesus: an arduous journey for a teenage woman heavily pregnant with her first child; a strange and crowded city where – presumably because of the length of time taken to journey there as a result of Mary’s condition – there was no proper shelter left for them, let alone decent aseptic conditions in which to be brought to parturition. There was not even the ministration of some wise woman from their own Nazareth community, known to the couple and trusted to provide the experienced assistance of a skilled midwife. The risks at this point were off the scale.

The risks after safe delivery were pretty high too, especially in view of what we have come to call 'the Flight into Egypt'. The child and his parents were now not merely absent from home for a limited period, they had become refugees, asylum seekers, with well grounded fears for their own safety and that of their son.

All of this is 'of a piece' with the sequence of risks taken by God throughout the history of His dealings with a 'chosen people' who, according to the biblical record, were serially unfaithful and disobedient and from amongst whom, time and time again, only a remnant was found to preserve and transmit His message and revelation.

The other side of risk is trust. God’s whole interaction with humanity is based upon trust. If God were not a 'trusting' God, confident of the capacity of humanity – the pinnacle of His creation – eventually to do what is right and good and in conformity with his loving purposes in creation, He would not have taken the risk that allows us to make choices and therefore the freedom to make wrong choices. Our knowledge and experience of God is of one who is never puppet-master and ever respectful and hopeful of our ultimate capacity to see and do what is right. Despite the odds God is prepared to trust.

God placed his trust in an untried young girl; he put his trust in an extraordinary man; and, in both, his trust was vindicated, not because he asked little of them, things that would cost them very little, but because he asked much.

He entertained the trust that, despite hardships and obstacles the outcome of his plan for the salvation of all people would be a good one. As far as we know there was no 'Plan B'. It wasn’t a case of 'if this doesn’t work we will try something else'. Rather this intervention, after the failure of Israel throughout the ages to set forth the offer of God to all mankind, was to work within the framework of historic Israel by setting himself physically within it, as a fragile and vulnerable child, in order to explode ancient prejudices and constraints so that 'justice might indeed roll on like a river and righteousness like a never-failing stream'. [Amos 5.24] God was faithful to Israel despite Israel’s reluctance to trust Him.

Therefore my hope this Christmas is this: that as individuals and as a society we may begin to re-commission our willingness to take risks for progress, harmony and a sustainable peace – peace on earth to all on whom God’s favour rests. It will require a resurgence of our trust in God and the loving purposes of God.

Then, based upon the rock solid certainty of God’s faithfulness to all who trust him, that we, ourselves, may to begin to see others – including those whom we have regarded in some fashion as opponents – as folk with whom we are prepared to engage in trust for the future.

As I believe that the message of the angels to that group of unlikely witnesses to our Lord’s birth, the Shepherds, an underclass in ancient Israel, was a message of peace which signals God’s will that all barriers of class or prejudice should be removed or summarily leapt over. So I believe that the same message is of equal urgency and truth for us.

Every generation is required to learn afresh the lessons of risk and trust. Every generation, in its own time, is offered new risks to take and new barriers to leap. We are not promised that we shall be exempt from failure. Yet we also need to recognize that the only circumstance in which failure is absolutely guaranteed is when risk is declined and trust withheld. Christmas encourages us to take fresh risks with trust in order to see the glory of God revealed through lives transformed and human relationships healed.

May the God of trust, who risked everything for each of us, grant us the courage to take the risk of trusting, that, in accordance with his will, we also may bring to birth and be part of something beautiful in Ireland for Him.

ENDS