Press Releases25 Dec 05

Bishop Richard Clarke's Christmas Sermon

One of the most unusual portrayals of Christmas is a painting by the sixteenth century Flemish artist, Peter Bruegel the Elder. Known as ?The Census at Bethlehem?, it hangs in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels.

What we see is a snow scene in Bethlehem and - in the style of Bruegel - showing a contemporary and localised village scene, rather than any serious attempt to represent first century Palestine. (There is even a parish church in the background!)

There must be well over a hundred people in the painting. There is a woman sweeping snow, a man gathering sticks, people involved in every kind of activity, including the building of a shed, and there are even some children throwing snowballs. But around a desk in a building in the foreground, there is a large crowd of people, obviously being marked off in the census. There are however no very dominant focal points in the scene. And you have to look quite closely at the painting before you spot - almost dwarfed by a couple of carts with large barrels of beer on them (and a man helping himself to the contents of one!) - a woman in a large cloak sitting on a donkey being led by someone whose face we cannot even see. It is only when you look carefully that you see who and what it is ? a heavily pregnant Mary being brought towards the census office by Joseph.

But you have to look carefully to see them.

This is surely is the essence not only of a sixteenth century Christmas in Malines, but also of twenty-first century Ireland. There is much to see around us, but we have to look intently to see God Incarnate within the picture..

We are of course caught today in something of a quandary. After decades of complaining that the real Christmas is being disfigured by commercialism and trivialisation, we now find ourselves grumblingwhen a religious symbol of Christmas, such as a crib, is removed from a public place in the interests of political correctness. I have to say that I do not believe that the removal of religious images of Christmas from the so-called ?public square? is anything very much to do with a genuine unwillingness to offend those of other faiths. Indeed it appears to have less to do with generosity and tolerance than with a manipulative agenda of secularisation which is neither generous nor tolerant. But we, as Christians, cannot have it both ways. If we insist on our place in the public gaze, we cannot then demand that we will be neither manipulated nor trivialised.

What Bruegel?s painting of the census in Bethlehem suggests to us, however, is that even amidst the ordinariness, the awfulness and the unpleasant, the garish, and the plain antagonistic, Jesus Christ is still there to be seen and encountered. This is the entire meaning of the Incarnation and therefore the true significance of Christmas. Jesus Christ is not here because we have made it so. He is here because he is, of his nature, God among us, (and he is among us, very often despite our energetic efforts to keep him out os sight most of the time.)

But to move from the concept to the practice of Christ in our midst, where is he to be seen? I would suggest three places on ?the picture? of our own context and surroundings where, if we look with care, we will find Christ : -

where there is need and helplessness,
where there is generosity,
and where there is hope.

The truth that Christ loved and loves every person who has ever lived is at the very centre of the Gospel, but we have also to take with real seriousness the certainty that his particular place is with those whom others have rejected or just failed to notice. It is the unfashionable, the scandalous and the unwanted with whom he seems to be most at ease. We parrot this again and again, and yet we do not let it affect the way we live our lives. But if we can live life without noticing the injustices, the hardships and the acute privation right under our noses, we are living life without Christ, no matter how many other efforts we may be making to keep in his company. Yes, we do have to look carefully and thoroughly to see Christ in the picture of Christmas today, because he is most certainly there with those whom we have stopped noticing or bothering with.

Many people - some of Christian faith and many who are not - will spend at least part of today with those who otherwise would not have any Christmas of any kind. We need to be more than cautious in ensuring that we do not claim as Christians all those who behave in a Christ-like way. Many who care sacrificially for others today will do so because of other convictions than the belief that this is where Christ calls them to be. Yet we can still see the person of Jesus Christ in those who today care less about themselves and their own comfort than about the good of others. Generosity is not confined to Christians ? indeed, most of us (and I include myself) shame the Christian Gospel by our lack of generosity, whether of time or of resources ? but the spirit of Christ and the true soul of Christmas is emphatically one of giving. This is where, in the strange confused and confusing picture of Christmas, we are to search for the restrained and unobtrusive figure of the Word made flesh ? in the generosity of love.

But Christmas is to be a place, not only of generosity to those who are in need of the human touch of others, but also of hope. ?Hope? is one of those words which today we are almost embarrassed to use, lest we appear tiresomely smug or brainlessly jolly. Yet hope is what Christianity is about, from start to finish. But it is not the puerile wish-fulfilment kind of hope which chirrups that everything will work out well in the end.
It is instead a hope built around the truth that God is in the world, always in the world, in the worst as well as in the best of what the world can be. It is the hope that God in Christ never ?gives up? on people or situations. It is the hope that you and I - flawed and broken as we may be - are called to grow into the fulness of the stature of Jesus Christ, to a complete maturity in Him and that on that journey, in that growing, we are to carry others with us, through - but only through - the extraordinary grace of God going before us and surrounding us, if we can but keep ourselves humbly alert to his presence.
There are people and places of such hope in this world. We sometimes have to look carefully to see them, but they are there ? in the L?Arche Community, in the work of Barnardo?s, in the gentle caring by a family of the sick and frightened relative.. But it is the vocation of every Christian community to embody such hope. It is to be the sign of Christ?s presence within each one of us and among us as community that we do not surrender hope to the forces of manipulation, self-absorption and superficiality which surround us. Places and people of hope are to be cherished, for they will teach us to find the hope of Christ within ourselves.

As we wish one another a happy Christmas on our way out of the Cathedral this morning, let us also resolve to look more carefully for the Christ who is not centre-stage in the Irish Christmas of 2005 ? the Christ who is in need and who is without comfort or possessions, but also the Christ who is found in quiet generosity and unobtrusive kindness, and, finally, the Christ who is the embodiment of hope and confidence for the year ahead.