Press Releases
Sermon preached by the Bishop of Clogher, the Right Reverend Dr Michael Jackson, at Holy Communion on Christmas Eve 2006 in St Macartin's Cathedral, Enniskillen
Your love for our family has helped to provide the healing we so desperately need. Gifts you?ve given have touched our hearts in a way no words can describe. Your compassion has reached beyond our family, beyond our community, and is changing our world, and for this we sincerely thank you.
This might indeed read like a Press Release issued on first century television on behalf of The Holy Family, setting the record straight after they have had a chance to come to terms with what has happened to them. Let us imagine that they are putting on the record their own stated position, as people say, in a turbulent Roman Empire and giving thanks for the welcome which they have received in Egypt. They are conscious of their good fortune, having fled just in time, unlike so many of the parents and children of Bethlehem before the Massacre of the Innocents ? and they want to show gratitude and to give credit where credit is due. The words may seem predictable, conventional, what you would expect. And yet the reality of the situation out of which the words quoted above in fact come is so totally different. It is far from being a cliché. It is among the more horrific human events to have happened in the international arena of 2006.
I want to take you back to the month of October in the year now closing and to ask you to remember something which on one level was simply yet another event but on another level was an event which had a devastating effect both on one particular local community and also, at the time, on the whole world community. The words which I have quoted above are the words spoken by a person unknown to most people until she uttered them, Marie Roberts from Georgetown, Pennsylvania in October after something specific happened. They arise directly out of the wilful murder of five schoolgirls, members of the Amish Community, in their school classroom. They are the words of someone whom conventional self-righteousness, itself so prevalent in the contemporary church, would not tend to see as someone deserving of love, healing, compassion. And such self-righteousness would act in this way because she is someone deemed to be associated with and tarnished by what happened through being close to the person who did the wrong. People like this we often, regularly shun. Marie Roberts is the wife of Charles Roberts, the murderer of the five girls, who himself went on tragically to end his own life. Like many other people in this sort of situation, Charles Roberts had a silent history which had to do with his own personal circumstances and with his own family disappointment. There is nothing unusual in that but the murders were unusual, cruel and horrible and ought not to have happened.
When we look at them now, the words of Marie Roberts are, therefore, all the more extraordinary. The gifts to which she is referring are gifts given to her and her daughter by other members of the Amish Community in spite of, following everything which had happened. She speaks of love, healing, compassion; she rightly draws the connection between what happens locally and the global impact of such local action. Just as extraordinary in today?s self-sufficient society, she is willing to receive help rather than brushing the best of other people aside as she descends into the bleakness of her own victimhood, asking questions like this: How could he have done it? Why did I ever marry him? How will I ever recover from the shame of it all? None of this does she say.
And yet she finishes what she does say like this:
Please know that our hearts have been broken by all that has happened. We are filled with sorrow for all our Amish neighbours whom we have loved and continue to love.
END of Press Statement ? but, surely, what a Press Statement!
These words cut right through the conventional expressions of righteousness which far too often pass for Christianity. These words open up a new way of seeing the calling of the church in the world of today. And these words offer a very new picture of what Christmas is about. And this is all the more surprising because, at the same time, they seem to have nothing to do with Christmas. Why do I say this? I say this because we have here a number of authentic voices which come out of tragic reality. There is no ducking the issue that we are here very close to the Child of Bethlehem. We have stripped away all the trumpeting of respectability and we are in the manger of need and squalor. We have blown apart all the posturing of theological vocabulary and we are talking a new and simple language of love, healing, compassion, giving itself as the point where worthy and unworthy meet. We have spotted the cracks in the politicking of church people and what we in fact see being formed in front of our very eyes is a community of strength where the media sees only wounds and unanswerable conundrums and, as is so often the way of the media, thundering incomprehension. And this is the miracle of Bethlehem ? every time and in every way it happens. And it is that miracle because the good strongly and stubbornly emerges to overcome and replace the bad. Now, to me, that is Christmas.
So much of our Christian living could miss altogether the new birth blossoming in this tragic situation, the birth of love. Let us draw out some parallels from a few well-known verses of the Christmas Scriptures. In the situation of Georgetown, what happens on the inside and what happens in the outside world are held together in a way which is genuine. St Luke in his day holds together the local and the universal and says: In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered? All went to their own towns to be registered. In the Georgetown situation, the good emerges in the midst of the evil. St John, in his own way and in his own day says: The darkness does not overcome the light. In the situation of Georgetown, giving and receiving continue generously in the midst of adversity and tragedy. St Matthew in his day says of givers of gifts: they opened their treasure chests and presented gifts to him: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. I draw these connections in order to suggest that the heart of Christmas is to be found in this extraordinary story of the Amish people who have shown that in moving on they do not forget but they do forgive.
Ireland today needs to take stock of what this story tells us. Too often have we thought that forgiving others is a concession which we, often reluctantly, make, based on our own superiority. The Amish experience tells us that it clearly is not. Too often we have thought that it is possible neither to forget nor to forgive. The Amish experience tells us that clearly it is not. Too often we have thought that it is impossible to do any sort of human business with our enemies. The Amish experience tells us that it clearly it is not. And, I suggest, we could go on. At the heart of the Christmas story lies a simplicity which cannot be overlooked: a universal story which happens locally; a positive message of glory triumphing over fear; a giving of gifts as a token of respect. There is no room for making Jesus ?mine? without Jesus also being ?yours.? There is no scope for seeing the part which is ours as of greater importance than the total picture of which we and others are part. There is no prospect of a future without its being a shared future. Otherwise we simply follow one another round and round the block, and keep missing one another all the time.
But why, you may ask, is Christmas about forgiveness? I reply: Because Christmas is about salvation. Isaiah speaks of restoration. St Paul, writing to Titus, speaks of the transformation brought about by mercy. St Luke speaks unashamedly of heavenly glory on earth. The Saviour of the World is not frightened to go where evil is unresolved. The Saviour of the World is free to be generous where nobody expects anyone to be giving. The Saviour of the World asks us to go, once again, where we do not want to be and to find there the babe lying in the manger. Our gift from God is our invitation to take God with us as we go out to seek those lying today in a manger.
Where do we not want to be? We do not want to be - in an Ireland which does not want to face the responsibilities of poverty, particularly where such poverty affects children, and has come under criticism for our repeated failure to recognize that it is woven into the social and political system as we know it. We do not want to be - in an Iraq where more and more people feel that, as a global community, we were bamboozled into entering a war under the threat and hype of Weapons of Mass Destruction which have never yet been found to exist. We count the number of those who have died, women, children men, civilian and military personnel and we document an encircling anarchy. We do not want to be - in a Northern Ireland where we continue to watch with increasing disbelief politicians carrying out a dance routine of very complicated footwork and being ever so polite in insisting that someone else jump first ? and still making little discernible progress towards socially responsible devolved government! I remain convinced that the bishops of the Church of Ireland along with the Church in Society Committee are right to speak with politicians of all parties. We do not want to be - in a Northern Ireland where the implications of the Bain Report are slowly beginning to dawn in terms of educational provision on an area basis. This now has to be combined with the expectation of collaboration post-Costello. All of this is happening in a climate where there has been so much aggravation, aggression and energy wasted on questions relating to the future of secondary education. I remain convinced in relation to this latter question that the NI General Synod Board of Education was correct in sticking to its principle of the following priority: ?educational provision for all pupils, fairly delivered, is of paramount importance.? We may indeed not want to be there in any of these places but in the name of Christ the Saviour and in the hand of God the Father we need to go and to be found there in the power of God the Spirit.
As I wish you a Happy Christmas, I encourage each of you to become part of the miracle of Bethlehem and to rejoice with me in the Son of God born of Mary. I invite you also in the New Year ahead to be where good flourishes in the face of evil.
Readings: Isaiah 62.6-12; Titus 3.4-7; St Luke 2.1-20
Further information from the Diocesan Communications Officer, Revd Bryan Kerr, Tel: +44 (0)28 6638 7219