Diocesan News25 Dec 04

Bishop Richard Clarke's Christmas sermon

'HE WAS IN THE WORLD..'

Sermon preached by the Right Revd Richard Clarke, Bishop of Meath and Kildare,
in Saint Brigid?s Cathedral, Kildare
Christmas Day, 2004

John 1.10 ?He was in the world..?

After years and years of the Church telling the world around it to stop spoiling Christmas by making it an orgy of commercialism and excess, the world is now getting its own back. We are being told to stop spoiling a perfectly satisfactory winter festival ? ?Winterval? as it is now being termed in politically correct circles on our neighbouring island ? by insisting on bringing Jesus and stables and wise men into the scene and thus making this whole holiday time religious and therefore exclusive or culturally imperialist..

There is of course a charming irony about all this. It was the Church which in the early centuries first hi-jacked an existing party time in the middle of winter, and turned it into ?Christmas?. What goes around comes around, and today we have to take it on the chin that the unsullied message of Christ the Saviour who has come among us is not, in Ireland - or indeed in much of western Europe ? at the centre of consciousness for society at large. The mid-winter festival is slowly but surely being hauled back to its pre-Christian roots. We are even been asked the question as to who ?owns? the Christmas tree? Is it really related to a Christian Christmas or is it a throw-back to sub-Christian or even pre-Christian winter festivities?

But what are we to do about it as the Church, or as individual Christian believers? We can of course make the decision to delineate carefully the Christian festival of the Incarnation from the surrounding revelry and partying. In other words, we will have our religious observance of the birth of Jesus Christ in Bethlehem, while ?you out there? can get on with whatever you want to get on with, but (we go on to think or even say) ?Don?t call it Christmas and don?t try to tell us what we are to call this time of year for us..? There is something rather plausible about this. Probably as with many of you, I have certainly, over the years, had Jewish or Muslim friends wishing me a happy Christmas and certainly meaning it in the proper sense ? seeing in Christmas something which is at the heart of the religious faith to which I hold. In this context, we don?t need to apologise for the actual Christmas any more than we would ask our Jewish friends not to talk about Chanukah or our Muslim friends not to mention Ramadan in our hearing.

But wrenching ?Christian Christmas? away from the surrounding melee of fun and lavishness and turning it into an austere introspective religious observance with no connection to the world around has other problems. Christmas is about the world around.. The Incarnation means that God is in the world in Christ, and not just in the religious bits.. The Incarnation is all about God who is not only there in a sanctuary but who is in the middle of a real world, the good, the bad and the neutral of that world. The Christmas Bethlehem which we prettify in the interests of good taste was probably no different to any main street yesterday in any town or city in this country.. Jostling, bustling, buying, selling, over-indulgence of every kind was part of the backcloth there in Bethlehem as well.. as was also poverty, misery, fear and loneliness. The pretence of lifting Christmas to a safe place away from the real world is, in its own way, a denial of what the Incarnation is about.

The Incarnation is about a real God in the middle of a real world and I would want to say on Christmas Day that we do not honour this real God by pretending that his only respectful place is in the sanctuary of a church or cathedral.. His place is everywhere, and it is for us to have not merely the vision but the courage to recognise him everywhere, and the greater courage to express and to articulate to others our awareness of his presence in every place and in every setting. And so, yes, we as Christian believers are to bring Christmas into the mid-winter festival which we no longer control. And our role is therefore not to build what is, I suppose, more of a grotto than a ghetto where Christmas can be kept safe, unsullied and untarnished. The message of the Incarnation is to be brought into the world as it is, not kept away from the world as it is..

So what is the message of Christmas that we now are to carry through our daily lives into the world as we leave Saint Brigid?s Cathedral. The first is of course the one of which I have been speaking but with a sting in the tail.

God in Christ is among and is therefore to be found in every place.. he is not absent from anywhere.. but.. God?s place is most comfortably with the unwanted, the unknown and the rejected of the world. This is a circle we cannot square. We know from the gospels that Jesus mixed contentedly with all kinds of people ? rich, poor, religious, non-religious, the respectful and the saucy.. In fact the only people he didn?t mix with very much were the complacent and the self-satisfied.. But we have to accept that where he was most comfortable was with those who were at the bottom of the heap ? the sick, the poor, the outcasts, the victims of violence and greed, and those whom others didn?t even notice.
This is the God whom we are worshipping today on Christmas morning..

This is the God behind those much-loved Christmas carols.. the God behind our greetings of ?Happy Christmas?.. the God behind the togetherness and the family gatherings..
This is the God we are to continue to worship outside these doors, and surely, surely, this must impact powerfully on our lives..

It?s become rather a commonplace for leaders and groups in the different churches to complain periodically about the treatment of those who are on the edges or even beyond the edges of Irish society ? those who are newcomers to our country, those of different culture or colour, and all those who are living in fear, in poverty, or indeed both fear and poverty in our self-satisfied and well-healed country..

Surely the time has come for the different Christian traditions not only to unite in their call ? a call in the name of those Christ-like virtues of generosity, humanity and justice - for radical changes in attitude, but also to do so with the kind of stridency and vehemence which would genuinely aggravate society, would really exasperate government and would certainly annoy many within the churches as well. Are we clear that the God we worship at Christmas is the kind of God who doesn?t necessarily want us to be over-polite in our relationship with those who would sneer at those who haven?t ?made it? within our sadly divided society?

The Church in Ireland today may feel rather battered and bruised (much of the battering and bruising incidentally of its own making) but it can never expect to regain the trust of the people of Ireland if it will not say with stridency and clarity that the place where Jesus Christ is most readily to be found is alongside those who are the victims of a twisted society and even of the warped Church itself.. Christ didn?t ?make it? in first century society in Roman Palestine. He certainly wouldn?t have made it today in Ireland either. But yet this is the Christ whom we claim that we worship and adore today.

The world outside may now wish to keep its distance from the Church?s Christmas, but Christ does not want us to return the compliment.. He would expect us to be in the world, rather than shaking either our fists (or our heads) at our neighbours. But yet we?re not to become so immersed in what we experience or enjoy that we forget that the gift of God in Christ turns our deepest values and our defining priorities upside down.

You and I are called to bring Christmas ? the whole Christmas ? into the world outside the doors of the cathedral. Then we wouldn?t need to worry about whether the Christmas tree is pre-Christian, sub-Christian, or whether it?s just nice to have around..