God with Us
1988 (Year C), 24 December /
Midnight Mass
St Peter de Beauvoir Town
‘There are of course, very many things that are inevitably going to be left undone. We cannot realistically expect to go on any more exciting holidays, and (Sarah) will not be able to embark on any more early summer walking adventures. Our Norfolk cottage, with its garden so lovingly nurtured and planned over the years, will not now see many days with her presence inside or out. Her happiness in and with the village has been great. We will not go sailing together again, but our last voyage in a dear friend’s boat on Wroxham Broad in early October was an occasion of unalloyed delight. We may not go to the opera or concert hall together again’.
The usual Christmas circulars were put into some kind of perspective when this one came. I’ve just read a paragraph from a colleague’s Christmas letter telling of the fast-approaching death of his wife. I offer it tonight, not to bring sadness, although it may, but as an illustration of what we, in our own less remarkable ways are doing tonight. Especially tonight.
For it speaks eloquently of the things which concern us all this and every Christmas. We come here on this most holiest of nights to remember. Memories of Christmases long gone and which probably only ever existed in our minds, yet which contain a fondness. Times maybe, which if we had the opportunity, we would return to for, we would rather inhabit them than the ones we do now.
Sarah, I guess, is remembering those times now. Michael, my colleague, says so in his letter. She ‘ ... is genuinely so calmly and gently remembering all these things with that pleasure which seriously means she has known them all. She wants, with me, to share her memories ... with you this Christmas.’ My guess is that there are parts of us which are only allowed to surface on this one evening of the year. We are all remembering the most precious relationships right now.
Yet memory doesn’t have it all its own way. Hope is the other great Christmas occupation. The carols speak of, ‘our hopes ... being gathered here tonight’. Christmas is a time for looking forward to that which is to come, trusting for the most part that it will be better than that with which we are presently engaged.
Sarah has less to be hopeful for than most of us, although as long as she draws breath there will always be the ultimate hope that the cancer which first invaded her lungs at the beginning of the year, and has now spread out through the rest of her body will somehow disappear. The truth is that in the face of the cancer hope is dimmed, ‘There are of course, very many things that are going to be left undone ... We will not go sailing together again ... We may not go to the opera’.
Memory and hope. Two great elements in our common humanity. Our memory of times past means for us some places and people are particularly significant. We bring them with us tonight. And our hope, as we call our memories fondly to mind, is for the people we have known and love. Memory and hope are part of our religious history too. Both are there in Jewish tradition. Their shared history welded them together as a people and the hope of a coming Messiah inspired them.
And memory and hope are often as far as tonight goes. Both are vitally important. Yet both serve to detract us from the present and it is to the present which the Christ Child comes. In the present the past is redeemed and future is given hope. It is in the present that the darkness of night is transformed by the glorious singing of the angels. It is in the present that the hope of the shepherds is changed to adoration. It all happens in the present, not in the sentimentality of the past nor in hope for the future.
For Sarah there are memories but little hope. Yet there is gloriously, a present. A present of which they say, ‘We thank God for the truly transforming and gentle experiences that each day brings in the hospice’. Together they are beginning to explore the glory of the incarnation. That mystery which is Emmanuel, God with us. Now. In this present moment. Not in their memory. Not in their future but present with them. And so each day is an incarnation. A transformation. A newness.
God transforms the present. That’s the whole message of Christmas. Making what’s perceived as mundane and ordinary into that which is gloriously special. It has profound implications for us because if we really believe it, if we discover it to be true in our lives then all things hold out the possibility of being encounters with the divine.
Emmanuel. God with us. Not contained by the past, nor banished to the future. God with us now in the Christ child. God with us in this priceless, timeless, present moment. And so the New Testament dream of a liberator, and the dream of peace, is not merely a dream. The liberator is already present and his power is already among us. We can follow him, even this evening, making visible something of the peace, liberty and righteousness of the kingdom which he will complete. It is no longer impossible. Let us share now in his new creation, born again tonight, and live as new men and women. And may the zeal of the Lord of Hosts be with us all. AMEN