The Incarnation
1992 (Year A) 25 December / Christmas Day
St Peter de Beauvoir Town
In a little village in Mexico one Christmas Eve a small girl called Lolla was trying to persuade her parents to allow her to take her donkey to church. ‘Alright’, said her father at last, ‘Providing you tie him up properly outside the church.’ The little girl went off happily to look for the donkey, who was called Don Pedro. She searched all over but couldn’t find him. Sadly she began to walk to church on her own. As she crossed the old bridge she felt it sway more than usual. The water in the river was very high. How black it was. Suddenly her heart began to pound. Something was moving near the river’s edge. ‘Who’s there?’ she called and in response heard the loud braying of a donkey. She ran down to the water. There was her donkey, stuck in the mud. ‘Kick, Don Pedro, kick as hard as you can.’ For what seemed an age the little donkey kicked but at last he struggled free.
Inside the church the priest had just finished telling the congregation of the blessings and joys of Christmas when a little girl and a donkey burst in. They were soggy wet and covered with mud. ‘What sacrilege is this?’ cried the priest. ‘Such a disturbance in church.’ ‘Oh father,’ said the little girl, ‘The bridge is all washed out if anyone crosses it this evening they will be drowned.’ When she’d finished, the priest touched the little donkey with tender hands. ‘God works in a mysterious way,’ he said. The little girl glanced at Don Pedro, standing quietly beside her. As she lovingly scratched the fuzzy head, she remembered another little donkey who had stood by the baby Jesus in a stable 2,000 years before. ‘Yes,’ she thought, her donkey had every right to be in church on this Christmas Eve.
Sentiment, even sentimentality seems to be as necessary a part of Christmas as the turkey and the singing of carols. They threaten to submerge us in a great gooey mess, just as sticky as the mud which trapped the donkey. As we’ve been making the physical preparations for the feast, I bet most of us have travelling mentally at least to a land covered in snow, populated by happy cherubic children. Well fed, well rested adults. Yet it’s a land which provides only temporary respite. We can only stay a short time. Soon we must return to our old ways. Yet whilst we’re there we enjoy a land where there is no conflict. Enemies become friends, even if it’s just for the day. Truces are called not just between warring nations and communities but even within families. It’s all part of a time when the most amazing things happen. It culminates in the discovery that those who you’d rather not spend time with throughout the year suddenly become indispensable at Christmas.
Of course the media play the game for all their worth and woe betide anyone who seeks to destroy this schmaltz especially if he happens to be called the Bishop of Durham. Apparently views which are taught and are acceptable in theological colleges and universities all year round, yet ignored by the vast majority of people for most of the time, are suddenly totally out of order at Christmas.
The danger of course is that sentiment and sentimentality overtake us entirely. That we become so distracted by cards and lights and trees, that we completely lose sight of the fact that notwithstanding the Bishop of Durham, we meet today to celebrate the birth of a baby.
And the birth of a baby as any parent will tell you is an historical fact. It may well be surrounded by all kinds of emotions and feelings. It may be that in times to come when we retell the story it becomes overlaid with the kind of sentimentality which brings a warm glows to our faces and embarrassment to others. But goodness me, in the beginning it’s certainly an historical fact.
And the historical birth of a baby, called Jesus, being born in Bethlehem cuts straight through the sentimental and the temporary. ‘Is this the kind of fast I have chosen,’ asks God of the prophet, ‘only a day for a man to humble himself, is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed. Is that what you call a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord ... Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen; to loose the chains of injustice... to set the oppressed free ... Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the wanderer with shelter ... when you see the naked, to clothe him ... Then your light will break forth like the dawn and your healing will quickly appear.’
This is the truth of Christmas. The eternal truth of Christmas. It will not disappear in twelve days’ time nor can it be contained by sentimentality. Those who can grasp this, who see light are in the light. They join in its splendour. So too those who see God in the face of the Christ child. They too are joined in his splendour. And God’s splendour gives life. Those therefore who see God will become children of God, joined eternally to his life. AMEN