Church of All Nations

delivered 25 December 2008
by Rev. Dr John Evans

John 1:1-14

Today can mean many things for different people.

It is true, the meaning of Christmas has been democratised. And by and large I don’t think I get too concerned about it. It is a great day – and in most significant ways – it is a positive, good and wonderful day. People take a break – we work around the clock now – most things today are shut and, what is more, we expect them to be shut; families gather – as is mine, from around the world and across the land; people generously help others – such as we will do in our Christmas brunch after the service. It is a good time, and we will see images of this tonight on TV and in tomorrow’s papers. I know it will be difficult for some – and we need to remember them, and stand with them in their personal grief – but Christmastime and this day, despite the often grating crassness we might see and experience, is good.

However, amid our ‘democratic’ understanding of Christmas – there is a heart, a reason, a profound basis, a theological underpinning, for this day. Today’s gospel reading says it is about “the Word becoming flesh and dwelling among us” (John 1:14). And also we often sing about it, I think quite unknowingly, when we use those many carols and songs of this time. They refer of course to the baby Jesus, the holy family, shepherds, wise men, and mysteriously, a little drummer boy – but also at times they state profound and deep theology. For example, O come, all ye faithful, is in part the great statement of the church’s faith, the Nicene Creed, set to music!

In the carol we next will sing, Let heaven and earth combine, Charles Wesley, one of the forebears in the faith of this church, gets to the heart of why we celebrate Christmas – and why we find ourselves here – early on a Thursday morning!

Let earth and heaven combine
Angels and all agree,
To praise in songs divine
The incarnate deity,
Our God contracted to a span
Incomprehensibly made man.

Our God, contracted to a span, incomprehensibly made man. (Well, he meant human.)

How do you like your understanding of the divine, of God – of all that is true and perfect; of the source of all life and hope? Is God out there, untarnished by this world’s grubbiness and darkness; or is our hope that God has broken into human history, with all its ambiguity, and in that context God’s will and hope for us is revealed and known? Surely, if this were the case, we somehow could relate to God, and God, in God’s own way, could affirm us humans – struggling for a full and meaningful life.

Allow me the indulgence of a personal story. Many years ago, as a callow youth, I left home to go to University. It seems that I had always wanted to go to university – I was sort of like the main character in Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure – with no great background of higher education in my family. So when the time came, I was filled with excitement, and a certain degree of trepidation and awe. I had been a big fish in a small pond – the NSW country town of Maitland; I was to become a small fish in a big pond, well a much bigger pond – at the Australian National University in Canberra. This was to be an adventure, there was a great deal of unknowing about it – there was mystery lying ahead.

Well, I can recall I arrived in Canberra on the Saturday by train; and got settled into my cell-like room. I was to live at Burgmann College on the campus there. On the Monday, a thing called orientation week began, but exploring the campus that day I promptly got lost – or at least disoriented. And I remember it clearly, I was somewhere around the administration building/the chancellery, with my map out, books and folders going in all sorts of directions – I was obviously a new student who was lost. At this time a short, older man came up to me and asked me if I needed help. I had no idea who he was, but he showed me where I wanted to go. I thanked him and thought no more of it.

Later that day there was something called the Vice Chancellor’s welcome to the University and yes, you are right, the person who helped me that morning was none other than the Vice Chancellor himself – Sir John Crawford. He was a very famous Australian – for many years he signed our bank notes and was a part of our post-World War II reconstruction.

Well you can imagine my reaction – the University had instantly lost its mystery. It was not impersonal and remote – even the Vice Chancellor would stop and talk with a pimply faced student. What the vice chancellor said on that occasion I have long since forgotten – the words were no doubt important; but more significant was that through his actions, the university was actually about welcoming, encouraging and enabling students to learn and study.

Isn’t this essentially the message of Christmas? God does not remain remote, if you like, issuing instructions from on high that remain unremembered and forgotten. God became one of us. God, in and through the birth and life of Jesus, revealed God’s will and compassion. Jesus, who in his life, befriended the lost and the outcast, who corrected the arrogant and guided the confused – became one of us.

Just as my experience with Sir John Crawford broke down barriers and became a tangible sign that I was accepted and really had nothing to fear about university; the same is true with Jesus. Jesus as my brother – makes matters spiritual and issues of ultimate meaning – comprehensible. I can relate to the life of another – a fellow human being, and in a fellow human being, I can see a way of living. God was ‘contracted to a span, incomprehensibily made man’ so God could become comprehensible to us.

We celebrate today not just a dramatic way God brings to us a message – through the life of Jesus Christ – born in Bethlehem; but of course it is the message itself we also celebrate. And here the message can mean the gospel – the good news. This is the message that the prophets foretold, or the message that Mary was told about by the angel Gabriel – God is a God of love: love which was to be shown in action – and not just in words. In the words of Mary’s song we know as the Magnificat, God would:

Scatter the proud in their conceit
Cast down the mighty from their thrones
Lift up the lowly
Fill the hungry with good things
And send the rich away empty.  (Luke 1:51-53)

In this kingdom of God each person would be valuable and accepted and loved by God. The values of the world would be upended. Christmas was about the coming of that love – the birth of Jesus. The message and the messenger are combined.

For you and yours I hope and pray that Christmas will be a special day – and it will have particular meaning for you. Amidst all your eating and drinking, celebration and particular traditions you might have, that democratic meaning of Christmas – I pray that you may share in the joy of this day and know the love and peace of Christmas – not just for today but for the rest of your life.