ALL SAINTS MARGARET STREET

Sermon preached by Fr. Gerald Beauchamp at High Mass on the Second Sunday of Christmas, 3rd January 2010

Readings: Ecclesiasticus 24. 1-12; Ephesians 1. 3-14; John 1. 10-18

Reading the newspapers recently I missed anything about the 'Christmas Story'. Usually there's some astronomer who has a theory about the star of Bethlehem; or an historian of the ancient world who decides that the magi were definitely Zoroastrians or definitely were not Zoroastrians. I did catch some piece (I forget where) claiming that angels, as described in the bible couldn't possibly fly but I decided that life was too short to read it.

I don't know about you but I'm comfortable with the idea that much of the Christmas that happens in church is 'mythological'. By that I mean that although the events described are largely lost to historical scrutiny the powerful images that we use convey truths that can't be communicated in any other way. Indeed, it's interesting that while the church we're told is in general decline and that historians question the Christmas story congregations at Christmas have increased over the years.

I can remember as a choirboy singing to an almost empty house on Christmas morning but throughout my life as a priest I've seen congregations go up at Christmas. The sceptic would say that that's because we're becoming a more credulous society, one in which people fill their underwear with explosives and try and blow up aircraft. But that's going too far and the key to all this is mythology. We live in a mythological age but this time I'm using mythology in a more negative way.

One of the myths or assumptions that we tend to make today is to think that if we're talking about the past all we need is more information. If we could go back in time and get behind the Gospels, recover what was really going on before Matthew and Luke put ink to parchment then we'd have a simple account of Jesus' birth, one that was about the 'facts'. But it's not possible to do that. You can't scrape off the varnish as you might with a badly restored old master painting.

History isn't science. You only have to read past historians to see that. The Ancient Greek, Herodotus is usually regarded as the first historian but some have called him 'the Father of Lies' because his work is more like storytelling than chronicle. Last Christmas Fr Alan and Theresa gave me a copy of Vasari's Lives of the Artists. It was Vasari who in the sixteenth century coined the term the 'Renaissance'. But he wasn't unbiased. For Vasari the Renaissance was all about Florence. Venice doesn't get a mention.

Getting nearer to the present day you find a similar prejudice in the late Kenneth Clark. His widely acclaimed book and TV series Civilization had a lot about Italy. Spain hardly figured. The current exhibition The Sacred Made Real at the National Gallery shows how blinkered Lord Clark was.

You can't get at Jesus and the facts of his birth as you might distil a wine and arrive at pure alcohol. For some people this is a bit worrying. If there's no objective historical truth then all we're left with is opinion: with my opinion and your opinion as good as anyone else's opinion. But I disagree. If that was how things were then we'd all be subject to other people's egos and that would be a terrifying prospect.

But we're worshippers and that means that our first priority is worship not historical reconstruction. We celebrate Christmas: 'Christ's Mass.' We don't itemize 'The Facts of the Birth of Jesus As Far As We Are Able to Work Them Out.' We did not sing Happy Birthday to Jesus on Christmas Day. (Although I fear that somewhere in our green and pleasant land a vicar probably called Dave did just that.)

Worship is not historical reconstruction. Worship is liturgical recollection. Worship starts not from reading a book (the bible) but from the contemplation of an image, an image to which we can all relate: a newborn child and parents and visitors. The feelings, the emotions, the pictures that arise in our heads and our hearts are not anchored in the exact circumstances of what may or may not have happened two thousand years ago but are rooted in God and our own deep experiences. This God is the God trusted in and believed in by the race from which Christ came.

That's why the supreme Gospel for these days is not Luke's account of the inn, the manger and the shepherds, nor Matthew's account of dreams and visions and magi but John's highly metaphysical account of the Word and the flesh. At Midnight Mass we heard the first fourteen verses of his prologue and this morning we hear some more of chapter one.

In these verses we sense the storm clouds gathering. The gospels were written in the light of the passion and resurrection so the origins of Jesus were written to show that suffering and the cross were written into his DNA. The birth of Jesus was accompanied by the shedding of blood. This is augmented by the remembrance of the Holy Innocents on 28th December and the Feast of the Circumcision and Naming of Jesus on 1st January.

Then there's scheming: the wilfulness of another Herod seeking to entrap the magi. There's rejection

He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world knew him not. He came to his own home, and his own people received him not.

Struggling to be heard above the clamour of all that is earthly, is God: the God who beckons; the God who invites us to believe; the God who desires that we are reborn for

all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God; who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

John invites us explicitly into the sanctuary: the place where the lights are dim, the smell of shed blood is ever-present and the prayer of incense is forever offered. This intense place finds its echoes in the sanctuaries of our own souls: the deep recess where there is darkness and brokenness and fervent intercession - the place where we cry out to God and are made holy like him.

Christmas 'works' and is ever more popular not because we can prove a highly improbable story but because it's great themes of light and dark, of love and fear, of rejection and salvation move us deeply. What gives substance to the telling of Christmas are our own 'hopes and fears of all the years.'

That's why so many of the carols encourage us to sing in the present tense: O come all ye faithful ... come and behold him. Woe betide anyone who sings Yea, Lord, we greet thee/Born this happy morning before midnight on Christmas Eve. Christmas is about liturgy not history. The Greek word leitourgos meant someone who performed a public service at their own expense.

If we loosen our grip on history what saves us from mere opinion, what rescues us from narcissism, what draws us back from the brink of subjectivity is community. Very few Christians are called to be hermits. The gospel calls us to more than twittering in the ether. Here, gathered side by side we are community, the Body of Christ challenging each other, calling each other to account, loving each other but allowing nothing to slip by on the nod.

The Word became flesh not to enable the flesh to be solitary but to enable us in the flesh to relate in love to one other. That way we don't retrace our steps in history but we make history in our own generation and we make that history glorious.

Christmas is about being present not excavating the past. Christmas is about our being present to ourselves and to each other. It's about being in state of grace: And from his fullness have we all received, grace upon grace. That's not the kind of thing we read in the papers. Good news never sells. It is always free. And we find it not on the newsstand but here in our community at worship.