ALL SAINTS MARGARET STREET

CHRISTMAS, 2005

MIDNIGHT MASS
All Saints, Margaret Street

Fr Alan Moses

“It’s better to give than to receive, or so they say”.

I’ve borrowed my text from one of the John Lewis’s Christmas adverts. No attempt was made to identify the source of the quotation. In fact it’s from Jesus as quoted by St. Paul in the Acts of the Apostles. Perhaps the advertising people thought it would be politically incorrect to mention Jesus, even on his birthday. Or could they have been embarrassed at exploiting the words of Jesus for profit?

It may well be, as Jesus says, “more blessed to give than to receive”, but we often find it more difficult to receive. We like to think of ourselves as basically generous, benevolent, giving people. That’s one reason why even the only nominally religious love Christmas. Christmas is a season to celebrate our supposed generosity. Christmas, we say, brings out the best in people. Everyone gives at Christmas, even the most hard-hearted Scrooge among us.

Charles Dickens in “A Christmas Carol” tells us of how we can give to others. This suits our favourite self-image. Dickens suggests that way down deep, even the worst of us can become generous, giving people. There is a profound truth here which religious people can sometimes forget: that we are all made in the image and likeness of God; that the Christ was born to save us all. However fallen people may demonstrate themselves to be; not least in their cruelty to children, to forget that is to despair of the world and of God. But Dickens is only part of the Christmas Story. That story as told by Luke is not first of all about how blessed it is to give but about how essential it is to receive. Luke tells us of God’s gift to us.

We may be better givers than receivers, not because we are generous people, but because we are proud people. We prefer to think of ourselves as givers - powerful, competent, self-sufficient, capable people. Our “goodness” motivates us to employ some of our power, competence and gifts to benefit the less fortunate.

This is quite the opposite of the gospel story of the first Christmas. There we are portrayed not as the givers we wish we were but as the receivers we are. Luke and Matthew go to great lengths to demonstrate that we - with our power, generosity, competence and capabilities - had little to do with God’s work in Jesus. God wanted to do something for us so strange, so utterly beyond the bounds of human imagination, so foreign to our human self-projection, that he had to resort to angels, a pregnant virgin, and stars in the sky. We didn’t think it up. We didn’t approve it. All we could do at Bethlehem was receive it - a gift from a God we hardly knew.

The gift of the Christmas story is to show us how to be receivers. The first word of the Church, a people born out of so a odd a nativity, is that we are receivers before we are givers. Discipleship teaches us the art of seeing our lives as gifts. Gifts from God before we can give them to anyone else. That’s hard, because we would rather see ourselves as givers. We want power to stand on our own, take charge, set things to rights, perhaps to help those who have nothing. We do not like picturing ourselves as dependent, needy, empty-handed.

In this past week, I have held two special hands. One was of a tiny baby. His father is one of our weekday worshippers. He rushed into the evening mass on Monday night. I knew that the baby was due any time and at the Peace asked if there was any news. He told me that his wife had just given birth to a baby boy. Later, I went up to visit mother and baby in the Portland Hospital - not exactly the stable at Bethlehem I know. The wee man, as yet without a name, was not in the mood for polite conversation with the Vicar, but you would have to be a paid up member of the Friends of Herod to resist a newborn child. I touched his hand with a finger and his tiny fingers grasped mine.

The other hand was that of an elderly lady in our congregation who has been in hospital and when I visited her the other day, she just wanted me to hold her hand for comfort while we talked quietly and prayed together..

Two hands, at opposite ends of life’s journey - one just at the beginning and one nearly at the end. Both expressing that dependency which is an essential part of human life. We spend much of our lives escaping it, or trying to. We think of it as growing up, maturity, independence. Well, I know that there are some forms of dependency which are unhealthy - but there are forms of independence which are worse. The arrogance that thinks we are in control, that sees the world revolving around us, which makes us incapable of receiving and makes of our giving more an exercise in self-assertion rather than self-giving.

The dependence of the Christ-child on Mary and Joseph teaches us something about the humanity which is God’s gift to us. Its true nature is not rugged individualism and sturdy independence. Genesis tells us that “it is not good for us to be alone”. We are made to relate to others, in family and friendship and community. Such relationships have a proper mutual dependence. Without it they are not relationships of equals. They miss out on something vital to love and friendship and humanity.

And so at the heart of what we do tonight is the receiving of gifts from God - “God’s holy gifts for God’s holy people” - the gift of the Christ Child in the Christmas gospel which we hear and sing year after year because we have to keep on learning and relearning its message. and in a little while the gifts of Holy Communion - As shepherds and wise men knelt at his manger cradle, so we kneel at his altar and hold out our empty hands to receive the gift of his life; so that having receiving we can begin to give of ourselves.