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Paul Stafford's Sermon for Midnight Mass Christmas Eve 2023
Hear the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Luke
Glory to you, O Lord
The birth of Jesus
2 In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the
entire Roman world. 2 (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor
of Syria.) 3 And everyone went to their own town to register.
4 So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the
town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. 5 He went there to
register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. 6 While
they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, 7 and she gave birth to her firstborn,
a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest
room available for them.
This is the gospel of the Lord
Praise to you, O Christ
Before I start may we briefly pray:
Lord God Almighty, thank you that we have been able to come here this evening and
that we have the freedom and the health to do so. We remember those who do not
have those things. We ask that our time now may encourage us so that as we go out
from here into the darkness we may walk more surely in the knowledge and light of
what the birth of Jesus has given each one of us, and of what he calls us to do. For
your glory’s sake. Amen.
The birth of Jesus in Bethlehem near Jerusalem 2000 years ago is the turning point
in history both for us and for the world in which we live. And it has consequences.
That, at least, is the belief of those who seek to follow Jesus in community with
fellow believers. Together, the three passages we have read, the first from the
Jewish scriptures known as the Hebrew Bible, and the others from the Christian
scriptures known as the New Testament, help us to recognise this turning point and
to identify what the consequences are. They are not difficult to understand. While
they are challenging, what is far more important is that they are encouraging, and
that if we grapple with them and work with them we shall be transformed by the
renewal of our minds.
The three passages were written with nearly 800 years separating the earliest from
the last. The first from the book of Isaiah is prophecy. The second from a letter by St
Paul to the church in the small town of Colossae in what is today southern Turkey, is
theology. And the third, from, the gospel of Luke, is history. The truth of the history is
fundamental because without it the prophecy is not fulfilled and the theology - in
other words the discussion about God - is meaningless because it has no basis in
fact.
Isaiah's prophecy was written soon after 700 BC, at a time when the Jews of
Jerusalem were under severe threat from invasion by the as Assyrian empire. It was
a prophecy written by a Jew for Jews, and it predicted the birth of a child who would
do astonishing things for the Jewish people. The child would be appointed by God,
and he would direct the way in which the Jewish people would be governed, in an
everlasting Kingdom whose foundations were justice and righteousness. The child
would be called by four names pointing to different aspects of his character:
‘wonderful counsellor, mighty God, everlasting father, and Prince of peace.’ He
would carry out a royal programme of action. He would have divine power as a
warrior. He would be an enduring and compassionate provider and protector, and his
rule would bring wholeness and well-being to individuals and society. By the time
that Jesus was born, 700 years later, there was a belief right across the Jewish
nation that this child, whom Jews called the Lord's anointed, or the Messiah, would
come soon to liberate them from subjugation to the Romans, who had started to
impose very heavy burdens of taxation upon them. The census that we read about in
Luke was introduced by the Roman emperor Augustus as a means of registering
people for the taxes that were to pay for the costs of Roman occupation.
The word Messiah in Hebrew is translated into Greek as christos, which in turn is
translated into English as Christ. Our second passage, Paul's letter to the
Colossians, can be dated to sometime before 60 AD, just over 25 years after the
death and resurrection of Jesus, and again was written by a Jew but this time not
only for Jews but also for the non-Jews or Gentiles with them at Colossae in the
community there known in Paul’s Greek as an ecclesia – the word we translate as
church. The passage sets out Paul's understanding of who Jesus was and continues
to be. First of all, the image of the invisible God in whom lives all the fullness of God.
Second the creator of all things in heaven and on earth: they are created by Jesus
and they are created for Jesus, and in him all things hold together. Third, he is the
head of the community of all those who follow him, the ecclesia or church. Fourth, he
is the first born among the dead. This is a reference to the resurrection of Jesus
which shows the power of God over death and means also that we too shall be
raised from the dead. In other words, death is destroyed, and the destruction of
death corrects our human horizons. Because if death is destroyed then there is
resurrection, and if there is resurrection then there is judgement in another world.
This life is not all there is. This enables us to be reconciled with God, made perfect
and without blemish in God’s sight. So God’s power over death, shown by the
resurrection, confirms the truth of Jesus’ teaching
and that he was who he said he was: the Son of God who is one with the Father.
Which brings us to Luke and his description of the census, the journey of Joseph and
Mary to Bethlehem, and the birth of the child in the Manger who grew up to become
not just a Liberator but to regain the place he had since before time began. Luke
wrote his gospel - good news - probably in the late 70s or 80s, some 20 years after
Paul’s letter to the Colossians. Luke was not a Jew but a gentile and although he
was a companion of Paul and lived alongside Jews, he wrote his gospel for both
gentiles and Jews, making use of material he found in the earlier gospels of Matthew
and Mark and adding further material of his own. That process of reading, reviewing
and expanding which Luke carried out on Matthew and Mark was repeated by John
in relation to Matthew, Mark and Luke. John’s gospel was the last to be written; and
the fact that it contains no more about the birth of Jesus shows that John thought
nothing needed adding to the facts that Luke described. And so in Matthew, Mark,
Luke and John we have four separate accounts or biographies of Jesus by people
who were either eyewitnesses of Jesus (in the case of Matthew and John) or who
got their information from eyewitnesses and Jesus’ human family (in the case of
Mark and Luke). No other figure in the whole of the ancient world was written about
in the same way, and it gives us confidence that the description by Luke of Jesus’
birth is, in all essentials, accurate. [That is what we have come here tonight to listen
to and celebrate.]
But there are some more words about Jesus’ birth, which were recorded by John in
his gospel and which were spoken by Jesus himself to the Roman prefect of Judea,
Pontius Pilate, who was about to order his crucifixion. The words were these: ‘For
this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.
Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.’ (Jn 18.37) What did Jesus mean by
truth? The Jews of Jesus’ day understood truth as being an attribute of Israel’s God,
and it was not one that figured much if at all amongst other people's gods. But for the
Jews, truth was not simply a matter of not telling lies; it was about moral truth and
integrity. Truth was something to be done and lived in. Yet Jesus takes the concept
even deeper. He told his disciples: ’I am the way, the truth and the life. No-one
comes to the Father except through me.’ Jesus was saying here that truth at its
deepest level was to be found in himself, in what he taught and in how he lived. The
essence of his teaching was that his followers should love God and love their
neighbours as themselves. The essence of his living was to bring compassion
forgiveness and healing to all those who sought him. Love and compassion for
others are therefore an essential part of truth, and this gives us the clearest of
insights into Jesus’ birth and its relationship with suffering.
Perhaps 98% of the suffering in the world is caused by man's inhumanity and
indifference to man and to other living creatures, by greed and by folly. The reason it
happens is because we do not love and care for one another or take proper care of
the planet. The remaining 2%, which includes the natural disasters, the children born
disabled and the suffering of later life and death, of course shows that we do not
control the world and ultimately cannot stop suffering or death. But imagine the
contrary. A world without suffering or death, to echo Mr Spock, would not be the
world as we know it. Instead it would be the world to come. In the present world, we
learn by our mistakes; and so far as this present world is concerned God is the Great
Allower. He wants us to learn from our mistakes. He does not want us to suffer but
we certainly do learn from suffering. In a cosmetic, pampered, Barbie world where
we were all immortal, we would learn nothing, and we would never grow in love or
compassion or wisdom. In other words, we could never become what God wants us
to be - because he has made us in his own image. The birth of Jesus in Bethlehem
2000 years ago was God's way of opening our eyes to all this.
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