Date: 24^st December 2009 (Christmas midnight service)

Preacher: Nikki Devitt

Churches: Draycott

Readings:

Isaiah 9, 2-7

Luke 2, 1-20

Well, after years of politically correct ‘Winter Festivals’, it seems the Christmas story is back in favour this year.

There has been a film called ‘Nativity’ released, about 2 rival school Nativity plays,

· and big-name comedy actors playing in ‘The Flint St Nativity’ on DVD,

· not to mention various Nativity productions in high profile theatres of Edinburgh and London.

I suppose because of all this Thespian activity that BBC radio4 had a recent feature on Nativity plays on its ‘Front Row’ programme…

and I was struck by a remark made by the producer of one of these West-end Nativities,

‘People go to Nativity plays as an ideological aspirin before the excesses of Xmas, they do it to show their children ’that’s what it’s really all about’…

Well is that the reason we’re here at midnight mass…to swallow the nativity story whole, as ‘ideological aspirin’ (before the fun really starts)?!

…. if we look again at how Luke tells the story, we’ll see the implications of the nativity story are much more far-reaching than that…

Luke sets the story in real time, and in a real place, in fact in the harsh reality of Roman occupied Palestine. He reminds us that Caesar Augustus is the head of all the inhabited world.

(By the way, this is the same Caesar Augustus who had triumphed over Mark Anthony in a great sea battle at Cape Actium about 30 years before. He managed to end a longstanding civil war and established the Roman Empire.

Because of this victory, Caesar Augustus was hailed in the literature of the time as Divine, Son of God, God himself, Lord, Redeemer and Saviour of the World…)

It’s against this backdrop of these world events that we are told of the birth of a baby to a young woman, who was travelling with her husband, and who owned so little that the child was laid to sleep in an animal’s feeding trough.

If you’d been there, it would not have seemed like anything particularly remarkable.

We have to turn to the shepherds to understand the meaning of the story:

the news of this birth is given to shepherds, who are the lowliest in the social pecking order.( Generally they were socially excluded because their lifestyle, living out in the fields, prevented them from observing the cleanliness and other rituals required by the Jewish law)

…but it is to these outcasts that the message is given (as promised in Isaiah, the good news is given to the poor). The heavens break open, and the place is filled with light. The heavenly messenger tells the shepherds not to be afraid,

There is joyful news for all people, even including them, the marginalised and ostracised by society.

A saviour has been born for them, in the city of David, the saviour is called Christ and Lord, and his very poverty is to be the sign by which they will know him: the child is wrapped in strips of cloth and lying in a feeding trough.

And then the angel choirs sing glory to God , and Peace to God’s people on earth,

And so the shepherds hasten to Bethlehem to see this child, this Godsend

and they find him in the manger, just as the angel told them.

And the shepherds see him,

there are lots of different Greek words for ‘seeing’ in the NT, and the one used here is ‘ίδοντες’,from which we get our word ’idea’…it means to grasp with ones mind rather than just perceiving with your eyes

So the shepherds see and understand the extraordinary thing they are witnessing,

two things result from that; one is that they are moved to tell everyone they meet the good news,

and the other is that, although they return to their former lives, ie watching over the sheep, they were constantly praising and glorifying God because of what they had seen and heard that night…

And so, I think Luke is not describing the kind of experience which can be encapsulated into an ’ideological aspirin’ and taken in one dose, quite separate and unrelated to anything else going on in the shepherds’ lives, or indeed our lives.

Neither is he telling fantastic stories to make children goggle in amazement…if our gaze is arrested by the spectacle of angels and heavenly hosts , and we can’t see beyond them, to the meaning of the story, then we miss the point.

Luke is showing us nothing less than a new vision for our world. His gospel is seditious literature:

It’s saying that the titles of Lord, and Christ, and Saviour-of-the-world belong NOT to Caesar Augustus, nor actually to any other imperial power who gains domination through military victory and subjugation,

BUT to Jesus, who brings the message of God’s kingdom, which is established through justice for everyone, leading to peace,

it’s a different way of doing things!

And we face the same choice as the shepherds, when we read this story, we are invited to come and see:

Do we think that peace on earth comes from Caesar, or from Jesus Christ?

If we choose the way of Christ, then we, like the shepherds, will be changed by the experience of ‘seeing’. The story challenges us to be part of God’s vision for the world: to think about the ways we can bring about that peace-from-heaven upon our earth.

That means choices about how we live…

at a personal level, within our communities, and as citizens of the world.

So with Luke’s message ringing in our ears, I wish you all a joyful…. but also a challenging Christmas.