A Christmas Story
A sermon preached by the Revd Canon Dr Alison Joyce
at the Carol Service on 12th December 2009
In the name of the living God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
A Christmas story for you.
It was Christmas Day fourteen years ago, and I was working at a church in another part of Birmingham. Our main service for Christmas morning was already well underway when the door at the back of the church opened and in came an old tramp, looking rather bedraggled and somewhat the worse for wear. And he staggered down the aisle, found a place fairly near the front, and sat down. Now there was nothing particularly unusual in any of this – because like most city churches, that one had its share of unexpected visitors and street people.
Our service that morning was one that always drew in a lot of families with young children, so the address that I was giving was designed with the youngsters in view – so part of it involved my asking the children a series of questions and then inviting those who answered to come down to the front and hold various things for my, while I told a story.
So I asked the first question, and all the children in the church shot up their hands. Rather to my surprise, so did our new gentleman friend. So I chose one of the children; she answered the question correctly, and came down to the front with me. Second question: all the hands shot up again – including the gentleman’s hand. So pretending very hard not to notice him, I chose another of the children to answer: the child answered, then came down the front. When I asked the third question, fortunately a child who was sitting directly in front of me answered, so that I knew that I could get away with completely ignoring our gentleman of the road, who once again was waving his hand enthusiastically.
But at this point my conscience started to get the better of me. I knew that I was doing my best to ignore this guy, and, worse still, I knew that my congregation could see that I was doing my best to ignore him. And that really bothered me. Why was I ignoring him? Well, I could very easily have convinced myself that, of course, this was an exercise designed for children, and so he, as an adult had no business trying to take part in it.
But in my heart I was well aware that the real reason was nothing of the sort. If I am absolutely honest, the shameful truth was that I was afraid. Because if he answered the question and came down to the front with the children, I had no idea what he would do next; how would he behave? Would he try to wreck my beautifully crafted address? Would I remain in control of the situation?
But I was also acutely aware of all that stuff in the New Testament about Jesus going out of his way to notice and to welcome the poor and the marginalised, and the rejected, and challenging his followers to do the same? Jesus never ignored or turned away anyone. And yet, that was precisely what I was in danger of doing – and on Christmas Day, of all days.
So, when I asked the next question – and the guy waved his hand in the air as before; I took a deep breath and invited him to answer it; he came down the front with all the children, and held the object that I gave to him as part of the tale I was telling. And it was all absolutely fine.
Except that, as it happens, this story does not end there. Because, from that day onwards, Jack, as I shall call him, began attending our church regularly. And about two months after he had first appeared that Christmas morning, I walked into the choir vestry one Sunday and was absolutely astonished to see him being helped into a set of choir robes. He became a regular and very faithful member of our church choir, and every Sunday someone from the church would go and collect him from the institution where he lived, and bring him to our morning service. And strangely enough, his involvement with our church lasted exactly three years after it had begun, because he was found in his bed, having died of natural causes, suddenly and unexpectedly, on Christmas morning, three years later.
Over those three years I came to know something of Jack’s story. He had started life as a bright, intelligent and well-read young man, from a good home, and with a very promising future ahead of him; all of that was suddenly turned inside out, when a massive schizophrenic episode, which proved to be the start of a lifetime of mental illness, changed his life forever.
Jack was a man who came to be respected and loved by all who got to know him, for his gentleness and his goodness. And I remained painfully aware that I so easily let the pettiness of my own prejudice and self-interest and fear combine to exclude him.
One of the things that the Christmas story challenges us all to do is to be prepared to be surprised. To be surprised at the ways in which God works. To be surprised at the people whom God chooses. Because one of the things that I love about the Bible is that God routinely goes out of his way to choose the most unlikely, most unsuitable, most unqualified of people to do the most important jobs for him: for example, if a great leader was needed to bring the captive Israelites out of slavery in Egypt, who in their right mind would have chosen Moses – a fugitive murderer, who had been raised as part of the family of their principal oppressor, Pharaoh, whom none of the Israelites trusted in the slightest, and who himself had no desire whatsoever to take on the job in the first place. And yet it is Moses whom God wants for the job.
And similarly, the Christmas story is so familiar to most of us that it risks losing its power to shock and surprise us. Because it is a truly outrageous, scandalous story: the woman God chooses to bear his Son is a young, unmarried mother, whose pregnancy risks bringing disgrace upon herself and her whole family. The place God chooses for the birth of his precious son is a filthy animal shed, in a city far from home. And when God wishes to spread the news of this wonderful, life-changing, world-changing birth, whom does he tell first? A motley gathering of the poor people of the land. Shepherds. And what on earth was the point of telling people like that?
But ours is a God of surprises. Ours is a God who challenges us to think the unthinkable; to look at people in a quite different way; to see below the surface; to set aside our prejudices and assumptions to recognise the hidden qualities of those around us; and never ever to write anyone off; always to be ready to look for their hidden qualities. Always to look for God at work in the most surprising of people, and situations, and the most simple of things: bread; wine; water. But so often we fail to see what is staring us in the face, because it is not what we are expecting.
There is a little poem by a writer called John Mole that is called ‘The Other Shepherd’, which describes a shepherd, who was there on the hillside outside Bethlehem on that first Christmas night; who was there when the angel came with the wonderful news – but who couldn’t be bothered to go with the rest of the shepherds down to see the Christ child. He preferred to ignore the angel – described in the poem as a ‘brilliant interrupting stranger’ – and leave the others to that particular bit of excitement – it would probably do them good to go down into the town. But he himself preferred to stay where he was, and have a drink, and get some sleep instead – and leave them to it:
The other shepherd
Oh, let them be, he muttered,
Let them plan their journey,
Let that brilliant interrupting stranger
Beckon them to Bethlehem.
A little fling won’t hurt them,
A change of air might suit them,
Get this twitch out of their system
But they’ll soon be back,
So then he broke a loaf
And drained a goatskin, then,
The wine still wet upon his lips
And sparkling in his beard like stars,
He nodded off …
Tired men prefer
Sleep to a great wonder.
I suspect for all of us, there are times when it is much easier to ignore the unwanted person; or to turn down the challenging opportunity; but, as the Christmas story reminds us, who knows what wonders we might be missing if we do?
Have a wonderful, peaceful, and joyful Christmas.
Amen