Christmas Day Sermon

God of all hope and joy, open our hearts in welcome that your Son Jesus Christ at his coming may find in us a dwelling prepared for himself; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God now and forever. Amen (NZ Prayer Book)

Bethlehem (House of Bread) – 1999 (on pilgrimage)

·         Manger Square

·         Church of the Nativity

·         Meeting in the Back Alley

from the Hymnal #79:

O little town of Bethlehem how still we see thee lie
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by
Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting Light
The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight

Philip Brooks (Episcopal Bishop of MA) wrote this in 1868, 3 years after visiting the Holy Land, he gave it to his organist who set it to music for the Sunday School. It has become one of our beloved Christmas hymns.  But the village he visited was a much different place than the bustling commercial hub where Jesus was born.

Nicholas Blincoe tells the fascinating story of Jesus’ birthplace in his book Bethlehem: Biography of a Town.   When the future king David was born there, it was only a settlement of shepherds and herdsmen. But Bethlehem came into prominence 200 years before Jesus’ birth when the Greeks built an aqueduct from the springs near the Bethlehem hills to supply water to the city of Jerusalem, seven miles away. Bethlehem instantly became a center of commerce as a well a strategic military location.

Blincoe writes that Mary and Joseph might have spent the night in the open garden in the center of Bethlehem. “Mary and Joseph would see tough-looking traders strike deals, count profit, write contracts, and exchange their sheep and wool for fruit or olive oil. To visitors from the Galilee, this might make Bethlehem a wild and strange kind of town. Nevertheless, it was clear that Bethlehem was far less free than the Galilee. There were soldiers everywhere. [Rome’s] Tenth Legion was charged not only with protecting the many miles of aqueducts, but also with policing the desert, the empire’s international border, as well as the profitable trade in livestock and Dead Sea chemicals . . . Bethlehem was supposed to be part of the Jewish ancestral homeland. Yet, as the scriptures tell us, it was not a place where one was likely to find many Jewish people.”

It was here, Matthew and Luke write, in this busy, bustling, place that God entered human history. Every day, Jesus is born in the Bethlehems of our lives: lives overwhelmed by responsibilities and expectations. Sometimes Christ comes to us in poverty that we might know the riches of God; he comes in simplicity that we might realize the presence of God in all things; he comes quietly so that we might hear the music of God amid the clamor of our noisy world.

This understanding that nothing will hold back Christmas, for the dark night will wake, the glory will break and Christmas will come once more even in misery and sin. It reminds me of a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow…
I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Till, ringing, singing on its way
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The Carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And in despair I bowed my head;
‘There is no peace on earth,’ I said;
‘For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!’

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
‘God is not dead; nor doth he sleep!
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men!’

Christmas will always break forth even in the bleakest of times and God will prevail. And when Christ does come into our midst, it is up to us to receive him.  This Christmas, may the wellspring that is Christ bring new hope and joy into our Bethlehem wildernesses; may the light that is Christ illuminate the darkness of our mangers with wisdom and peace in this season and in every season of the new year. In the words of that beloved carol: 

Where children pure and happy pray to the blessed Child,
Where misery cries out to Thee, Son of the Mother mild;
Where Charity stands watching and Faith holds wide the door,
The dark night wakes, the glory breaks, and Christmas comes once more. Amen.