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Sermon - Christmas Day (C) - 25th December 2009
St Aidan's Anglican Church West Epping 8:30am
Readings: Isaiah 9.2–7; Luke 2.1–20
Let me take this opportunity to wish you a very happy Christmas Day.
One tradition in our family is that each Christmas Day Jenny gets out our CD of Handel’s Messiah and plays it non-stop for the whole day. Its wonderful music, I love the Hallelujah Chorus, But I also love those words, ‘For unto us a child is born; unto us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulders.’ But this year there is one word there that carries a jarring note. It’s the word “government.” In the closing weeks of this year, normally the time we joking call,“the silly season,” government in our country seems to have developed a bit too much of that silliness whether its at a State or Federal level. Perhaps it carries such a special concern when we consider the issues that are confronting our governments. We still seem to be in some economic uncertainty. Our state, and our state infrastructure is not in great shape, whether it’s the railways or the hospitals. Federally, we have economic challenges not to mention what is going on overseas, whether it is war in Afghanistan or conferences in Copenhagen. Just as in any other time, we need good government, and government focused on the issues of the day. We need wisdom and thought out strategies. We desperately need good government at home and abroad.
We saw last year a kind of secular version of Isaiah 9. The election of Barack Obama was hailed with wild delight around the world. Desmond Tutu sounded crazy with joy talking about him on the radio. Oprah Winfrey said on election night that there had ‘never been a night like this on the planet earth’. Perhaps an exaggeration. The whole world was hungry for hope, and now Obama is being told that the government of the world is upon his shoulders, and we expect him to solve its problems. Poor man: no ordinary mortal can bear that burden. Nor should we ask it of him. The joy and hope at his election only shows the extent that other hopes have failed, making us snatch too eagerly at sudden fresh signs. And that can be because we have forgotten the Christmas message, or have rendered it toothless, or have turned it into a Christmas fable, along with Santa himself, and all his elves, as though the shoulder of the child born at this time was simply a shoulder for individuals to lean on rather than the shoulder to take the weight of the world’s government.
Because this day, together with its senior cousin, Easter Day, is the real day planet earth was waiting for and to which it must look back if it wants to know the way forward.
Perhaps we place too much trust in our politicians because we place too little trust in God, or in the child who is born to us. And when our politicians make the shock admission that they were only human all along, all we can think of is . . . how to find another politician, a superman or woman, who will get it right this time. That’s like the non-solution to the present economic crisis proposed by every advanced economy in our world: “let’s all spend some more and then it’ll all be all right!” Which means, of course, lets keep doing what got us in to trouble in the first place, but lets do it,even more so, even more often, so we can be happy again, except, of course, for those who are losing their jobs, those whose homes are being repossessed, those who are lured into the trap of spiralling debt and can’t get out.
By now you’re probably thinking I came here for Christmas, not a half-baked version, of the 7.30 Report. So getting back to Jesus, Why was he born in Bethlehem? Luke tells us: because the then global superpower – Rome wanted to raise taxes, so they told everyone to sign up and pay up. That’s how the Middle East worked then, and, with minor adjustments, that’s how it works today. This was Caesar’s world, and you did what you were told. Yes, says Luke; but watch what happens next. The child who is born is the true king from the house of David. And all the ancient prophecies spoke of the coming royal child from David’s line as the king, not of one small country far away, certainly not of a heavenly kingdom removed from this earth, but of the earth itself, the world claimed by Caesar and taxed by Caesar, the world where the rich get rich at the expense of the poor while telling them they are giving them freedom, justice and peace. The world of empires from that day to this.
Luke’s story digs underneath this typical story of everyday empire and undermines it with the explosive news of a different empire, a different emperor, a different kind of emperor. Jesus isn’t simply another politician on whom everyone can pin their hopes and who’ll then let them down. His way of establishing God’s justice and peace on the earth was different to Caesar’s, different to the usual power games, different in method, different in effect. We are today hungry for exactly that difference, and Christmas is the time to ponder it.
Luke in his spectacular Christmas story cries out, that it’s time for a different kind of world, a different kind of empire. What we need is a new economic system, a new way of doing global politics, a new style of leadership. That’s what the Christmas message is all about: ‘Unto us a child is born, a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulders. And his name shall be called, Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.’ Christmas is all about the coming of the world’s true king, the one who stops wars, who forgives debts, who establishes true justice and judgment in the earth. But how does he do this? How do those four astonishing titles take effect? How can we prevent the Christmas message, being more than just whistling in the dark, a fantasy to help us forget the dark reality for a day or two?
The story the gospels tell is not whistling in the dark. It’s about this child growing up and starting to put God’s kingdom into operation, close up, wherever he goes. This is what it looks like, he says, when God is running things. The world gets turned the right way up.
In the gospels, the Wonderful Counsellor goes to work, dealing with individuals but also confronting the systems which had enslaved them, and upsetting the slavemasters. Watch as the Mighty God strides through Galilee feeding the hungry, healing the sick, rescuing people and restoring creation itself. Look on in awe as the Everlasting Father is seen mirrored in the incarnate Son, giving himself totally to his beloved world. And watch as Jesus, from his earliest beginnings with a price on his head, through to his riding the donkey into Jerusalem, shows what it looks like when the Prince of Peace is on the move. He comes to get God’s kingdom off the ground – or on to the ground, the real life of real people. And that involves taking upon himself the full force of the world’s cruel systems, the political and economic enslavement from which we still suffer, so that the power of evil can be broken and something new may take its place. That was true at Jesus’ birth, as it was true at his death. This is what the alternative looks like.
We need to think of different ways of organising our world; as the ad sign says, We’ve tried the rest, now try the best. Here we have the baby-in-the-manger way, the way of putting the vulnerable and the poor first and working out from there, ‘The government shall be upon his shoulders’: that is the good news of the gospel. With the story of the Christ-child in our hearts, and the Spirit of Jesus giving us energy and direction, we are called to be kingdom-bringers. How do we do it? Not by another political dream. It’s a different dream and it works in a different way.
The kingdom of the Christ-child gets to work when we stop, and look in wonder once more at the baby lying in the manger, and like Mary ponder in our hearts what it all means. Only through deep devotion to the child who is born to us, the son who is given to us, can we make sure that the government really is upon his shoulders. ‘O come, let us adore him’; yes, and then, with that adoration opening our eyes afresh to his way of doing things, putting into our minds and hearts a new vision of how things could be, let us celebrate the fact that the government is upon his shoulders, and let us go out into the new year to face the much-heralded darkness with the news of a great light.