Hebrews 1. 1 – 12
John 1. 1 – 14
Christmas Eve
Fr Alex
“And the Word became flesh and lived among us.” We have arrived at last at the great moment itself, the culmination of our weeks of watching and waiting.
Tonight we celebrate the fulfilment of the promise made to God’s people over thousands of years, repeated by prophets down the ages. That God would send a Saviour.
But I have a question. Why does God go to so much effort over us? The story of salvation that we’ve heard in the pages of scripture over this holy season, is really a story of God’s creation causing him a lot of trouble. A story of human beings turning away from him, time and again.
So what is it all for? Why do we celebrate this birth tonight? And why does God keep bothering with us, when we let him down so often?
Tucked into your booklets is a little sheet with one of my favourite poems: ‘Making,’ by R S Thomas. It is a beautiful meditation on the nature of God, and his relationship with his creation.
And having built it I set about furnishing it to my taste: first moss, then grass annually renewed, and animals to divert me: faces stared in from the wild. I thought up the flowers then birds. I found the bacteria sheltering in primordial darkness and called them forth to the light. Quickly the earth teemed. Yet still an absence disturbed me. I slept and dreamed of a likeness, fashioning it, when I woke, to a slow music; in love with it for itself, giving it freedom to love me; risking the disappointment.
God takes so much trouble over us, purely and simply because he loves us. He is endlessly patient and faithful, even when we let him down, because he is in love with what he has made; and he longs for it to love him in return.
That wonderful image that Thomas conjures up of God surveying all the good things of creation; but still feeling disturbed by an absence; that nagging feeling that drives an artist on when his masterpiece is nearly complete; giving expression to the passionate need to create.
To sleep, and to dream of something so precious that he bestows on it his own divine likeness; in love with it for no other reason than for the joy of loving it. But most importantly, giving it freedom to choose to love him—or not—in return.
The story of salvation might indeed seem in many ways to be a story of failure and disappointment, but that’s ok. In creation, God risked the disappointment of rejection; because love is not authentic unless it is freely given. No one can compel someone to love them, not even God.
And yes, while this story might seem to be about a problem that needs fixing, the truth couldn’t be more different.
In that great Gospel reading, the incredible prologue to the Gospel of John, we heard of the creative work of the Word of God, with God in the beginning.
When God built the earth and furnished to his taste, with moss and grass and animals and flowers and birds; that Word was there. When God slept and dreamed and fashioned a likeness to love, that Word was there.
And in the dark and mess of a stable, on the edge of nowhere, in the unlikeliest spot of all: that Word was there, God’s likeness and our likeness, heaven and earth in one little space: all to show us just what God’s love looks like, and to call us to love him in return.
The incarnation didn’t happen to fix a problem with creation: the incarnation was God’s final response to that absence that so disturbed him in the act of creation; his desire for closeness with what he had made, and fallen in love with. His desire for the Word of his creation to become part of that creation: to become flesh and dwell with it, to know our hopes and our fears, to feel our joys and our pains.
No longer a disturbing absence, but a fulfilling presence: God with us, and us with God.
We look at the story of salvation with human eyes and see a story of scarcity: of human failure and sinfulness. But if we look again, with the loving eyes of God, we see a story of abundance: the abundance of God’s love for what he has created, and the enormous lengths he goes to, to show us that love.
It seems to me that the watching and waiting of Advent, is really all about stopping and listening for that “slow music” of God’s love, as R S Thomas puts it; about tuning our ears and our hearts to the music of heaven, so that we might add our own voices to the great song of love that continues each Christmas-time.
After all, the first thing those shepherds heard on the hillside outside Bethlehem, was the heavenly music of angels. Their great song of joy at heaven coming down to earth: and earth being drawn closer to heaven.
May you come to know how much you are loved this Christmas: unconditionally and abundantly. And may you experience the creative and transforming power of that love, in the year to come. Amen.