Sermon preached on Christmas Morning 2013 in Gloucester Cathedral
By The Right Reverend Michael Perham, Bishop of Gloucester
Have you ever thought what a challenge it is to preach in the Cathedral on Christmas
morning? Especially for the tenth time! There are a whole series of expectations. For some
of you the primary need is brevity - presents and partying await you and may be you came
chiefly for the carols, or, perhaps better, for communion, not so much to listen to the
bishop. Ten minutes at most you’re thinking. You’ll be lucky!
Then there are the media. They want something relevant to the tragedies and traumas of the
world. Senior bishops, it said in The Times at the weekend, are going to challenge the
government in their Christmas sermons about what the Archbishop of York has called the
“British food crisis”. Well, now I know I am not a senior bishop, because nobody has asked
me to do that or asked if I am going to. Of course here in Gloucester we got there last year
when I did talk on Christmas Day about food banks, even in Cheltenham, even in Chipping
Campden. And, yes, it is wonderful that the churches are involved so much in food banks I visited the one in Tewkesbury during the year - and, yes, it is a scandal that we have
created the sort of society in which people have to resort to food banks, even some people
in work, unable to make ends meet. Jesus, born in poverty, has something to say into that
situation. Let the government hear that message.
But the media have already had a message from me, a slightly different one. You may have
seen it. I was struck by the Christmas campaign by the homelessness charity, Shelter, with its
headline message:
One homeless child at Christmas is a tragedy. 80,000 of them is a disgrace.
I was puzzled by the 80,000. Clearly too small a figure to be a world-wide statistic, but surely
too great to be the UK alone, I thought. But, no, 80,000 is the figure for Britain and last year
it was 75,000, so the situation is deteriorating. “Homeless” in this context doesn’t often
mean no roof over their head, but it does more often than not mean emergency housing in
Bed and Breakfasts. Shelter tells how almost half of the families they interviewed reported
children witnessing disturbing incidents, including open drug use and threats of violence. The
Christmas story that we retell each year is, of course, about a homeless family. Again they
did have a roof over their head, but it was a stable with straw in a manger for a bed, in
reality a wretched place for a child to be, let alone a place for a mother to bring her child to
birth.
There’s another cry for help that has stuck in my mind this Christmas too. It came to me as I
listened again to St Luke’s account of the birth of Jesus.
In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be
registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of
Syria.
Quirinius was governor of where? Of Syria! What a reminder that the region that keeps
hitting the headlines, the region where there is war, conflict, a frightful refugee problem and
a relentless persecution of Christians is the region of Christ’s birth. Insignificant Judea was
part of the vast Roman province of Syria of which Quirinius was governor. And Egypt is
always in the news and there the attacks on Coptic Christians are driving the Christian
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minority away from the land where the infant Jesus was a refugee. For the Christmas story
did not stop at the stable scene. Later comes the massacre of the innocent children by the
tyrant King Herod, from which Joseph, Mary and Jesus escape only by a flight into Egypt. The
homeless family become the refugees in a foreign land. 80,000 homeless children in Britain is
indeed a disgrace, but the hundreds of thousands of refugee children, fleeing from Syria and
other countries, is more disgraceful still. That needs to be spoken about at Christmas too.
So what should I speak about? What do I want you and others who will read this through
social media and websites to reflect upon this Christmas? Food banks, yes. Homelessness,
yes. The tragedy of Syria, Egypt, Palestine and the whole North African and Middle East
region, yes. Only ten minutes remember. But there are some other things as well.
You might want to hear something a bit more homely and Christmassy in a joyful sort of
way. After all you came (at least in part) for the carols. I’m really glad we sang “Christians,
awake!”, John Byrom’s fine 18th century Christmas hymn, designed originally to be sung by
carollers in the street below to literally wake up the slothful upstairs in their beds asleep on
Christmas morning in Manchester, a stone’s throw from the cathedral. You may be thankful
we did not sing all nine stanzas of Byrom’s original poem, or even the six to which it is
reduced in the hymn book. We had only four, so somebody somewhere knows you need to
get home for the presents and the party. But, just in the verses we sang, there are such wise
and beautiful lines and ultimately this:
Rise to adore the mystery of love,
which hosts of angels chanted from above
There’s wisdom there - the mystery of love. For love came down at Christmas. Just keep
looking at the Christmas scene. Look into the crib. Look at the picture on a Christmas card.
Look at a statue of the Virgin and child and ponder the mystery of love. And then move on
from that to this:
With Mary let us ponder in our mind
God’s wondrous love in saving humankind,
Trace we the babe who has retrieved our loss
From his poor manger to his bitter cross.
We seem to be leaving behind the political and the social and becoming a bit theological.
Well, not quite, but the political and social meet with the theological on Christmas Day and
you can’t divide them. Theology, that’s another thing at least some of you want in a
Christmas sermon.
There is one sense in which the Shelter campaign could be said to have got it wrong.
One homeless child at Christmas is a tragedy. 80,000 of them is a disgrace.
The point of the Christmas story is that, in one unique case, one homeless child at
Christmas was not a tragedy. It was a revelation of the love of God, the mystery of love, and
the beginning of a life of love that brought rescue to a broken world. It challenges us to
work, with the God who loves the world so much that he sent Jesus, to reduce that figure of
80,000 and, if necessary, to open our borders more readily to refugees. Yes, one homeless
child at Christmas was the sign of love and the source of salvation.
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So what should I speak about this Christmas? Food banks, yes. Homelessness, yes. The
tragedy of Syria, Egypt and Palestine, yes. The joy of our Christmas celebration with its
hymns and carols, yes. The mystery of love, yes.
It’s a kind of messy mix, isn’t it? The pictures pile up, superimposed one over another - the
holy family in the stable (throw in some shepherds, angels and beasts), people collecting food
vouchers in Gloucestershire, this joyful gathering where we meet the child of Bethlehem in
the spiritual food of our Christmas communion, people queuing for food in Syrian refugee
camps, carol singers in the streets of Manchester or Gloucester, Middle Eastern Christians
attacked in their churches, Mary pondering the mystery of love (God’s wondrous love in
saving humankind).
It’s a messy mix! That’s what Christmas is all about, the messy mix, in which God in Jesus
Christ chose to live, born on Christmas Day, to inhabit the mix, to share the mess and to
make a stupendous difference. Yes, because he was God with us, one homeless child at
Christmas was the sign of love and the source of salvation.
In his beautiful rich and profound meditation on the meaning of the coming of Jesus, John
wrote - we heard it in the gospel, honoured with incense and alleluias The Word became flesh and lived among us.
Lived among us. Made his home with us. Inhabited the mix and the mess. But he went on:
We have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son.
Somehow there was glory in the mix and the mess. Good news and glory.
+Michael Gloucestr:
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