Christmas Morning Sermon in Gloucester Cathedral 2012
The Right Reverend Michael Perham
Bishop of Gloucester
“It was quite extraordinary how my Christmas cards changed when I was ordained,” one of
the curates of the diocese said to me this week. “One year it was all Santas and, one year
later, it was all Jesus and Marys.” Well, I guess it’s good to send pictures of the Christmas
story to curates, or canons, or bishops even, just in case they are in danger of leaving the
Christ out of Christmas! Probably even better to send Jesus and Marys, rather than Santas,
to our friends and acquaintances who might not be intending to darken the doors of a
church over Christmas. Jesus and Marys better even than choristers throwing snowballs in
front of a cathedral shining brightly in the snow.
Bishops send and receive a lot of Christmas cards - even with today’s postal charges! I’ve
always worked with the Jesus and Mary principle. If the bishop’s Christmas card doesn’t
retell the Christmas story, we might as well all give up. So every year there is Jesus and
Mary, most years Joseph too, just occasionally shepherds, once in while angels; I can’t
remember any kings, but that may just be my prejudice that kings have to wait twelve days
till Epiphany. There was an interesting letter in The Times on Friday, asserting that there are
very few shepherd cards this year, but many more kings, perhaps because the cult of
celebrity has even reached Christmas cards and we need to celebrate gold, wealth and
affluence and shut out the poor man, the shepherd, who could not afford to bring a gift.
I’ve never worried too much about the shepherds or the kings, nor even the angels. The
focus for me is always that little group centre stage, centre stable - the man, the woman
and the child. It matters, of course, that they are Joseph, Mary and Jesus. It matters that the
child is the Son of God. But that’s not how I come to it first. They are simply a man, a
woman and a child. Human beings, made in God’s image. Human beings, the crown of God’s
creation - a man, a woman and a child. And God’s deep desire is that for every man, every
woman, every child, there shall be dignity, there shall be opportunity, there shall be
fulfilment, there shall be love. And the Christmas story is a daring risk-taking divine
adventure to further that desire.
In the Christmas card they are usually together - the man and the woman and the child.
And that’s good. For God has not made us to be alone, but to belong, to create community
- and, for those fortunate enough to have one, family is one such community, one that the
Christian tradition deeply affirms. But the world is not neat and tidy. We do not spend all
our time in family, in community. Sometimes we are alone and the love of God is all the
more important for us then. Sometimes we are lonely. I wrote about that in my Christmas
message for the media. Sometimes, especially at Christmas, people can descend into depths
of loneliness. But the God who in Jesus on the cross felt entirely alone is there too.
So look with me for a moment at the man and the woman and the child each in their own
space, not arranged together in a pleasing family shape.
Look at the man. Call him Joseph, if you will. The Christian tradition portrays him as a
working man, the carpenter of Nazareth, and as the guardian of the woman and the child.
That’s a fairly traditional male image and our life today is more complex in the West. But
stay with that model for a moment. Joseph, the carpenter - there’s even a Feast of St
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Joseph the Worker. And set that against the reality in our own society this Christmas, men
with no work, families with more than one generation where the men have no work, whole
communities of high unemployment, young men leaving school or even university with little
prospect of work, fathers having to go to the foodbank to feed the family - yes, even in
Cheltenham and Chipping Campden. Now I know this is not just a gender phenomenon. It is
happening to women too. But stay with that man who has not the wherewithal to be
guardian, the breadwinner, for the woman and the child. What that does for his self esteem
and his sense of flourishing? And wonder what God makes of that.
Look at the woman. Call her Mary, if you will. The Bible portrays her as God’s co-worker
and collaborator in the work of rescuing the world. Sometimes Christians portray Mary as a
model of submission and obedience. And indeed she is obedient to her vocation, the one the
angel spells out for her at the Annunciation, but it is a vocation to give birth to a Saviour, to
change history, to make a difference to the world. By her resounding “yes” to God’s
invitation, she, a woman, becomes the model for feminine humanity reaching its potential,
though, of course, by her faithfulness at the foot of the cross as much as in the pain of
labour, she becomes also a model of suffering patiently endured, woman made in the image
of God. Stay with that woman singing her song of prophecy and protest - “God has looked
with favour on his lowly servant, has scattered the proud in their conceit, has cast down the
mighty, has filled the hungry.” Stay with that woman and her vocation and think about our
contemporary world, where in many societies women are not treated as the equal of men,
think of discrimination enshrined in law and practice against women, think of the
downtrodden, the marginalised and the oppressed. Think of the place of women in our own
Church - a woman may mother the Son of God, but may not mother his body the Church.
And what does God make of that?
Look at the child. Call him the holy innocent, if you will. The Christmas story tells of a baby
laid in a manger, his birth a cause of pondering and wondering and great joy, taken as a
refugee into Egypt, growing in stature and wisdom under the watchful eye of his mother. But
it also tells of other children - the Church remembers them on the 28th of December, the
little boys killed by King Herod as he sought to annihilate the child whose birth had been
heralded by a star. “The Holy Innocents” we call them. Think for a moment of the children
of our world today - in some cases their growth stunted by poverty; in others growing up
with huge potential for flourishing, but sometimes abused, sometimes shaped from an early
age by the materialism and sexualisation all around them, sometimes snatched from their
homes, sometimes their lives cut short by violence. Hold in your heart the holy innocents of
Newtown, Connecticut, and their grieving parents. What does God make of that?
What God makes of all of that is that God must be among God’s people, ensuring they
know the limitlessness of God’s love and inviting them to work for the establishment of
God’s kingdom of justice and peace. Every time that God sees that love is absent and other
things have taken its place - greed, tyranny, violence, discrimation, oppression - God
wants to pour in the endless resource of love that flows from God’s heart. Eternally that is
what God has done, is doing and will do, ever pouring in love; the more it is needed, the
more it is given. To every man, to every woman, to every child, love, love and more love.
But God goes further. Love comes down at Christmas. Love is embodied. In the womb of
the woman hides the unborn Son of God. At the breast of the woman lies the One who has
come into the world to embody the love of God, to reveal it, to show what it is like utterly dependable, inexhaustible, even when the murderers move in. What God made of it,
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what God makes of it, is to move in, to be alongside with God’s passionate and
compassionate love.
With love and with yearning - yearning for a kingdom like heaven, a kingdom on earth,
where justice and mercy and peace are deeply established. When Jesus was born, angels
spoke to the shepherds, the poor men air-brushed out of the Christmas cards, about peace
on earth. The angel told them, because that is where it could start, with them. Not
necessarily with the big important people, though they had their part to play. Herod was
right - the old sort of kingdom was falling apart. The wise men were changed - they went
home by another route, their world suddenly looking as if it might pass away. For God had
begun to build a new kingdom, the kingdom of justice and mercy and peace and love.
At the heart of that kingdom was a child who would grow into manhood. At his side a
woman risked all for this new kingdom, though a sword pierced her soul. But soon, ready to
work with the child who became a man, there were others, who saw signs of a new
kingdom, and some who wanted to be part of it. There were the shepherds, there were the
wise men, and then there were Simeon and Anna, and then there were Andrew and Peter
and James and John and Mary of Magdala, and then there was Paul and Timothy and Phoebe.
Here were the kingdom builders.
What did God make of all that? God set about building a kingdom like no other kingdom.
God gave it its values. There shall be dignity, there shall be opportunity, there shall be
fulfilment, there shall be love - for every child, every woman, every man, made in God’s
image, the crown of God’s creation. In a stable in Bethlehem God’s Son was born to embody
the love and to inaugurate the kingdom. He searches today for people to honour those
values, share that love and build that kingdom. Are you joining in?
Joseph, Mary and Jesus, the man, the woman and the child, beloved by God.
Happy Christmas!
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