This sermon was preached on the 25th of December 2024, The Feast of the Birth of Our Lord, in the Anglican Parish of Kalamunda-Lesmurdie. A recording is available here.
Texts:
Sermon text
Where do you find your hope? What gives you hope?
I ask this because hope is an essential human need – one that we too often fail to scrutinise. I have my own hopes and ambitions and I’m sure you do too. And we have hopes for those whom we love, for children, for family, for friends.
But there are deeper kinds of hope. There is the hope that the world will be a better place, not just for me, or for you, or for us, but for every human being. There is the hope that we will be better stewards and custodians of creation, of the Earth.
And there is a deeper hope still. There is the hope that there is some sort of meaning to the world, to be found amongst all of this seeming chaos. The hope that there is some sort of justice in our improbable existence, some kind of meaning amongst the beauty and the brokenness that we witness in our daily lives.
And so, we need hope, but where shall we find it?
Well in today’s Gospel we hear of the Emperor Augustus. Augustus utters an order to an aide, and suddenly the whole machine of empire whirrs into action, people in their thousands, in their hundreds of thousands, travelling back to their ancestral homes so that they can be counted.
Surely this is power!
In his time Augustus was praised as lord and saviour. He had brought peace to the Roman Empire after a century of civil war.
And here we find a very seductive kind of hope. The Roman Empire had no concept of human rights, no concept of the dignity of the person. Either you were rich, and powerful – and protected because you were rich and powerful – or you were an object, to be used, exploited, and discarded.
What hope can we find in a society like that?
We can find only a pallid kind of hope: the hope that you and your immediate circle will come out on top; or the hope that you will go unnoticed, that you’ll get by; the hope that order, bought at any price, will still be better than utter chaos.
It’s remarkable to me that we hear no dissent, no fear when Augustus gives his order. Everybody just does what they’re told. Even the Holy Family set out upon their journey, even though it would have been very difficult for the heavily pregnant Mary.
Fear only enters into the story later.
Fear enters into the story when God kicks in the fourth wall, and bursts into the world.
Picture the shepherds, out in their field.
These are not neat and tidy people, these people aren’t middle class: they’re one step above vagrants. They sleep out in the fields by night, on beds that they roll up and carry with them by day; and they take turns to watch by night.
But think about that: there’s a care there, surely. A care one for another, a care for the animals. A deep, simple care.
And then into this scene suddenly from nowhere there bursts a dazzling light: the light uncreated, the light eternal.
And with that light comes the thunderous sound of heaven, myriad voices, the host of heaven, chanting the eternal hymn! Glory to God in the highest heaven!
And how do those shepherds react?
Well they’re absolutely terrified.
And you can hardly blame them. They’re terrified, because suddenly they don’t know what is happening, suddenly the sky has burst into light, suddenly before them stand angels, the heavenly host.
But they’re terrified on another level as well, because the order of the world has just been turned upside down and shattered.
God has entered the story of humanity in a particular way, in the person of Jesus Christ.
And this is where we find the true hope, this is where we find eternal hope.
Not in emperors, not in human structures of rule, not in those people who in our own time make banner headlines. No, true hope is found in God.
If you had asked Augustus how divine power might be known in the world, he would have pointed to a bust of himself sitting on a plinth in his palace. And if you asked the shepherds, they too might have pointed to earthly rulers and kings.
But God chooses a profoundly different path. A path so humble and surprising and improbable and wonderful that no human being could have seen it coming without some kind of divine inspiration.
The second person of God, the Word of God eternal, the Word of God who spoke all of this, all of creation in its magnificence into being, the Christ is born to Mary and lies in a manger. Born to Mary, a woman from a dusty corner of empire, a woman who could have been entirely overlooked – but not by God.
Take a look at this artwork. It’s one that I love. It comes from the Besançon Book of Hours. It’s from the fifteenth century, from late medieval times. It shows us the nativity, it shows us a beautiful moment between father and son, Joseph cradling the newborn, swaddled Jesus. And it also tells us something of who Mary is: Mary was a theologian, Mary knew the Scriptures, Mary loved God with all her heart.
And it’s in this scene that we find our true hope. Hope in Emmanuel, God with us.
God is not an emperor. God is not a tyrant. God did not enter into the world to fix everything with the click of a finger. God entered into the world to be with us, to be with us in the beauty and chaos and wonder of life.
And God entered into the world to show us, in the person of Jesus, in this little swaddled child, who God is, and who we might all might be. In that little baby we find our God. God trusted in humanity. God became utterly vulnerable, as every human child is, utterly dependent on Mary and Joseph to feed and to care and most of all to love.
This is true hope. And true hope is never anchored in fear. True hope finds its source in love. True hope finds its source in God.
The three persons of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, as limited as those words are, are an eternal community, bound up together. And eternally they offer all that they are, one to another, now and forever, world without end.
And the second of those persons, the Christ, came into the world, to show us this, to show us the eternal, perfect nature of God. Jesus taught. Jesus healed. And most of all, Jesus loved. Read the Gospels and you will find that Jesus never turns anyone away.
Today we celebrate the Birth of Jesus. We celebrate that all creation, all humanity has been sanctified, through the miracle of the incarnation, through the miracle of Emmanuel, God with us.
God has made you in their image: ever person bears that image, the image of God, Holy and Triune. And so every person is infinitely precious in the sight of God: you are infinitely precious, the person next to you is infinitely precious, every single person in the whole world who has ever been, and ever will be.
We have seen in God incarnate, in this little boy, the potential and dignity not just of ourselves, but of everybody. And this transforms the world! This utterly transforms how we view one another, and how we relate to one another. It is the eternal legacy of this little child in a manger.
So embrace the image of God that you bear. Embrace God’s call. Be who God calls you to be, who God made you to be.
Let go of false hopes.
Let go of fear.
Let go of division.
Let go of judgement.
Do those two simple things that Jesus asked us to do.
Love the Lord your God.
Love your neighbour as yourself.
Amen.