“CHRISTMAS
COMES BUT ONCE A YEAR”
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A sermon preached Readings: Isa
60:1-6, Matthew 2:1-12; |
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“The left for
their own country by another route” (Mt 2:12)
Thomas Tusser (1542-1580) once wrote
“At Christmas play and make good cheer,
For Christmas comes but once a year”
Living
in the 16th Century, he knew what he was talking about –
for
Henry VIII had passed a law restricting Christmas festivities –
forbidding any
“artificer, or craftsman, of any handicraft or
occupation,
husbandman, apprentice, labourer, servant at husbandry,
journeyman, servant of artificer, mariner, fisherman,
waterman or any serving man [to]
play at tables, tennis, dice, cards, bowls, clash,
coyting, logating or any other unlawful game,
out of Christmas, under pain of 20/- to be forfeit
every time.”
In
other words, the working classes could play games to celebrate Christmas,
but then it was back to normal for another 12months.
·
There is of course a school of ecclesiastical thought
which fits in with this -
The Ecclesiastical purists who give us
12 days -
Christmas lasts from Dec 24 to Epiphany, Jan 6th,
and they won’t allow anything other than advent hymns
to pass their lips until Christmas Eve –
not a shepherd or an angel to be seen.
·
But over against that,
secular Britain seems to have a longer and longer Christmas -
Shopkeepers are happy with three months
And then again I knew one local preacher who regularly picked
“O come all ye faithful” in August to remind us
that the Christmas Gospel is eternally and always true.
Which reminds me a
bit of the character in Alice
who preferred unbirthdays to birthdays,
because you got 364 a year instead of only one.
I suppose I want
to say two things –
1.
The rhythm of the
Church calendar has a real value –
every season a different lens through which we see the one true Gospel,
each season to be anticipated and celebrated in its turn.
(I see Easter Eggs have now displaced the crackers in Tesco –
call me old fashioned, but it seems a shame
to have our seasons run into each other like this)
2.
But the Christmas
story is one which should inspire and imbue
our living 365 or 366 days a year.
The Christmas Gospel should not get packed away
with the baubles and the fairy from the top of the tree.
Look at the
shepherds and the wise men:
1.
They came to the manger for the special time.
2.
They didn’t take up residence in the inn.
3.
The shepherds went back to the fields – they had sheep to watch -
4.
The Wise Men went back East
But
their lives were transformed and would never be the same again.
And
so for us –
though we may not sing carols and read the Christmas story all year,
I hope we may take with us into the whole of the new year the Christmas
message.
At
a very basic secular level,
there are the true riches of the Christmas season to take with us back east,
back to the fields -
v When you meet and greet
strangers
v When you make a fool of
yourself for the sake of a laugh
v When you spend more money
time and energy on others than yourself
v When you are particularly
kind and forbearing
to the most difficult members of the family
We
need to make sure these do not go back in the box in the loft
with the tinsel and the wrapping paper until the next season of goodwill.
But
the issue is deeper than that -
At
a deeper level,
as we come to the manger at Bethlehem,
we meet one who changes our understanding of the world
and will not allow us ever to see the world in the same way again.
TS Eliot’s marvellous poem about the Wise Men
Includes the lines
“We returned to our old places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods”
And
when we leave the Christmas manger, we find that we have –
like the shepherds and the wise men before us –
glimpsed a vision of what the world could be.
We
have glimpsed a vision of true humanity –
Of
the possibilities for our race.
And
that of course is the whole point of the incarnation –
that we see in our own lives and our own sinful world, a glimpse of God –
and a glimpse of truly fulfilled humanity.
And
no, we don’t celebrate Christmas every day of the year –
not in the sense of sitting by the manger –
but we do take with us the vision - the vision
of a new world.
And
like the wise men of old, we find return from whence we came –
and the place is the same, but we know it differently –
for we see it in the context of the manger of Bethlehem.
So we see
·
the gods of materialism and greed,
·
the gods of shock and awe,
·
the gods of sleaze and filth –
perhaps
a world which we took too much for granted in the old days –
But
now we have followed a star –
Now
we have been on a journey –
And
we must see the world in the light of the star –
And
strive to make the whole world like the stable of Bethlehem.
Yes – Christmas may come but
once a year,
and the carol sheets may soon be packed away for another year -
but for those who have looked fully into the face of the babe of Bethlehem,
nothing will ever be quite the same again