Christmas Homily: Ards 2017: Year of the Family

Christmas Homily: Ards 2017: Year of the Family

Emmanuel that is the title He gives Himself…

God with us…

Down the dark and longing ages the prophet’s flame touched words are heard,

“A virgin will conceive and bear a Son and his name shall be Emmanuel”…

They were not understood but they were repeated, renewed in each generation’s heartfelt yearning…and so the sacred words come down to us…

They shine an inner light upon that yearning that arises from that deeply gnawing sense we all have of separation… of being alone… of isolation…

Separated from our God, sin sundered from each other, separated by death… we long for completeness, for perfection, for peace… for life eternal,

for God with us…

We look for its fulfilment… so often searching in the wrong places… We give ourselves over to short term solutions, thinking that our hungers are more important than asking why we are hungry at all and, if we are then what are we truly hungry for? We think our desires are more important than those of others, our needs more pressing than yours…and so finding in our overwhelming desires a fire that scorches and destroys when all the time we were really looking for a light that illumines and enlightens…

It is enough to make us despair…

Or it would be…

Were it not for the prophet’s Spirit whispered promise…

Emmanuel: Our God with us…

the fulfilment of all our hopes and dreams with us…

Can it really be possible?

We wonder…

Could the God of gods, the light from light truly want to be with us?

With us in our mess?

With us in our sin?

With us in our brokenness?

No! Impossible, we think,

At least not until I make myself perfect, or at least a little better,

God would not come to my home, to my heart, to my family… I mean look at us…

Look at me…

“If you really knew me…” we say

 and the fall silent before the mirror of our own soul and its sin soiled surface

No, we think… He could not want to be with me, and in our twisted pride we close our doors to him, just as surely as the innkeeper did on that night,

as the Pharisees would later,

as Pilate finally will with the washing of his hands…

But look at the name He is announced under…

God with us… Emmanuel

Not God with us if…

Not God with us… when

Not God with us…but

You see, where true love exists there are no ifs, buts, or whens;

no conditions no limits no ultimatums

There is only with…

The Lover with the Beloved

Each allowing the other to be who they are.

The One present to the other in open compassion and peace.

That is love

That alone

And to prove this He comes in the most simple and poor way possible.

He descends directly into the mess, into the heart of the mess,

Into a divided world

Into conquered nation

Into a persecuted people

Into a displaced tribe

Into a dung and straw filled stable

Into a topsy turvy family barely ready for a birth

Into the pure heart of a young girl

Love descends.

Love itself descends and becomes one with the mess

Becomes one with us.

Becomes one with me.

Becomes one with you.

And we touch pure, divine unconditional love

No waiting for us to be perfect here…

If God was to wait for us to be perfect there would never have been a Christmas!

No He comes to the mess and in coming to it begins to heal it there and then.

Right there in the midst of it all.

He comes.

The star hangs silent and almost unnoticed over a town overrun with chaos

The angels travel to the simplest and most unclean to deliver the message

of peace!

(no shepherds allowed in the temple! No farmers before the altar with their muddy sandals and earthy hands.)

Emmanuel: Our God with us…

He comes in stillness

He comes in peace

He comes in vulnerability

He comes in the middle of the night

He comes in the deep midwinter

He comes to be loved

He comes to love as only a baby loves

Without judgement and always in the perfect

present moment, forgetting what has just been before

and open to Love now.

Emmanuel: Our God with us…

One with us…

And in that shining moment of Bethlehem we are made part of His family again

The one great family of creation restored as sons and daughters of the Most High

There is no one without a family ever again

No one without a place here at the manger

No one for whom the babe would not have come

Or did not come…

He came for you

He came for me, broken, sinful me…

And He came so that in the Love that is God the broken would be made whole, the sin forgiven and the new beginning of blessing begun in my life and in yours too…

This is what we celebrate tonight…

Every Christmas light you see reminds us of the light of the stable and the star,

every tree in every window the evergreen welcome of Christ in His Love,

every gift exchanged a shadow of the greatest gift ever given…

this is why we gather here and in all the churches of the world tonight and it is why we are sent from here with this message, this commission to tell the whole world

Our God is Emmanuel

Our God is with us!

Hear it!

You have a commission… You cannot call yourself a Christian and absolve yourself from it! Wherever you are, wherever you go you have a message to proclaim, if not by your words then more importantly by your life!

In your home

In your place of work

In your relationships

You must be Christmas!

You must be the reminder to all that God is with us!

You must become a Christmas tolling bell announcing the Word made Flesh,

the birth of the Saviour…

No one should meet you, friend or stranger and not meet the Good News of God in the mess, God with us…

No one should meet you, should meet me

without knowing they have met another call to the manger,

a call to come home to the family of God,

a call to the embrace of Love;

No one should meet you, should meet me

without knowing that in some way they have met the Christ who comes,

the babe of Bethlehem, the God who is with us…

the God who is love.

The God who sees in us only and always

His beloved sons and daughters

His family.

We have called Him Lord and Master and rightly, for so He is…

We have called Him Prince of Peace, and Wonderful Counsellor and Everlasting Father, and so He is…

But He has called Himself Emmanuel…

God with us…

And that is what we celebrate this Christmas night.

May the Lord give you His Peace this Christmas Night: The Father, the Son and + the Holy Spirit.

Amen/