December 2024

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An address for a Christmas Eve midnight service

 

What do you want at Xmas?

We do silly things at Christmas - things we would not do the rest of the year. Have you seen what some people have put in their gardens? In one shop I saw a Christmas Tree dressed as a Santa that sings carols when you clap your hands. Mind you I have Christmas puddings on my tie. And, would you believe it, some people go to church only on this night.

Why? Thomas Hardy gives us a clue in hi poem, The Oxen

 

Christmas Eve and twelve of the clock,

   'Now they are all on their knees'

Said an elder as we sat in flock

   By the embers in hearthside ease.

 

We pictured the meek mild creatures where

   They knelt in their strawy pen

Nor did it occur to anyone there

   To doubt they were kneeling then

 

So fair a fancy few would weave

   In these years! Yet, I feel,

If someone said on Christmas Eve

   'Come see the Oxen kneel'

'In the lonely barton by yonder coomb'

   'Our childhood used to know'

I should go with them in the gloom,

   Hoping it might be so.

He would have gone to see the oxen kneel -  "hoping it might be so". Of course we despise and mock the old superstitions: oxen kneeling, or Shakespeare believing that

"the nights are wholesome and no fairy takes, no witch has power to harm".

We are modern rational people, we don't believe all the old stuff.

Yet we feel the same, don't we? We hope it might be so.

We live our ordinary lives. We pick our ways through the hazards of life, finding our pleasure and comfort where we can. As you look back over the past year no doubt you can pick out the highs and lows. There have been highs, certainly, times of happiness, enjoyment, of love and affection. But they are not many of us whose lives have not been touched by evil circumstance or by human wickedness. We share that with all those people who have gathered for over a millennium in this place. We are no different. And we share something else.

We feel that there must be something more that there is something more than this. Surely there is more to life than keeping healthy or out of debt. More to it than indulgence and filling the attic with useless possessions, more to life than the occasional meal out and an annual holiday. Surely there is more than that.

That is why Thomas Hardy would go to the byre and that is, if we are honest, why we are here. Because here we feel that there is something more - that we are not loose in the world, not on our own, not merely here to fulfil our own desires and pursue own petty and necessary ends. That we feel we are part of something greater, bigger, more purposeful.

Down the years people have gone to church on this night for the same reason. Lords and Ladies in their finery, Bishops and Priests in their pomp, farmers from their ploughs, fishermen from their boats, bakers from their ovens, butchers from the meat, joiners from their wood, clerks and mangers from their papers. Even at the back the landless labourers with only their poverty; they are here too. Like them we have come out of the cold darkness of a winter's night into this bright warm place to catch a glimpse of something better, higher, nobler. To catch a glimpse of what we mean to God.

To be lifted above the commonplace, above our squalid dealings, above our grasping and greed, above our meanness and deceit, above our self-centredness and frail humanity.

Please do not trivialise your presence here, that you have come out of habit, or that it is a fun thing to do at Christmas. Do not pretend you do not know why you are here. You know it goes far deeper than that. You are in touch with things that belong to your peace, your happiness and your salvation. And you must grasp it. Set aside your selfishness and greed. Do not think your life will grow rich through indulgence. Trust God for your life and with your life. Do all the good you can. Follow Christ; the baby in the manager. You are here to seek something better. You were made for something better. And you will find it lying in a manger. The love of God for you and for the whole world.