Carol Service Sermon 2023: Christmas has been cancelled in Bethlehem

 

Christmas has been cancelled in Bethlehem.

Or at least, celebrations will be kept to a minimum this year in response to the war in Gaza.

There will be no Christmas tree and no fairy lights.

 

Bethlehem’s economy is 90% dependent on tourists and pilgrims, but for months now souvenir sellers have been playing backgammon rather than running their stalls.

Normally 150 000 people would go Bethlehem during the Christmas period, but this year there are virtually no visitors.

In contrast to the first Christmas, the hotels are empty.

 

One church in Bethlehem has set up a manger scene surrounded by rubble.

Perhaps more than the tinsel and the glitter, that image of a manger in the midst of rubble, captures the meaning of Christmas.

Because Jesus came for a broken world.

He entered our mess.

 

If we imagine the perfectly curated Christmas, there might seem little need of Christ.

I’ve no idea how Jesus fits with Stacey Solomon's Crafty Christmas or Jamie Oliver’s Quick and Easy Christmas.

But when we think of the reality of our world, perhaps we can begin to understand why Christ came.

 

He was born in royal David’s city, but he came to be with the poor and meek and lowly.

He was born after a long, hard journey, in difficult circumstances, in an occupied land, his parents displaced from home.

An animal’s feeding trough in a borrowed room isn’t the beautiful nursery parents-to-be dream of.

And soon Jesus would be a child refugee, fleeing from Herod’s violence.

 

Christmas is for people walking in darkness, for those living in the land of the shadow of death.

It’s for those who know gloom, distress and oppression.

But it is a great light – a dawn which changes everything.

The true light has come into the world.

 

In the carol, O Little Town of Bethlehem, we sang:

in thy dark streets shineth
the everlasting light;

 

Jesus came into this world of sin, and he comes to all who will receive him still.

We need him to cast out our sin and enter in and be born in us today.

 

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling amongst us, in this world of mess and pain.

God himself came to our world in Jesus, that by believing in him we might have new life as the children of God.

 

Even when there are no fairy lights, the Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.

Jesus could not be cancelled.

When they killed him, he rose victorious from the dead.

The Light wins!

 

Jesus is the Prince of peace, and of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end.

 

There’s still a long way to go before we see the message of the angels, of peace on earth, entirely fulfilled.

But their message is more than make-believe.

It’s not merely sentiment or aspiration.

It’s good news because it is the announcement of the favour and kindness of God: of God’s undeserved love for us and our broken world.

Something has happened which the Shepherds can go and check out:

The birth of the Saviour – Christ, the Lord, the long-promised rescuer-king, who alone can give us peace with God and peace within.

 

However terrible the pain and suffering of our world, we should never allow it to cancel Christmas.

According to the Bible, Jesus came to cancel the charge-sheet of sin for all who would put their trust in him.

 

The darkness, the shadow, mustn’t do away with Christmas.

It shows us our need of the Light.

 

So even amidst the rubble, look to the manger!

Perhaps especially when we’re conscious of terrible violence and suffering, Christmas is good news of great joy to all people.

 

May you know hope, joy and peace this Christmas. Amen.

 * * * 

Since preaching this sermon, I've seen online a a 1511 painting by Albrecht Altdorfer of the nativity amongst a somewhat derelict house. 

On the first Sunday of Advent 1943, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote from prison:

November 28, 1943

My dear Parents,

Although no one has any idea whether and how letters are presently being handled, I nevertheless want to write to you on this afternoon of the first Sunday in Advent. The Altdorfer nativity scene, in which one sees the holy family with the manger amid the rubble of a collapsed house—just how did he come to portray this in such a way, flying in the face of all tradition, four hundred years ago?—is particularly timely. Even here one can and ought to celebrate Christmas, he perhaps wanted to say; in any case, this is what he says to us.