Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock,
"Now they are all on their knees",
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.
We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us 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 him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.
This poem, much used on Christmas Eve, of course, was published by Thomas Hardy in 1915 against the background of the second Christmas of the first world war. It must have been unbelievably poignant then, in those years when man’s ingenuity was turned to devastation and death and such optimism as there had ever been was hard to sustain in those years. That the poem still speaks of lost innocence and faint hope so strongly in these quite different years of peace and prosperity is of course a tribute to the author’s skill; but also surely to the enduring force of the Christmas message throughout history. And the fact that our response to it changes and grows as we grow older, so that while we may discard the folk tales of cattle kneeling and Santa Claus, we feel there is still something worth listening for – a voice to be heard, however faint it may become.
For Christmas Eve is a special night, when we stand momentarily between the past and the future in a quite distinctive way. Now you’re about to say that’s a silly thing to say - that we always stand momentarily between the past and the future and of course, we do. What’s done is done, what’s to come hasn’t happened yet. But this is the night when we recall and yet in a sense, await, the event that underpins our faith – the time when God became one of us, in the person of Jesus – a baby in Bethlehem.
This was the moment when Before
Turned into After, and the future's
Uninvented timekeepers presented arms.
This was the moment when nothing
Happened. Only dull peace
Sprawled boringly over the earth.
This was the moment when even energetic Romans
Could find nothing better to do
Than counting heads in remote provinces.
And this was the moment
When a few farm workers and three
Members of an obscure Persian sect.
Walked haphazard by starlight straight
Into the kingdom of heaven.
It’s that wonder of God with us that we wait on tonight and celebrate tomorrow.
Now just occasionally the national press comes up with a really good piece of religious writing, and there was one such in Saturday’s Face to Faith column in the Guardian, which was so good it left me thinking, why don’t I just read this for my sermon? But that would be cheating, so I’ll just pinch one idea from it. The bad news of Christmas. Recall that we said that God became one with us. In living among us and eventually dying for us, he signalled that we matter to him – you matter to him, I matter to him. The bad news is, and I quote, that this is true for everyone else too, true for you, true for the one who differs most from you.
So why don’t we, privately, and a bit naughtily on this night of all nights, line up a rogue’s gallery of, I don’t know, three or four people we’re not too keen on… it could for example be
* Someone in you life who really gets on your nerves. (that’s why we’ll keep it private because they might be sitting quite close)
* An overpaid and talent-free celebrity with a monster ego who..should never be allowed on TV again
* A criminal who had done something you find deeply despicable or somebody with whom you disagree deeply
* Or simply someone you find boring…
Got them lined up? The message is, as God comes into our world this night, they all have worth, they all matter to the God who is with us, he loves them all. It’s not bad news really, but it certainly is thought provoking. All those ghastly people – they matter to him just as much as we do.
Thomas Hardy’s poem harks back to a time of greater certainty and ends with the faintest of hopes. It is a far cry from the angel choirs proclaiming the saviour’s birth of which we sing this evening. But maybe in truth it is more in tune with many of our hearts – we hear the story, we get the message but our hope and faith are sometimes faint.
So what’s to be done? Are we inevitably going to live as though we simply weaved a fair fancy on this night? The angel choir doesn’t seem to appear to order, does it? But then again, then again, what are angels but messengers? §.. A few years ago, we all sat here one Christmas morning with scissors and card and made little paper angels. Indeed I gather some of them still exist around the village as reminders of the fact that we can all be God’s messengers.
I don’t propose to do that now, but what I would suggest is that perhaps we could conscript our own personal rogue’s gallery to do the job for us – every time we see one of them, it’s a little message that we matter to God, they matter to God. God’s love includes all of us, and that’s why he became God with us.
Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock – the hope of the world is here.