Light in the darkness

Sermon – Midnight Mass, 2015, Snape Castle Chapel

The light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it. Words from John’s Gospel we just heard. Light in the darkness….

We see Christmas lights everywhere this time of year and tonight, here we are, bathed in the soft glow of candlelight. We sing about light in carols: “light and life to all he brings”, “but in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light”, “Silent night, Holy night, Son of God, love's pure light”. So what is this Light which we celebrate at Christmas? Where do we look for true Christmas Light?

Perhaps we should look at some of this year’s TV ads which seem to want to share some kind of “spirit of Christmas”. The John Lewis ad, (Man in the Moon) has a theme of reaching out to the isolated, symbolized by a girl sending presents to an elderly man on the moon. Then there’s the Sainsbury’s ad featuring Mog the cat who saves the day when the house catches fire, but the punchline is that all the neighbours share their Christmas things with Mog’s family.

And then there’s the new Star Wars film The Force Awakens, where some themes seem to fit the season. No spoilers, I promise! The film’s title The Force Awakens appeals to the idea of a moral rising up, the goodies standing up for justice against oppressors.  The whole series of Star Wars films includes themes of hope, good versus evil, oppressed peoples waiting for their salvation, and on the personal level, themes of power, temptation, self-sacrifice and redemption. The light sabres shine in the darkness…?

In many ways, then, we live in a culture which still seems to want to embrace some elements of what we think of as the spirit of Christmas. But even these positive themes are not the heart of Christmas, they are not the light shining in the darkness which John’s Gospel speaks of. At Christmas, we may see glimpses of light in the darkness in these cultural nods but, to paraphrase Obi-Wan Kenobi’s line in a previous Star Wars film, “These aren’t the lights you’re looking for. You can go about your business…”
They are not the real deal.

Perhaps we can see the Light more clearly in a traditional nativity play acted out by small children? Even here though, we can still end up selling Christmas short, lovely and heartwarming as nativity plays invariably are. And that’s the problem. If our vision of Christ’s birth is merely “lovely and heartwarming”, if it’s the cosy, sanitized picture painted by sentimental Victorian carols like Away in a Manger, we have got it very wrong. “But little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes”? Seriously? Doesn’t sound like a real baby to me… and make no mistake, Jesus was a real, human baby.  An airbrushed, idealized baby who doesn’t cry, in a soft-lit, beautifully clean stable scene with docile animals, beautifully lit by starlight is pretty much the opposite of the events of Christmas we read about in the Bible. It was dirty. It was messy, smelly, noisy. It took place under an oppressive regime in an unimportant part of a huge empire. It took place at the end of a pregnancy which would have shamed both Mary and Joseph’s families. God met us in a mess. Jesus arrived in squalor and was laid in an animal’s food trough because things were so bad that there simply was no other option, and before Jesus was much older, his family had to become refugees in Egypt, as they fled for their lives.

The light shines in the darkness…

But again, this light is about more than the mere survival of a baby against the odds. Jesus, the Light of the World didn’t remain a baby. He grew into a man and lived a perfect life which exemplified God’s love, showing us that it is possible to love God and love each other. But this life of self-giving love had a price: it challenged the powerful and made those who thought they had the monopoly on morality uncomfortable. And it led to an unfair trial, torture and a shameful death for Jesus on a cross.

The world still has darkness. The world still needs light. So yes, this Christmas let us reach out to the isolated as John Lewis suggest. Let us share our plenty with those in need as suggested by Sainsbury’s. As in The Force Awakens, let us reawaken our efforts to bring about justice in our world (not just in a galaxy far, far away). All good stuff, really good stuff which I am not knocking.  But remember that these are symptoms of Christmas Light, reflections, not the light itself.

God’s Light is not remote. God came to us – and still comes to us today - in Jesus. The darkness of this world meant that Jesus’s life of love, light and peace led to his death on the cross. And then, three days later, the true nature of the Light which Shines in the Darkness was revealed: Jesus rose from the dead.  The Eternal Light of God came to live among us in the person of Jesus Christ on Christmas day, but this crucial moment in history wasn’t immediately obvious to the world. The power of that light was only fully revealed at Easter when that same Jesus Christ was raised from the dead into a wonderful new expression of life – resurrection life. And Jesus is alive and among us still today by the power of the Holy Spirit, and is alive in his Church. Christmas light is Easter light: the light of eternal life in God.

So know this: whatever life throws at you, however dark things seem, or however light and comfortable life may be, God’s light is worth inviting into your life. Welcome the light of Jesus into your lives, not only this Christmas, but forever more. Don’t make do with just the reflections, go for the real deal: the transforming light which comes through Jesus. “In him was life and that life was the light of men”. Ask God for something truly transforming this Christmas. Open your hearts and pray that you will receive Jesus: the light which shines in the darkness and which the darkness cannot – and has not - overcome. Amen.

Church reflected: 4 schools in one day

One of the joys of working where I do is that there are five primary schools on my patch. Today I spent time with four of them. Today I caught a glimpse of what church communities can be like at their best.

Communal life in Christ: we are many, but one body....

The day started with midweek Holy Communion which takes place on market day in a market town. Years 5 and 6 formed more than half of the congregation of thirty-odd. There is always a real sense of community about this service with worshippers of all ages being present and taking part in the service, some as servers, or giving contributions to the sermon, and everyone sharing a handshake of peace across the generations. I always get the sense that this service is something the regulars - whether pupils or adults from the wider community - really cherish.

Then it was on to take collective worship in a school tucked away down a beautiful side valley. I arrived to find them still finishing their annual Christmas Dinner, so I had to shorten what I'd planned so a group of them could go off on the coach to swimming lessons on time. But we chatted about Advent and how its themes help us think about Christmas being just one important part of God's Great Big Story. Again, the welcome from the pupils is always a delight, and it didn't really matter that we had a shorter time together: what we did do together was put the fun of the Christmas dinner they'd just had into some kind of bigger picture, and for me and for them this was a welcome pause for breath in the middle of a busy day.

On next to another village school, this time meeting in a village hall for their Christmas production. Reception and Key Stage 1 (that's "infants" in old money) staged a nativity play with great panache (and occasional prompts and prods). Then the older pupils performed a dance and then a song (the latter being something I'd helped them learn on my weekly visits to help in class). It was great to be with this school as an audience member for once. Normally when I see them, it is either me leading collective worship, or helping in their classrooms, but this time it was them giving to me. And it was ace.

Thankfully, a cuppa was available before I sped off to yet another village for an after-school Messy Church session. Here, members of the village's Methodist and Anglican churches (lay and clergy alike) worked alongside the children in craft activities, making different elements of the nativity, chatting round the tables about how the characters fitted into the story, and eventually joining together to tell the Christmas story in a cardboard theatre resembling a Punch and Judy tent.

And God pointed to the classroom carpet and said unto Abraham,
"Look at the carpet and count the number of bits of glitter, if indeed
you can count them..." (see Gen. 15:5 - a good Advent I reading!)

I was part of the team who were decorating the theatre itself with glitter, stamp prints of nativity characters, glitter stars, paint, glitter, stickers, stars, glitter, glue, glitter tape and glittery stickers. And glitter. There were loads of adults there which was great - a ratio of around one adult for every two children - so there was a lot of inter-generational helping each other and explaining, and not just grown-ups telling the children what to do. Church is at its best when it refuses to be merely clubs of the likeminded but genuinely breaks down social barriers, and this was all-age church in action. We were a team, with an idea of what the big plan for the afternoon was, but with a lot of giving each other space to do our own thing, try different ways of doing things, and enjoying each other's company as we all made it happen together and learned from each other.

So in one day:

• children joined with me and others around the Lord's Table in worship, to spend time meeting Jesus in Word and Sacrament
• children and I shared a reflective time together, a restful pause in a busy day for all of us
• children served their community through creative communication
• children and adults got covered in glitter, glue and paint, engaged with an important story in the Christian faith, and made something good co-operatively
• these things grew out of the schools to become something bigger, reaching out into a wider vision of community
• the children's contribution was valuable and valued; they gave and received; they were affirmed and they affirmed others

Sounds like what Church could be, to me.

Today reminded me that when people talk about British values, they are still really talking about Christian values. Not in the moralistic way which the term "Christian values" is used from time to time; rather that the communal values I saw in four C of E schools today are grounded in models of Christian communal living which we read about in the New Testament. No society is value-neutral. No society exists which is not "belief-based": whatever values we use to base consensus on are underpinned by faith in something or other every time.

Not every parent would be comfortable with their child participating in every element of my day. I get that and respect that, but no child was forced to take part in any of it, and the atmosphere was not one of indoctrination, but of sharing and celebrating together things which underpin our national culture, and which inform our society's values. Or at the very least, these things give us a starting point for a discussion about how those values need working through into practice.

Church of England schools were founded to serve their communities rather than to be places of indoctrination, or cosy clubs for church "insiders". Today I saw living proof that this foundation is being lived up to now, at least in rural North Yorkshire. I think we all enjoyed ourselves today, and I reckon there are many churches who can learn a lot about what it means to be a loving Christian community from their schools.