The Incarnation - entry into every detail of human life

Here's the sermon I shared this morning at St Mary's Langdon Hills and St Catherine's Wickford, and will share again at St Peter's Nevendon this afternoon:

A former curate of mine hadn’t sung ‘Unto us a Son is born!’ before coming to our then Parish and got quite a shock when he was out carol singing round the parish and realised what he was singing in the third verse:

“Herod then, with fear was filled:
‘A prince,’ he said, ‘in Jewry!’
All the little boys he killed
At Beth-lem in his fury,
At Beth-lem in his fury.”

You can see why, as in a few short phrases ‘Unto us a Son is born!’ graphically brings home to us the horror of the genocide which the Christmas story contains.

I once heard Giles Fraser talk about this story (Matthew 2. 13-end) in a BBC Four programme on ‘Ten Best Sacred Christmas Classics.’ He was talking about ‘The Childhood of Christ’ by Berlioz and spoke about the way that this piece of music associates Christmas with fear by including the story of the massacre of the infants.

Why should Christmas be associated with fear? He was arguing that people had traditionally associated God with protection. God was the all-powerful, the omniscient, the all-seeing, all-knowing one who could always be there for you in every situation and circumstance. But the Christmas story is of God becoming the weakest, most vulnerable, most dependent thing that a human being can be and that is a new-born baby.

The Christmas story is that the God who we think of as being an all-powerful protector actually becomes wholly dependent on human beings for his own protection. Fraser argues that that is frightening because it removes our sense of being protected at the same time that it makes God weak and vulnerable. And the point in the Christmas story when this realisation comes rushing in on us like a freight train is the massacre of the innocents because we realise that God is now in a place and position where he can be killed; not just through the malevolence and wickedness of Herod but possibly just through an accident or neglect. As a human baby God is wholly dependent on human beings for his protection and as we hear regularly on the news, we don’t actually have a very good track record when it comes to treating children well.

Fraser emphasises the sense of shock and fear for us in finding our protector become dependent. I want instead to emphasise what this conveys to us of God’s love. The story of the massacre of the innocents shows us that God is willing to take the risk of coming into our world; a world in which genocide occurs and in which innocent children are abused and die. He is willing to risk coming into this world unprotected as a baby wholly dependent on his human parents for protection:

“And the word became …
Wordless
Flesh
A baby with no words
And the voice of the maker became a hungry voice
A cry for food
A cry for milk
The voice that made gravity cried out for fear of falling
The voice that made women cries for a woman’s breast and screams with disappointment when it is denied …

Then now God is this small thing
Is a baby
Is a baby that can be dropped or hurt or left unfed, left unchanged, left wet and smelly
Or be child-abused.” (‘Image of the Invisible,’ Late, Late Service)

This is the reality of the incarnation and of the Christmas story. This is what it means for Jesus to be born. It is the ultimate identification. God becomes flesh and blood and moves into our neighbourhood with all that that involves, not just at the beginning of his life but throughout:

incarnation

knew what it meant to be born into poverty
knew what it meant to survive genocide
knew what it meant to be forced to live as a refugee
knew what it meant to grow up disadvantaged
knew what it meant to experience the stigma of illegitimacy
knew what it meant to go to school and to learn a trade
knew what it meant to turn to God in prayer, faith and hope
knew what it meant to offer up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears
knew what it meant to be hungry and thirsty
knew what it meant to be tempted and tested
knew what it meant to share food and drink with friends
knew what it meant to be feted and praised
knew what it meant to feel compassion
knew what it meant to meet people’s needs
knew what it meant to be criticised for doing good
knew what it meant to shed tears at the death of a friend
knew what it meant to be questioned and rejected
knew what it meant to wrestle with God
knew what it meant to be arrested and imprisoned
knew what it meant to be put on trial
knew what it meant to be beaten and tortured
knew what it meant to be scarred
knew what it meant to be abandoned by a father
knew what it meant to learn obedience from suffering
knew what it meant to die

Emmanuel – God with us
made like his brothers and sisters in every way
tempted in every way, just as we are
able to sympathize with our weaknesses
Emmanuel - became flesh and blood
moved into our neighbourhood.

Why does God do this? Why does he take the risk? It is all because of love and it is perhaps best explained in some words from Hebrews 2. 14-18:

“Since the children are made of flesh and blood, it's logical that the Saviour took on flesh and blood in order to rescue them by his death. By embracing death, taking it into himself, he destroyed the Devil's hold on death and freed all who cower through life, scared to death of death.

It's obvious, of course, that he didn't go to all this trouble for angels. It was for people like us, children of Abraham. That's why he had to enter into every detail of human life. Then, when he came before God as high priest to get rid of the people's sins, he would have already experienced it all himself—all the pain, all the testing—and would be able to help where help was needed.”

Hebrews 4. 14-16 then goes on to says: “Now that we know what we have — Jesus, this great High Priest with ready access to God — let's not let it slip through our fingers. We don't have a priest who is out of touch with our reality. He's been through weakness and testing, experienced it all — all but the sin. So let's walk right up to him and get what he is so ready to give. Take the mercy, accept the help.”

This Christmas let's do just that - walk right up to him and get what he has demonstrated that he is so ready to give. Take the mercy, accept the help, receive the love, embrace the risk. May it so for each one of us. Amen.

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Berlioz - L'enfance du Christ, Op 25, Hol 130

Advent Reflection: Seven Great O Antiphons

The Advent reflection I shared today with the Basildon Chapter was based on Malcolm Guite's Advent Antiphon sonnets and Steve Bell's use of them on Keening for the Dawn:

'We are at the beginning of a holy season in which we connect again with our ‘inconsolable longing’, as C.S. Lewis called it, our yearning for the One who is to come and is also, mysteriously, the One who has come already, come as child, come as fellow-sufferer, come as Saviour, and yet whose coming, already achieved, we hold at bay from ourselves, so that we have to learn afresh each year, even each day, how to let him come to us again.

In the first centuries the Church had a beautiful custom of praying seven great prayers calling afresh on Christ to come, calling him by the mysterious titles he has in Isaiah,' calling to him; O Emmanuel (God With Us) ; O Sapientia (Wisdom); O Radix (Root); O Oriens (Daystar); O Clavis (Key); O Adonai (Great Lord); and O Rex Gentium (Desire of Nations).

'These antiphons were sung before and after the Magnificat at Vespers, according to the Roman use, on the seven days preceding Christmas Eve (17–23 December). They are addressed to God, calling for him to come as teacher and deliverer, with a tapestry of scriptural titles and pictures that describe his saving work in Christ. In the medieval rite of Salisbury Cathedral that was widely followed in England before the Reformation, the antiphons began on 16 December and there was an additional antiphon (‘O Virgin of virgins’) on 23 December; this is reflected in the Calendar of The Book of Common Prayer, where 16 December is designated O Sapientia (O Wisdom).'

'Until a few years ago, I didn’t know what these “Great O Antiphons” were; although I was well acquainted with the song (O come, O come Emmanuel) that preserves the tradition and these seven ancient, prophetic names' for the Christ.

The person who made me aware of these Advent Antiphons was the priest-poet Malcolm Guite, who has 'responded to these seven Antiphons with seven sonnets, re-voicing them for our own age now, but preserving the heart of each, which is a prayer for Christ’s Advent for his coming, now in us, and at the end of time, in and for all.'

Click here to read Malcolm Guite's sonnet O Sapientia.

'The last of the Seven Great O Antiphons, which was sung on either side of the Magnificat, is O Emmanuel, O God with us. This is the antiphon from which our lovely Advent hymn takes its name. It was also this final antiphon which revealed the secret message embedded subtly into the whole antiphon sequence. In each of these antiphons we call on Christ to come to us, to come as Light as Key, as King, as God-with-us. Now, singing this Antiphon standing on the brink of Christmas Eve, looking back at the illuminated capital letters for each of the seven titles of Christ we would see an answer to our pleas : ERO CRAS, the latin words meaning ‘Tomorrow I will come!”

O Emmanuel
O Rex
O Oriens

O Clavis
O Radix
O Adonai
O Sapientia'

Malcolm Guite in his final sonnet 'tries to look back across the other titles of Christ, but also to look forward, beyond Christmas, to the new birth for humanity and for the whole cosmos, which is promised in the birth of God in our midst.'

Click here to read Malcolm Guite's sonnet O Emmanuel.

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Steve Bell - O Come, O Come Emmanuel.