Sermons
24th December, Midnight Mass
by Revd Chris Palmer
They say the loneliest place on earth is packed commuter train. You share people’s geography – pushed up close together, each person’s personal space little larger than their own body. And yet you share nothing else: catch someone’s eye by accident and they look away embarrassed. Start a conversation? Unheard of! Everyone studiously avoiding contact, isolating themselves in Candy Crush on their phone, or behind the armour of headphones, or the pages of a free newspaper, folded narrowly and held close enough to your face to damage your eyesight. We are so with people, and so not with them.
And the lack of solitude in the city only heightens our isolation. After all true solitude gives space and time to pray and reflect, to develop relationship with myself and God – even to discover the value of relationships with others. A packed commuter train is simply a fraught reminder that there are 9 million people in London who aren’t my friends.
And it’s a symbol for much of life. We walk – or run – through life keeping busy – working, exercising, socialising, travelling. All of which fill our time, but very often fail to fill our hearts. We have substituted activity for encounter, networks for relationships. Because when we get near real relationships it feels dangerous – demands commitment. We hide behind humour so as not to do the hard work of truly speaking with our children.
Or we hide behind tasks and busyness. Do you remember the spoof ladybird books that filled stockings a couple of years back? One of them was called The Wife. ‘Wives like to talk,’ it tells us. ‘Phil’s wife Imogen had a furious go at him last night about how he avoids talking to her. Phil feels bad about this today, and is making it up to Imogen by mending the roof.’
Christmas celebrates God who refuses to avoid encounters, but instead becomes presence in our isolation, relationship in our loneliness. St John says, ‘he was in the world… yet the world did not know him… the word was made flesh and dwelt among us…’ This is incarnation – word made flesh – God with us. We are so often not with others, but God is relentlessly with us; he builds relationship and provokes encounter.
We can see this encounter in the story of Jesus. Mary encounters the angel and so meets her own destiny. She journeys to meet Elizabeth and the children in their wombs encounter one another, the story implies. Joseph is tempted to separate himself from Mary when he finds she’s pregnant, but the angel guides him to deep, committed encounter. The shepherds and kings leave their safe places to encounter the baby and recognise the God-presence in him.
And it’s even clearer in the stories of Jesus as an adult. In story after story we see that Jesus stimulates deep relationship, in which people are given the gift of fellowship. The disciples on the sea shore, the centurion whose servant Jesus heals, lepers whom Jesus touches, Zachaeus whose house Jesus invites himself into for tea, the woman who anoints Jesus feet knowing she is loved and forgiven, Peter after the resurrection when Jesus asks him again and again ‘Do you love me?’ In each case Jesus is breaking through their isolation – the social isolation of lepers, the alienation of the woman written off by the religious bigots as a sinner, the isolation of Zachaeus with only his money for company, the loneliness of Peter in betraying Jesus.
What is the isolation and loneliness that Jesus wants to break through for us? Maybe it is avoiding the people we love, because the effort of conversation is too hard. Or it’s the world we have created in which we utterly fail to encounter those different from us, even though we share the same streets. How many people have never spoken to a homeless person? People of different faiths used never to speak with each other – that is breaking down in places, though such isolation still feeds prejudice in many communities. An article recently told how many teenagers have no meaningful relationship with any adult. And so often we only listen to people who share our political views – and shout at others across a void which avoids genuine relationship.
The encounter with the word made flesh must include encounter with his people – and the commitment to that encounter even when it is hard. One of the most remarkable people of the 20th century was Dag Hammarskjöld , who was Secretary General of the United Nations from 1953 until 1961 when he died in an air accident. He rejected his childhood Lutheran faith, but as he grew older he re-engaged with the writings of ancient Christian mystics, and his only book is a deeply spiritual work revealing his inner quest for God. But the thing that interests me is the way this quest goes hand in hand with hands-on diplomacy and negotiation and a desire to be a catalyst for dialogue between nations. He was instrumental in diplomacy between Israel and Arab states, in freeing American prisoners held in China, in diffusing the Suez crisis. And… he oversaw preparations for a meditation room in UN headquarter in NY. One of his prayers is this,
Before Thee, Father,
In righteousness and humility,
With thee, Brother
In faith and courage,
In thee, Spirit
in stillness
Thine, for thy will is my destiny
The prayer oozes a spirit of encounter with God – and notice that he says Father, Brother, Spirit rather than the conventional Father, Son, Spirit. In other words, he speak to God as God relates to him, rather than as the son relates to the Father. It is that personal encounter, willing to name his own web of relatedness which he brought to all his work.
And yet so much in our politics today appears to deny all this relatedness. We have the most polarised politics we can imagine in the US; propaganda on both sides of the Brexit debate threatens to lead the UK the same way. And the transition from megaphone diplomacy to Twitter diplomacy has simply deepened attitudes. Insults are a quick way to win arguments, but they destroy relationships – and they deepen isolation and loneliness.
The incarnate Christ invites to true encounters, in which we listen and understand – and in which we are heard and understood. Those stories of Jesus meeting people in the Gospels are for today also; we also can meet with Jesus and be changed. Christian community at its best moments embodies this authentic meeting – I think, ironically, that’s why church can be uncomfortable, because the context of prayer softens the spirit and so opens up the possibility of heart-felt, grace-filled encounter.
I’ve known people who at hard moments in their lives find that sitting in worship causes them to cry; I’ve known people of whom that is true even when they weren’t aware of anything traumatic or difficult going on. And the temptation is to withdraw in embarrassment: I can’t go to church, I just cry all the way through. But actually that’s another way of avoiding. The tears are a sign that deep encounter is happening. And the Christian community should be strong enough to hold that and encourage the encounter.
What is the meeting, the encounter you need to make? With a family member or friend, with a colleague who’s difficult, with someone whose views make you angry, with a person who lives close but whose life is profoundly different, with Christian community on a regular basis, with God? Will you plan to seek out that meeting, to deepen relationship today.
