There’s a phrase in that second reading which always sounds out of place to me at Midnight Mass. And it’s when Paul tells us that we have to give up everything that does not lead to God, and all our wordly ambitions. Every year when I hear it I feel for the many people throughout the world for whom this is, perhaps, their only visit to Church in the year and for whom those words must sound very negative and discouraging, reinforcing the feeling they already have that religion is full of prohibitions and means giving up the things they enjoy. And while this is not true at all – the very opposite, in fact, is the truth - it may well sound that way to some of you here tonight. But for those of you who have been with us all through Advent and have been part of our weekly reflections on the nature of sin, I hope the rich, positive aspect of Paul’s words are obvious to you.
What we have been reflecting on, for those of you who weren’t able to be here, is the fact that sin, and with it all the trouble it causes in the world, is the result first and foremost of foolishness rather than badness. Every human being longs for happiness and is created for happiness, the problem being that we look for it in all the wrong places. At the heart of our reflections has been something Thomas Aquinas, the great theologian of the Middle Ages, said seven hundred years ago: that human being are not attracted by evil, only by apparent good. We chase after what appears to offer happiness, but, since we are constantly being conned by a mixture of illusions and our own stupidity, just when we think we have the happiness we seek it turns out not to be what we thought it was and slips through our fingers like sand. Each one of us could tell the story of how this has happened in our own lives, but, as we gather to celebrate the birth of Jesus this year of all years, the evidence for it in the world around us could hardly be more obvious.
From time immemorial human beings have caused pain and suffering to each other through hatred and violence, always in pursuit of some illusory good – very often peace – which, being an illusion, never materialises. And then, in recent years, we have been struggling to come to terms with the problems created by our abuse of the environment, likening us to a man up a tree happily sawing off the branch he himself is sitting on. But this year we have an especially powerful example of our own foolishness in the form of the financial crisis currently afflicting the world. For years we have worshipped at the altar of the goddess money, living by her commandments – the laws of the marketplace – sacrificing human beings to her every day and treating as heretics anyone who had the temerity to question her teaching. And now we are seeing all of this for the insanity it always was: spending money we didn’t have and borrowing even more to pay for it. Time and time again here at Mass we have reflected on the ultimate unsustainability of an economic system which depended on consuming more and more things we didn’t need and couldn’t afford, the ultimate insanity being, as the Archbishop of Canterbury pointed out this week, that, as the system collapses, the solution being offered by politicians is to do more and more of the thing that got us here in the first place.Time, of course, will tell how the politics and economics of it all work out. That is not our concern tonight. Our concerns are infinitely deeper than that as we contemplate a God who, in Jesus, enters into this world, and, faced with the insanity of so much human behaviour, shows us a whole new way of thinking and being which itself seems insane to those who think in traditional human terms. And it’s all contained in the Christmas story, not in words, but in images and symbols which, if we can move beyond childish ways of thinking about them, tell us everything we need to know at this moment in our history.
And at the heart of it is a complete turning upside down of values and ways of thinking which are taken for granted in our society today and never seriously questioned, the reason being, of course, that they are too radical for us even to contemplate. And at the very heart of it lies Jesus attitude to riches, the thing we value above everything else in the developed world and the yardstick by which we gauge the worth of other human beings. Born in poverty, Jesus rejects the worship of money. Later in his life he will call it a tainted thing and tell his followers that they cannot worship both God amd money. They will either hate the first and love the second or love the second and treat the first with contempt. The greedy pursuit of money for its own sake lies at the heart of all our current difficulties and even the bankers and financiers – the high priests of the goddess money – can finally see that. But by being born in poverty, Jesus is also telling us something about what it is to be a human being. In a consumer-driven society, people are judged by how much they own and what they have, drawing us into a never-ending struggle to compete. But Jesus has none of this. Right from the first moments of his life, symbolized by the shepherds, he was at home with those on the margins of society, reminding us that a person’s worth comes, not from what they own or from the status or position they hold, but from the fact that they are created in the image and likeness of God. And by rejecting the road of fame and celebrity – shunning Herod’s palace and later in his life walking away when the people wanted to make him king - Jesus rejects the shallow, bogus celebrity culture to which so many are addicted today in the form of cheap television programmes designed to keep our minds off more serious issues
And so, once again, we see that Christmas, far from being for children, is something which challenges us to the very depths of the way we live our lives today. And it’s not about stopping doing the things we enjoy. It’s about stopping doing the things which seem to offer happiness, but don’t, and embracing the things which will really lead to the happiness we seek and are made for.
So understand this and embrace it. Then, you will know what it is to have a happy Christmas.
BIDDING PRAYERS
If the world is to respond to the profound challenges contained in the Christmas story, three basic things are necessary. First, through the power of the Spirit living and working in us, our minds must be opened to understand what it is saying. Then, through the power of the same Spirit, we must begin to desire it. But finally and most importantly of all, our behaviour must begin to change. And so we ask God to grant us these graces in abundance this Christmas.........Lord hear us
Last week, the Archbishop of Canterbury likened our society to a person addicted to heroin. Hooked on consumerism and driven to spend more and more money buying more and more things we cannot afford, we are caught in a vicious circle of spending and debt from which we cannot escape. And so, he said, the current financial crisis is a blessing in disguise, a reality check, inviting us to confront unwelcome truths about ourselves. And so we pray that it will be this for us...................Lord hear us
The state of the world economy is a matter of huge importance. The lives and future of millions of poor people depend on it working in a just and effective way. And so we pray that those with power to influence these things will be, in the words of Scripture, people with far-seeing eyes: men and women who have the vision needed to question and re-examine things which everyone else takes for granted and never stop to question, so that real, radical change becomes possible.................Lord hear us
Even today, in the midst of an increasingly secular and atheistic society, there is still something magical about Christmas. This is because the story, filled with powerful images, speaks to our imagination rather than to our intellect. And so it reaches and touches parts of us which words and ideas could never reach or touch. And so we pray for the world at this time, that, in a way beyond its own understanding, it will be affected by the story of Jesus’ birth this year...............Lord hear us
In rejecting riches and palaces and associating himself with outcasts and foreigners, Emmanuel, God with us, the Word made flesh, is saying something of immense importance to the world at this time. And so we pray that, in the course of this new century, the world will see dramatic and long-term changes to the way we treat the poorest among us, whether at home or abroad. And we pray that this parish will play its own part in this story, reaching out to all in need..............Lord hear us
The following of Jesus is not at all about giving up the things that we enjoy. It is about letting go of our addictions, rejecting ways of thinking and behaving which cause us harm, and embracing newer, healthier ways of living. Ultimately, it is about opening us up to the happiness we seek but which, in the end, only God can give us. And so we ask God to pour into our lives over the coming days this happiness which only he can give, especially within our families.............Lord hear us
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