Christmas day

If atheism is the great new religion of the 21st Century, then it is important that we understand it. It is the inevitable consequence of the times in which we live, and only those who are willing to engage with it in an open and honest way will be able to share the Good News of God’s love for the world with the men and women who share this moment in history with us. At Christmas we celebrate the mystery of a God who became part of our history and shared our experience, and only those who can do the same today, feeling what the atheist feels and seeing the world as the atheist sees it will have anything helpful to say to the people of our time. And so I invite you to reflect briefly on some of the roots of modern atheism and see what Christmas has to say about them.

Given the fact that we have recently celebrated the 200th anniversary of his birth, there has been lots of coverage recently of the influence of Charles Darwin on modern atheism. But while this has undoubtedly been very important, there was another even more important influence several hundred years earlier. This was the realisation by Copernicus and then Galileo that instead of the sun revolving around the earth, the earth, in fact, revolved around the sun; and that the sun itself was just one star among millions in the universe. Now that may not seem much to us today, but it was a discovery which shook to the very foundations the way people had thought about themselves up to that point. Based on the bible’s version of creation, our ancestors thought of themselves as the pinnacle of God’s creation and the earth they lived on as its centre. To discover that this was not the case, that they lived on small planet in the middle of nowhere, had a devastating effect on the way they saw God, themselves and the universe. It was a bit like an only child going to school for the first time to discover that the world did not, as he had previously thought, revolve around himself. He was not the centre of things any longer and life could never be the same again. And then, much later, along came Darwin.

Darwin’s influence, of course, is still being felt and is the basis for most of the attacks on the idea of God being launched today by high priests of atheism like Richard Dawkins and others. At the root of this, however, has been a complete failure to understand the nature of the Book of Genesis and its account of creation, as a result of which, when they were first published, Darwin’s theories shocked and horrified many. If the discovery that we are not the centre of the universe was a shock in Galileo’s day then the idea that we are descended from monkeys finally shattered the illusions of those whose faith was rooted on an infantile literal understanding of the Bible. And so the scene was set for atheism as we have come to know it. There is, however, a price for everything in life and that has included atheism. Take God out of society and other things will take his place. And so we have seen in our own day the rise of so many false gods promising happiness if only we believe in them and live by their commandments. And chief among them in the modern world has been the goddess money along with the materialism and consumersim which are her children. But taking God out of life has had other effects too. Much of the art and literature of the 20th century has been marked by a deep-rooted sense of the absurdity and pointlessness of life, hardly surprising if you remove from the equation the one thing which enables it to make sense. Anyone who looks to materialism or consumerism to provide happiness will inevitably be disappointed, and this has contributed in no small part to the sense of despair and confusion which lies behind, for example, a culture of drug-taking among young people today. If life has no meaning, if global warming is going to destroy us, providing swine-flu or some giant meteorite doesn’t do the job first – the background against which many see life at the beginning of a new century – then what’s the point anyway?

And in Christmas we have the answer to all this. Realising that we are not the centre of the universe had to come. Learning the true nature of the Genesis stories and facing up to the discoveries of modern science is all just part of growing up. But like every person who moves through childhood and adolescence into adulthood, the ultimate challenge for the world is to find out who we really are. And that’s what Christmas is about. Our planet may exist in the middle of nowhere. We may have evolved from apes. But in Jesus Christ, God has become one of us. Any doubts we may have about the meaning or otherwise of our own existence are overcome forever by the person who comes to realise that we have a God whose one desire is to draw us to himself so that we can share in his own life. If this is true, then far from being absurd or pointless, human existence is filled with meaning so far-reaching that it is far beyond our power even to imagine it.

But there’s a problem. And it’s this. Just as a failure to understand properly the great stories in the book of Genesis was part of the mixture that led to modern atheism so a very similar misunderstanding of the Christmas story is what prevents the people of our time recognizing the true meaning of today’s feast. As long as we remain stuck at the level of donkeys, shepherds and inn-keepers and tell ourselves that Christmas is ‘for the weans’ the world will never know the depth of what we celebrate today. This is no children’s story. The donkey and the inn-keeper are mere packaging. Behind them lies a truth with the power to transform the world. And that is the challenge currently facing us: to unpack what is a truly wonderful story and open up to the men and women of our time what it all means.

Richard Dawkins has said that he had become an atheist when he was fifteen. And in many ways that is what he and others like him are: adolescent atheists. And so we have nothing to fear from their atheism. It will, like adolescence itself, prove temporary. Beyond it lies adult faith, the kind which, once we have learned to embrace the deeper meaning of the story – something we will explore in the Bidding Prayers - Christmas is really about.

BIDDING PRAYERS

The presence of the angels in the Christmas story symbolizes the coming together in Jesus of heaven and earth. God has become part of our world giving new meaning to human existence in all its rich variety. There is no longer any distinction between the spiritual and the physical. And so we pray for a deep sense of the dignity that goes with being human, especially in a world where many have lost touch with God and see no point in life and are filled with fear and anxiety about the future.........Lord hear us

The shepherds in Jesus day were the outcasts of society and their presence in Luke’s Gospel is a sign of Jesus profound commitment to the poor and marginalized in every age. He began life among the poor and ended it among them, crucified between two thieves. And so we pray that the followers of Jesus throughout the world today will show that same commitment to the poor of our time and that here in this parish will always make them welcome and have a place for them in our lives.........Lord hear us

The Three Wise Men, or Magi, represent people in every age who are searching for the truth. There are many such men and women in the world today, and in a society with so many versions of the truth their search is not an easy one. And so we pray for them, that they will have the courage to follow their star wherever it leads and however long it takes until they come to know the God who created them and longs to share his life with them……Lord hear us

The shadow of the cross hangs over the Christmas story in the murder of the Innocents, the flight into Egypt and Simeon’s prophecy that a sword of sorrow would pierce Mary’s heart. And so we pray for suffering humanity, that, in moments of grief and despair and in the midst of warfare, violence and hunger, people throughout the world will know the presence of God and find hope in the mystery of his coming among us............Lord hear us

We are living through an age of widespread atheism the likes of which has never before been seen. And so we pray for the wisdom and insight we need to understand this phenomenon. We pray, too, for the courage to recognize the part the Churches have played in creating this atheism by offering people a version of the great truths of faith, like Christmas, which are infantile and so are rejected today by many intelligent people as little more than fairy stories on a par with sleeping beauty or the three bears ..........Lord hear us

And we pray, finally, for the grace to enjoy to the full these days of Christmas celebrations. We pray for the insight we need to see God in our families, to taste him in the food we eat, to savour him in the drinks we drink and to recognize in the gifts we give and receive, a sign of his immense generosity which has caused him to pour so much goodness into our world.........Lord hear us