SERMON BY THE VICAR: Midnight Mass of the Nativity 2024

Readings:  Isaiah 52:7-10, Hebrews 1:1-4, John 1: 1-14

Welcome to the celebration which transforms our lives, the Birth of Jesus Christ. Of all the images of this last year 2024, what stands out for you? For me, it was the Archbishop of Paris knocking on the door of Notre Dame nine times as that sacred building was being reopened. After each group of three knocks, he said “Notre Dame, prier pour nous”.  Our Lady, pray for us. That’s the image for me, “Our Lady, pray for us” The re-opening of Notre Dame after the disastrous fire of 2019, is a tangible image of both strength and hope. It’s those two things I want to speak about, strength and hope. 

First strength.  In our Christian tradition, strength is the opposite of the superstate bristling with electrified fences and huge armies. It was Stalin in the Soviet Union who misunderstood this in 1945 when he asked, “How many divisions does the Pope have?” To which Pope Pius is said to have replied “When you see our son Joseph again tell him that he will meet our divisions in heaven.” In the Christian tradition, strength is the world turned upside down. We see this so clearly tonight.  Our strength lies in this defenceless babe born in homelessness and poverty. Our strength lies in the realisation that actually we are not in charge as masters and mistresses of the Universe, but only through our reliance on God. St John’s, this church, acted this out in 2024 when a serious diagnosis from our architects told us that we had to do extensive and immediate work on the structure of this building to ensure its strength and stability going forward. This work, costing hundreds of thousands of pounds, was started immediately though we did not have the funds. Our reliance on the surrounding community and all who wish us well, rooted in our reliance on God enabled us to achieve this. So, at the end of the year with the work done, and the strength of this sacred space assured, we are thankful to all who have given and worked hard. We are equally thankful to God who blessed our empty hands and enabled us to achieve this work. And in the flier you have, you will see our ambitious plans for 2025 – complete renovation of heating and lighting systems to move towards being carbon neutral, together with the restoration of the fabulous Victorian decoration of the inside of this sacred building. Let’s take Notre Dame as our example, but this time not costing hundreds of millions of Euros from the international community. Our strength, in this sense, is local. 

At the Midnight Mass of 2020 I said this, “I do believe that history will have a harsh judgement on how the Church was seen to visibly retreat at the beginning of the pandemic. Banging the doors shut was a mistake and a catastrophe, which we tried to put right here on a local level. I apologise for this leadership failure which we experienced.” And now again at the end of 2024 I stand here and once more apologise for the leadership failure of the Church of England, this time in the field of safeguarding the vulnerable. Here again, our strength as a Church has always been found at grassroots level in the local, and what happens in the bubble of senior hierarchy has very little effect on the essential work the Parish church does, day in day out. We get on with the business, as we can see from the growing number of people from all backgrounds, including many vulnerable people, who find a home in this church. This too is strength in our Christian tradition, and it leads to hope.

Hope. Professor Andrea Bonior, a psychologist on the staff of Georgetown University, wrote this year of the health benefits of hope - describing them as reducing physical pain, boosting circulation and respiration, lowering blood pressure, and many other health benefits. Anyone who has been given a terminal diagnosis but survived it knows the importance of both hope and faith. We have always known this too in the Christian church, which is why the poorly drafted Assisted Dying Bill needs serious scrutiny in a way which has not yet happened. Proper palliative care in a loving and faithful environment gives hope in a way that being shipped off to Geneva does not and cannot. As a senior oncologist said to me recently “one day medicine will catch up with religion.”  At the other end of the life cycle, the birth of a child is, often, a sign of hope. The birth of this child, Jesus Christ, is the birth which gives hope to everyone. Hope in tired and disillusioned secular liberal democracies, hope in war and conflict zones, and hope among the marginalised and displaced. This birth changes everything, which is one of the main reasons why in Orthodox iconography the birth of Christ takes place in a cave not in a stable – as the cave symbolises the human heart. We become, through this birth in our hearts, a new humanity. As a little microcosm of hope, we continue to experience the growth of St John’s, partially fuelled of course by immigration which brings the wholly positive benefits of people who are often far more confident in articulating their faith. Over the past decade we have seen a fourfold increase in the numbers of people regularly attending this church.  This year we saw the largest attendance on record at our Carol Service. People need hope, search for hope, yearn for hope, and find it the word made flesh, hope made flesh, Jesus Christ. 

I have spoken about the birth of Jesus Christ as strength and hope. This is also an answer to the question “What makes us human?” The second century church Father Irenaeus wrote this “The Glory of God is a human being – fully alive.” We become fully human, fully alive, when the strength and hope of the birth of Christ is experienced in our hearts. With this, we are well set for the year ahead – whatever challenges it brings. We can and will do our part in making 2025 a real year of strength and hope, partly as we celebrate 1,700 years of the Nicene Creed which reminds us how we are fully human as the new humanity in Christ, fully God and fully human. When we are fully human in Christ, we are made new, and fully alive. May this continue to be true for all of us, and may 2025 be for our whole world a year of grace and wonders through the birth of Jesus, who is our strength and our hope. 
I started with Notre Dame, so I’ll end with it. The world leaders and the great and the good were assembled in the building ready for the opening on December 7th. There was a great deal of jockeying for position, air kissing, chit chat and sizing up who was the most important person in the room. A celebrity party.  But as the great seventeenth century bell called Emmanuel spoke for the first time, so the leaders were silenced. Likewise, we in silence and awe wait for Emmanuel – God is with us in this child - to speak. “Notre Dame, prier pour nous.”