I’ll share some updates below, but first here is my sermon for Midnight Mass, offered to everybody, but especially to those who are feeling weary of battle in these dark times.
Midnight Mass, 2022
Isaiah 9:1-7, Titus 2:11-14, Luke 2:1-14
Jesus Christ: The True Light Born Into The Darkness
Midnight Mass
Isaiah 9:1-7, Titus 2:11-14, Luke 2:1-14
Father Christmas in Narnia
One of the most often ridiculed parts of C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe is the seemingly random and bizarre appearance of Father Christmas halfway through the story. How ridiculous that the jolly, fat red man and his sleigh should appear in Narnia for no apparent reason, spreading Christmas cheer and giving gifts to the children! What a bizarre intrusion into the narrative. But, of course, when we think about this a little more deeply, we realise that C.S Lewis. is, as always, a hundred steps ahead of us.
Until this point in the story, Narnia is a land of deep darkness. It is always cold. It always Winter and it is never Christmas. The Narnians are not unlike the ancient Israelites, spoken of in our reading: “those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness” (Isaiah 9:2). The White Witch (who we instinctively recognise as the figure of Satan himself) holds all of her subjects under a reign of totalitarian terror and uses a network of spies and secret police to root out the disloyal so that she can turn them into stone. The trees are dead and so are the flowers. Birdsong is not heard in the land.
And yet into this darkness comes Father Christmas, proclaiming, “I’ve come at last…She has kept me out for a long time, but I have got in at last. Aslan is on the move. The Witch’s magic is weakening.” The point of all of this is very simple: jolly Saint Nick is the herald of the Incarnation. Winter is ending as the Witch’s diabolical power weakens. The great thaw is coming. Father Christmas is here!
As Mr Beaver says earlier in the story:
Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight,
At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more,
When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death,
And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.
It is a very fitting thing that Christmas falls for us at the darkest and coldest time of year. In this bleak midwinter, we celebrate the coming of the light into of our world: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light…on them the light has dawned.” (Isaiah 2:9).
Christmas is not Easter
And yet…we mustn’t rush too quickly ahead in the story. The Nativity is a central and crucial part of our faith, but it is just the beginning of the battle into which Jesus was born. This is clearly heralded in the narratives of his birth. The Gospel of Luke tells us of the perilous and painful journey of Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem. A heavily pregnant woman, on the cusp of giving birth. She went into labour shortly after they arrived and the place where she delivered the baby is not even noted, except to say that they laid him in a bed for the animals because the inn would not make space for them. Can we speculate and say that Mary’s labour took place in a stable amongst the animals? Was Joseph the only person on hand to attend to her? Can we imagine the holy couple there in that dark and lonely place, filled with the inclination to despair as Mary travailed in the pains of childbirth? Were they tempted to believe that God had forgotten his promise to them? That he was not truly with them in this bizarre journey after all?
The great German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “God lets himself be pushed out of the world onto the cross” and we see in Jesus’ birth in the manger the beginning of his life of rejection and sacrificial suffering.
We can so easily romanticise the Christmas story and act like it is all a happy ending. But it is nothing of the sort. It is the beginning of God’s struggle through Christ to redeem this world which has fallen into sin and deep darkness. Yes, the light was breaking in and this twist would prove decisive. But the struggle was only just beginning.
I don’t know many Christmas carols that acknowledge this aspect of Christ’s Nativity, except for one. I often quote it but that is because it is unique as far as I know:
“When he is King they will clothe him in grave-sheets,
Myrrh for embalming and wood for a crown,
He that lies now in the white arms of Mary
Sleeping so lightly on Bethlehem Down.”
The world would not recognise him for a king. They would not clothe him in the purple of an emperor or give him a golden crown. They would not anoint him with perfume for his coronation. His true identity would only be revealed to those with eyes to see as he was lifted up upon the cross, with a crown not of gold but of thorns. After this coronation, he would be laid in a tomb and clothed in its sheets, embalmed with the same ointment with which he was presented as an infant child by the wise man who saw his glory ahead of time.
He sleeps in his mother Mary’s arms now, but one day a sword will pierce her heart as she looks upon her dear Son, offered up for the sins of the world. The mystery of God who intended all of this for a nursing infant. How wonderful are his ways.
How we are to think of Christmas
When the Pevensie children meet Father Christmas in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, he gives to each one a gift: to Peter his gives a sword, to Susan a bow and to little Lucy a dagger. The implication of this gift-giving is clear: each one will be called upon to fight against the White Witch and her hoards of wickedness. When we commit ourselves to honour and worship the infant Jesus, we too join him in a cosmic battle against the powers of darkness and evil. But, as the Apostle Paul tells us, “the weapons of our warfare are not worldly but have divine power to destroy strongholds” (2 Cor. 10:4). Indeed, they are “purity, knowledge, forbearance, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God…the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left.” (2 Cor. 6:9).
That is what we are fighting with but what are we fighting for? We are fighting for nothing less than the redemption of our souls and all that is good in this world. Without the Nativity, without the Incarnation, without the cross and glorious resurrection, what hope do we have that the darkness will one day be overcome? Perhaps we might see a slight rolling back, perhaps some political change and improvement, but there is an inevitability that one day the darkness will return and engulf us entirely.
No, the stories that we have always heard, that we have listened to since our childhood, of a great war between good and evil, of a war that involves ordinary people like you and me who must choose which power they will serve, stories which speak of a great struggle which at many points looks lost but which will be won eventually by the righteous through the power of good. The wonderful thing about these stories is that they are all true and that they all find their fulfilment here in this lowly stable, in these gentle arms, in this tiny infant child. This is why these stories speak so clearly and powerfully to our hearts.
In his great work The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien tells the story of Frodo and Samwise who set out as those willing to bear the destructive Ring of Power to its doom and probably their own. They are willing for the simple reason that they are servants of the light. At one point Frodo feels that he cannot go on, cannot continue the journey, and says, “I can’t do it, Sam.” Samwise replies:
Sam: I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t. Because they were holding on to something.
Frodo: What are we holding on to, Sam?
Sam: That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for.
Friends, there is good in this world. And it is worth fighting for. So, I encourage you to join today in this mighty battle of good against evil, of darkness against light. Pledge your fealty to the infant Christ, take up the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left and let us fight not with the weapons of our worldly warfare but with the strength which God supplies. Jesus bore the light from his Nativity to his death upon the cross, through his glorious resurrection and triumph over the powers of darkness. And he is now seated in brightest glory. He calls us to bear our own light through this passing darkness, through this momentary shadow, knowing that in him we have the victory.
In the words of C.S. Lewis’ vision of Saint Nicholas as he cracked his whip and drove away his sleigh, “Merry Christmas! Long live the true King!”
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