1^st January 2010

Rev Dr Max Champion at St John's UCA Mt Waverley

Lessons -- Isaiah 9:2-7; Luke 2:1-20

'For too many people,' says today's Christmas Eve editorial in The Age, 'there continues to be no room at the inn.' The story of the obscure birth in trying circumstances 'still resonates in a troubled world' where evil is done, tragedy strikes, loved ones die, people are displaced from their homes or homelands, others are persecuted and hope seems distant.

The three reflections tonight speak of hope in dire circumstances in which people see the reality of God in the midst of severe trials and the apparent ordinariness of life.

(1) 'Christmas in a Prison Cell'

On 28 November 1943 Dietrich Bonheoffer, hanged on 9 April 1945 for resistance to Hitler, wrote to his parents from the Nazi prison at Tegel in Berlin of the poignancy of 'Nativity', a painting by Albrecht Altdorfer in approximately 1513. He said:

'Altdorfer's "Nativity" is very topical this year, showing the Holy Family and the crib among the ruins of a tumbledown house. However did he come to paint like that, against all tradition, four hundred years ago? Perhaps he meant that Christmas could and should be kept even in such conditions; in any case, that is his message for us.' (Letters and Papers from Prison, p
152.)

Later (17 December 1943) he wrote to them, saying:
'From the Christian point of view there is no special problem about Christmas in a prison cell. For many people in this building it will probably be a more sincere and genuine occasion than in places where nothing but the name is kept. That misery, suffering, poverty, loneliness, helplessness and guilt means something quite different in the eyes of God from what they mean in the judgment of man, that God will approach where men turn away, that Christ was born in a stable because there was no room for him in the inn -- these are things that a prisoner can understand better than other people; for him they really are glad tidings, and that faith gives him a part in the communion of saints, a Christian fellowship breaking the bounds of time and space and reducing the months of confinement here to insignificance.' (Letters and Papers from Prison, p166.)

(2) 'Birth in a Cemetery'

In a splendid article called 'Reflections on Mary, the mother of Jesus'
(Jesus Christ for Us, ed. N Watson 1982), Rev Dr J Davis McCaughey (first
President of the UCA and former Governor of Victoria) mentions a fresco
painting in a cemetery chapel in the tiny Italian village of Monterchi.

Painted in about 1460 by the Italian Renaissance master Piero della
Francesca, it was located in an old country church until the building was
destroyed by an earthquake in 1785. It then found a home in the cemetery
chapel until 1992 when it was moved to the town museum.

Mary is portrayed with a hand against her side to support her prominent
belly. On either side is an angel holding open the flap of a pavilion in
which they stand. The tent is decorated with pomegranates which symbolise
Christ's suffering and death.

How poignant to place the Madonna in a cemetery waiting to give birth to a
special child from God who will be crucified by mankind!

McCaughey sums it up perfectly: 'From the grave of men's hopes comes the
child who is the hope of the world.' (p73)

(3) 'A Glimpse of Redemption at Christmas'

People who are persecuted, imprisoned or bereaved may be more open to
understand the meaning of Jesus' Incarnation. But what about those for
whom the Christmas rush makes it hard to glimpse the sign of hope?

In 1942, during the dark days of World War II, the English poet WH Auden
wrote an epic poem (1500 lines) called For the Time Being: A Christmas
Oratorio.

In this brief excerpt, he looks back on Christmas in a way that helps us
prepare for it.

Once again
As in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed
To do more than entertain it as an agreeable
Possibility, once again we have sent Him away,
Begging though to remain His disobedient servant,
the promising child who cannot keep His word for long.
The Christmas Feast is already a fading memory,
And already the mind begins to be vaguely aware
Of an unpleasant whiff of apprehension at the thought
Of Lent and Good Friday which cannot, after all, now
Be very far off. But for the time being, here we all are,
Back in the moderate Aristotelian city . . . .
. . . . And the kitchen table exists because I scrub it.
It seems to have shrunk during the holidays. The streets
Are much narrower than we remembered; we had forgotten
The office was as depressing as this. To those who have seen
The Child, however dimly, however incredulously,
The Time Being is, in a sense, the most trying time of all.

Reviewers note how 'Auden glimpses redemption even in the trivialisation
of Christmas, in the frantic shopping, distracted gaiety and unsuccessful
attempts (as he says elsewhere) to "love all our relatives" '. 'He draws
out the incarnational impact of the Nativity on the mundane world of the
everyday. For him, Christmas is . . . an annual reminder that God has
acted and is acting "to redeem from insignificance" the monotonous sludge
of our everyday routines.'

For the time being then we must do this and that -- matter-of-fact things.
But Auden reminds us that they are redeemed from simply being 'ordinary'
because the Being who created Time has entered Time in the person of Jesus
Christ. Therefore, what we do for the time being is given meaning by his
Incarnation -- however trying it is to see the 'Time Being' in the
Christmas rush.

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Rev Dr Max Champion is minister in the St John's Uniting Church, Mt
Waverley, Victoria, Australia. Dr Champion is Chair of the Assembly of
Confessing Congregations within the UCA.