Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. Luke 2:10
Fear not - trust! Trust God - he is above all to be trusted!
There is great tumult in our nation. As 2018 ends no one knows how 2019 will shape Britain’s future in relation to the rest of the world. The credibility of Parliamentary democracy has taken a tumble with that of ministers, politicians and the media leaving many bewildered not knowing who to trust.
Fear not - trust! Trust God - he is above all to be trusted!
His are truth, goodness and beauty and those qualities remain evident among us. Such is the crisis in truth telling that the second and third qualities are becoming preferable pointers to him, beauty especially.
As we gather to celebrate Midnight Mass we owe much to our choir and orchestra and the composer Joseph Haydn for the beautiful music these words interrupt to speak of truth. In his Credo there is no mistaking his witness to Christian truth in the incarnation and resurrection as we shall see.
Haydn like us knew tumult. Whilst he lay dying in the Vienna of 1809 Napoleon was bombarding his neighbourhood. Such was his international reputation as a composer that Emperor Napoleon sent guards to his house to protect him.
The score of the St Nicholas Mass is marked ‘in nomine deo’ as were all Joseph Haydn’s works. With all his flaws Haydn put trust in God seeking the Holy Spirit to make him his conduit of beautiful composition, musical beauty we are being fully immersed in this Christmas night.
Fear not - trust! Trust God - he is above all to be trusted!
In the tumult of an earlier age, as the Roman Empire fell apart in the 5th century, St Augustine of Hippo preached these words in his Christmas sermon on the same text I gave you from Luke 2:10: Fear not the coming of your God: fear not his friendship. He will not straighten you when he comes, rather he will enlarge you...You see then, if you love, how much room he gives you. Fear is a suffering that oppresses us. But look at the immensity of love.
I was taken by his image of Christianity as enlarging. It’s so against people’s perception of what we’re about.
Yet the Babe of Bethlehem accepted those swaddling bands to give us the glorious liberty of the children of God.
God got straightened, bound up, so we could find new spaciousness and be granted power to become his children.
To be a Christian is to have a capacity to rise through natural fear into the glorious liberty of the children of God.
You see then, if you love, how much room he gives you. Fear is a suffering that oppresses us. But look at the immensity of love.
To know you are loved, that God’s Spirit has been poured into your heart, is to connect through trust in God with the centre of the universe and see his perfect love casting out your fear and its oppression over you.
One of the saddest caricatures of Christianity is that it’s narrow minded, a sort of strait laced morality. That Christians are ‘holier than thou’s’ sent as moral policemen to keep the world in order.
A priest once had the privilege of speaking to the comedian Groucho Marx. ‘I’d like to thank you, Mr. Marx’ the priest said, ‘for all the joy you’ve brought into the world.’ Quick witted as ever Groucho replied And let me thank you, Father, for all the joy you’ve taken out!
God forgive us Christians for making our religion seem so constricting.
Tonight Jesus was bound in swaddling bands to expand us out of fear into the joyful immensity of divine love!
When people look at a Church door they might think of it as a way to narrow down your existence. Jesus did say enter by the narrow gate!
Once you come through the Church door – and I mean really come through into day by day discipleship and week by week worship - it’s more like the door of Doctor Who’s Tardis. You enter another dimension, the very dimension opened up tonight.
God became man in Palestine and lives today in bread and wine – so he can live in you and me, opening up our horizons to his and widening our human possibilities into his.
Fear not - trust! Trust God - he is above all to be trusted!
There are people in Brighton this Christmas struggling through cancer, unemployment and family breakdown. Where there’s faith in the Christ Child these circumstances aren’t able to bind and restrict Christian joy – I’ve seen it for myself in many I’ve been privileged to minister to here at St Bartholomew’s.
When the One ‘born to raise the sons of earth’ comes into our lives he enlarges us so we can embrace the world around us in all its frailty and tumult.
Tonight we celebrate God’s investment in humanity giving us new value through a new creation started in the Virgin Mary’s womb. We celebrate the Child of Bethlehem bound in swaddling clothes who went on to be bound on the Cross so we could expand into a whole new dimension of life.
St Augustine once again: Fear not the coming of your God: fear not his friendship. He will not straighten you when he comes, rather he will enlarge you...You see then, if you love, how much room he gives you. Fear is a suffering that oppresses us. But look at the immensity of love.
Look indeed, on this most holy night, and see in the Crib that immense love which enlarges you!
As you welcome Christmas Communion pray for yourself, and for all of us, to live as God made us to live - with greater trust in him!
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