Preached at St Mary’s, Potterne; Holy Cross, Seend; and St Peter’s, Poulshot
Romans 1. 1-7; Matthew 1. 18-31
“Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet…”
“He’s Got the Whole Word in His Hands”, Willemstad, Curaçao © Gerry Lynch, 22 November 2007
♫♪“He’s got the whole world in is hands.”♪♫
It has been a very long time since I’ve started a sermon by singing from the pulpit. This song isn’t a Christmas song, but it is perfect for this last Sunday in Advent and the Bible readings set for us today—for both are saying that God has a long-term plan for the human race. Our Gospel reading says that strange story of Many conceiving by the Holy Spirit came about to fulfil what God said through the prophets; our other reading, from a letter St Paul wrote to the first generation of Christians in Rome, says that the good news of Jesus Christ had been foretold by the prophets long in advance.
So, this might give us a good chance to explore the long backstory of the first Christmas.
The Christian story starts at a mythical time, before history began, when human beings lived in harmony with one another, with nature, and with God. This was the Garden of Eden. Humans are identified right at the start of the Bible as being a very special part of creation – the last part to be created, made in the image and likeness of God, the summit of God’s handiwork. We were God’s apprentices, being trained to tend and keep the Earth, and made for eventual union with God. There were no rules in the garden – except for one. The only thing we were forbidden do was to eat the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and we were told that if we did, we would die. We ate the fruit, because we wanted knowledge that we had been warned was too hot for us to handle—we’ll come back to that idea later.
The Garden of Eden is, of course, a myth, but it expresses a truth too profound for dry facts—that as humans evolved, we became alienated from our true nature. We know from archaeology that even before humans had writing, we were already out of balance with the rest of life. We know that it was us who wiped out the mammoth and the sabre-toothed tiger, long before we learned how to write, or work metals, or make wheels.
Once we had writing, around 5,000 years ago, history began. It had many glorious and beautiful episodes, but also had the constant presence of war and slavery. We were out of balance with God and with one another, and that is how we remain.
Yet the Bible tells that although we were often wilful, cruel, and self-defeating, and God sometimes got angry with us and chastised us as a result, He never abandoned us. Somehow, despite God giving us simple rules for living in harmony, and us often being full of good intentions to live according to them, we were never able to escape the darker side of our own nature.
A rescue plan was needed. So God became a human being, one of us, in the mightiest Empire the world had seen to that point; but not as a child born to be king, but as a carpenter’s son from a little town of no account in a backwater region of a troubled province.
The baby grew into a man of great wisdom and gifts of healing, who attracted many followers, for a while—but although He sought no power, those in power saw Him as a threat and put Him to death. This man was, however, actually God, the source of life, and so could not die. Somehow, mysteriously, in dying He destroyed our death.
Now, if this all sounds weird, that’s because it is weird. We just don’t think it’s weird because we’re clever modern sophisticated people. People back in those days also thought it was weird. When Joseph was told that Mary was going to have a baby, he didn’t say ‘how wonderful the Holy Spirit is!’—He assumed another man had come on the scene and wanted to break the engagement off.
Yet that weird story may be perfect for our weird times. For we live in what may be the most perilous moment in all human existence. We are lining up, one after the other, the means to destroy ourselves – through nuclear weapons, through smarter-than-human AI, through modifying our own genetic code in ways we don’t understand the implications of, through damaging the environment, and through all these powerful technologies interacting in ways we can’t predict. We have become a very clever species, us humans, and the power our cleverness has won for us far exceeds the wisdom we possess to use it constructively. Once again, we have obtained knowledge that is too hot for us to handle.
The true meaning of Christmas isn’t presents, and choirs of angels, and cute babies, and Advent calendars with whiskey miniatures. That’s all lovely and I enjoy them as much as anyone, but the true meaning of Christmas is this: God has a long-term plan to save us from the worst of ourselves, and He has been working on it since the beginning of time. To fulfil that plan, the creator of the universe came into the world in the womb of a poor and vulnerable unmarried mother.
He put Himself into our hands to save us from the worst of ourselves. He did it, because we’re worth saving, and because He loves us, and we are lucky indeed that He’s got the whole world in His hands.
And now glory be to God for whom we wait, the Father, and the Son whom He sent to judge and to rule us, and the Spirit whom He sent to comfort and to guide us, now and unto eternity. Amen.
Top image: Hottentots-Holland from a Cape Town to Johannesburg flight © Gerry Lynch, 8 February 2017. It feels like you have the whole world in your hands from up there!
My difficulty is that God planning doesn’t fit with his attributes. Plans don’t survive contact with the enemy and whatever God ordains will come to pass. Therefore, God’s plans, unlike ours, are in fact foreordained events. Let’s ease off, if we’re in the covenant we’re in ( this will be seen in how we live) . Trust and faith, introspection, will suffice. If however, your lifestyle seems out of alignment with God’s natural order, be concerned, very concerned.