Tag: Christmas

Light in the Darkness

Sermon on Christmas Eve 2024

I wonder, what are the most important Christmas traditions or rituals for you? How do you celebrate these days? Is it the time spent with family, the thought put into buying the presents, the decoration of the Christmas tree, or the food that is being prepared for tomorrow? For me, one of the most important rituals is putting up my fairy lights, and filling the house with candles. It’s actually the one night during which I leave the Christmas tree lit, and go to bed with one or two tea lights still burning. Don’t worry, I’ve got the fire phone!

‘Light in the darkness’ is one of the key themes within the Christmas story. Tonight, we hear how the Light comes into the world, and the darkness does not overcome it. In the more narrative Gospel accounts, in Luke and Matthew, we hear how the angel came to the shepherds in the darkness of the night, and how also the Wise Men were led to the stable by the light of a star.

‘Light in our darkness’, it is something we understand, and I think most of us long for. So I suspect I’m not the only one who loves to focus on this part of the story with my fairy lights and candles.

In his sermon on the Mount, Jesus encourages us to be that light ourselves: “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven”. It’s an important theme, how we can bring light to the darkness, but that is not, I think, what we celebrate tonight. Because tonight is not about what we can do and who we can be, but it is about what God has given us.

The most beautiful lights I have seen, were earlier this year, when we were lucky enough to be able to see the Northern Lights here at Hurst.

The only thing I had to do to see them was walk out of by back gate, and find the darkest spot on the fields.

Away from the houses, the buildings and maybe most importantly, my phone. I was able to just stand there, in the darkness and see the spectacle unfold in the night sky. I only needed to stand and watch. And even as a scientist, for a moment I wasn’t thinking about the conditions that had made this possible, about the earth magnetic field, but for a moment I was overwhelmed that this was here for me to see and to enjoy.

Often, we try so hard to create the perfect conditions: the most thoughtful gifts, the most beautiful meal, the most welcoming house, and indeed, the brightest and most beautiful lights. I’m not suggesting that there is anything wrong with that, but maybe, maybe tonight is not that time. Maybe tonight is about moving our gaze towards that faint, but most beautiful light that isn’t of our making, that isn’t because of what we have done. But it is ours to behold, if we wish to see it.

I think it is this that makes what we celebrate tonight even more incomprehensible, yet even more wonderful: it is not because of what we have done, or because of who we are, that we are given this gift, the gift of God’s presence with us.

It also means, equally hard to understand and to accept, that the Light came into the world not only for us, but also for them – whoever the people are who we consider as them, as ‘not-us’.

Therefore, amidst our own celebrations, with our own traditions and rituals, maybe even amidst our own beliefs of what it is that we are celebrating tonight, for a moment, we can turn our gaze away from our lights to the darkness that lies beyond us. Because it is into that darkness that the Christ was born, to be among us, and to be among them. To bring peace to a world that needed and still needs it.

Maybe most of all, we celebrate tonight that promise and the hope that comes with it: that the Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness will not overcome it. Hope is not optimism that there won’t be any darkness; we would have lost it by now if it was. True hope is knowing that we too have a place and a purpose in God’s story; knowing that the light is there for us to see, if we turn our attention to it. To find our place, maybe all we need to do is to behold the light that has come, and to be willing to share that moment with those whom we know, and those whom we don’t.

I wish you and your families, and those whom you will encounter a peaceful and joyful Christmas.

Waiting with the Light

Sermon for Christmas Day 2020
Hurstpierpoint College Chapel

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness – on them light has shined” So speaks the Prophet Isaiah to the people almost three thousand years ago.

I had never experienced what it was really like to walk in darkness, until I walked a stretch of the Camino de Santiago in October last year. I had anticipated long, sunny days, but instead I spent a lot of time walking in darkness and in rain. I hadn’t appreciated that Spain’s coast is significantly west from where we are, yet it shares the Continental time zone. Hence, the first three hours walk every day I walked in darkness.

I would have certainly been surprised, if not terrified, if I had suddenly seen a great light. So I can imagine a little bit what the shepherds must have felt that night when they saw a great light, and probably even more so when they saw that in the light there was an angel. No matter how much the angel told them not to be afraid, that was probably exactly what they were.

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The Light shines in the Darkness

Sermon for the first Eucharist of Christmas
Hurstpierpoint College Chapel

A couple of years ago I was speaking to a colleague from Albania. He had come to the UK in the late nineties fleeing the civil conflict at the time. Remembering the continuous threats and fear of his home country, as he arrived here, he could not believe that people here got upset if they didn’t have enough milk in their tea or if the post arrived a day late. However, after a couple of years in safety and security, he noticed how he too got bothered by the trivialities of daily life.

I was reminded of this conversation when reflecting on the year past. On a personal, national and international level, our conversations have been dominated by COVID-19. For all of us, the pandemic has brought a darkness and dullness to our lives, which we could not have imagined a year ago and this has dominated our thinking and our speaking. As many of us have asked ourselves: what did we talk about before COVID? Ok, apart from Brexit and Trump …

I am sure, therefore, that I am not the only one who hears the words from the Prophet Isaiah tonight in that context: “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation.”

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A Christmas message

Sermon St Peter’s Milton Lilbourne, 24^th December 2018, 11.00pm
Midnight Communion: Isaiah 9.2-7 and Luke 2.1-20

As a child, I often spent Wednesday afternoons with my grandmother. I particularly remember one afternoon: we were going to leave a message in a bottle. I don’t quite remember what the message was, but I remember well the sense of excitement as I stood in the middle of the bridge crossing the river, ready to throw my bottle into the unknown. I have remained fascinated by the idea of leaving a message for someone you don’t know.

So last week, my eye was caught by the story you may have read or heard as well. It was the news item that a young girl had found a message in a Christmas card she was about to write: a message that claimed to have come from within a Chinese prison. Someone wrote in English “We are foreign prisoners in Shanghai Qinqpu prison in China. Forced to work against our will. Please help us and notify human rights organization.”

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Expect the unexpected

Sermon St Mary’s Marlborough, 30^th December 2018
First Sunday of Christmas: 1 Samuel 2.18-20, 26 and Luke 2.41-52

Jesus in the temple Traditionally, well, at least since the 1970s, this first Sunday after Christmas is often celebrated as the Feast of the Holy Family. As we hear about Mary, Joseph and Jesus, we are invited to see them as a model for all Christian families, and, I suppose inevitable, reflect in how far we live up to that standard. I think whoever had the idea of placing this particular celebration just after Christmas, either did not have a family, or had a good sense of humour, or was one of those people who had the perfect family – a person I have yet to meet!

Of course, hopefully, over the past few days, most of us will have had the opportunity to spend time with family, or families in some way or other. Time with children, grandchildren, parents, grandparents, or with friends who have become like family. Time to celebrate, be together, and eat together – often a bit too much. But, no matter how much we have enjoyed our celebrations, I think we also realise that the perfect family – whatever that may look like – does not really exist. For many of us, this time will also remind us of the more painful moments in our lives, often connected with what has happened to those nearest to us, or between us and them.

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Christmas: An image of home

Sermon St Mary’s Marlborough, 24^th December 2018, 11.30pm
Christmas Midnight Communion: Isaiah 9.2-7 & Luke 2.1-14

*“Earthrise” taken by Apollo 8 on 24th December 1968*

“In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered”. They are familiar words for many of us, and I guess that whenever we hear them, we think of Christmas. Just as when we hear the opening chords or “Silent Night”, smell the sweetness of mulled wine and Christmas pudding, or see a beautifully decorated Christmas tree through a window.

Apart from the things we have in common, we will also have our own rituals: things we say or do to mark the start of Christmas. It may be a particular meal for Christmas Eve, a film you watch year after year, or indeed, coming to Church tonight.

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The gift we are

Homily Marlborough College Carol Services
December 2018

Christmas is only a couple more weeks away, or, for us here at the College, only a couple more days away. Today, we celebrate together, but later on, we each will celebrate in different ways. For some, it will be a large gathering with family and friends, whereas for others, just those closest to us. Some will travel to sunny or snowy places, whereas others will not travel any further than the Berkshire border.

Chapel

But, no matter where we go, or what we do, there is – I think – one thing we all have in common: in some way or other, we will all be involved in exchanging gifts: we will all be giving something, something of ourselves. For many, of course, this will be actual gifts, great or small. But it also may be giving of your time, or your skill: providing the music or cooking the turkey. Giving is so instinctive to us human beings that often we forget that we are doing it.

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The Greatest Gift

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.

Nativity

Most of us will be able to think of moments of great significance in our lives. Often you recognise them at the time, even though you don’t always know precisely how until much later. I would like to suggest that most, if not all, of these moments involve an encounter: an encounter with the other, in which suddenly something is revealed that we hadn’t recognised before.

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