When I was a child, I’d be a nightmare on the last day of a summer holiday. Back in the 1970’s you had one holiday away. We usually went to Bournemouth or Cromer or Clacton on Sea.
One year we even went north of Watford Gap to the far-flung delights of Scarborough! On the last day when told to come off the beach, I’d run back onto it. Why? Because I didn’t want the holiday to end. Returning to normality – school and so on – needed to be put off for as long as possible.
I wish it could be Christmas every day. But isn’t Christmas over? I was in a Morrisons in Harrogate the other day. In your face as you enter the shop is a big sign. It says “Easter”! The girl behind the till asked me if I was still being festive. I said “your shop is full of Easter.” “Yes,” she said. “Christmas came down on Tuesday. It is Easter now!” “I’m a church vicar,” I said, “I need a break before I can think about Easter!”
One of the presenters on Radio 1 said the other day as they’d stopped playing Christmas songs, “thank goodness I don’t have to play Mariah, I’m sick of it.” In our homes Christmas is in a heap, stuff everywhere and bits of food to be used up. One of my friends asked “is it okay to have a mince pie for breakfast?” To which I replied, “I’ve just had one on my way to making breakfast. Is that okay?”
For much of society Christmas is over. And like me on the beach, journeying from celebration to the reality of January and dark miserable wet days like yesterday isn’t attractive. We want the lightness and the hope and the fun and the escape from it all to last longer. But it doesn’t last. We’ve sung about peace on earth, goodwill to men but Russia is still bombing Ukraine and Israel is still bombing Gaza. We’ve sung about the little town of Bethlehem how still we see thee lie, when Bethlehem at the end of 2023 is anything but still. We’ve celebrated the light of the world, and it seems that light isn’t doing very much. You don’t hear me preach very often in this part of the Circuit, but regular hearers know I get inspiration from funny places. How about a sign on the toilet door in Holy Trinity church in Ripon? “Light not working. May be dark. Sorry.” That’s where people are. We support each other through a dark struggle, and we don’t know what to do.
I wish it could be Christmas every day. Well before you say dear God he’s a miserable preacher. Let’s hope it’s three years and four months until he comes again, let’s remember the Christmas Gospel. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Arise shine for your light has come and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. In him was light and that light was the life of everyone. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness shall not put it out. I am the light of the world, whoever follows me shall not walk in darkness but shall have the light of life.
Friends, this is the Christmas season.
It lasts at least until 6 January, but you can stretch it out to 2 February which is Candlemas. I never got that until I was the minister of an Anglican and Methodist LEP as I am now. Anglicans keep the crib out until Candlemas and they light the Christ candle until Candlemas. It is to remind us that Christmas truths equip us to do January and whatever a New Year brings. The light might not be working. It may be dark. Sorry. But there is a greater light.
Today the lectionary leads us to two characters who see Christmas as a lasting gift, a light that will shine for ever. Mary and Joseph are in the Temple to do two things, obey two Jewish rites. The first rite was for Mary, purification 40 days after the bleeding from the birth of a son. There’s a very exciting eight verses on it in the twelfth chapter of Leviticus if you’re bored this afternoon. Mary comes with the offering of a pair of doves or pigeons, as required for those who can't afford a sheep. The second rite was the presentation of Jesus as a firstborn son.
The text doesn't focus on the rituals that brought the family to the Temple. Instead they encounter older people, filled and led by the Spirit. As so often in Luke's Gospel, there is a pairing of a woman and a man: Luke's birth narratives also begin with an older couple, in Elizabeth and Zechariah.
Simeon's reaction reflects both personal and universal hopes. The Spirit enables him to see the promise of the Messiah for all peoples fulfilled in this baby now – long before Jesus has done anything. That also fulfils a personal revelation, that Simeon would see this. Here is light. Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace: according to thy word. For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people. To be a light to lighten the Gentiles and to be the glory of thy people Israel. Simeon had waited year after year for the moment of revelation. He found peace and deep joy at the end of his long life.
Anna is also led by God to this baby. She also sees God's promises fulfilled and shares her excitement with others. Luke describes Anna as a prophet, as someone who speaks God’s truth not just about the future but about the present, God’s presence here among us. As an old woman, a widow, possibly with no children of her own, Anna would not have had much status in society. She may have spent all her time in the temple, but as a woman she would not have had much religious status either. And yet, it is to people like Anna that God makes himself known. Light not working. May be dark. Sorry. Here’s the Christmas that lasts shared to us by two very elderly people – light, peace, glory, contentment and excitement. We don’t know how many years more Simeon and Anna lived but we can imagine Christmas was with them every day. Life had changed.
I wish it could be Christmas every day. Well, it can be. Our diet needs to improve, we can’t party all year, we have things to get on with, but if Jesus the light is here then he is here forever. We can’t blow his light out. Remember one candle, one light is a protest saying we will not have it this way.
I don’t know what your numbers at services over Christmas were like. Allhallowgate had its highest number on Christmas Day for several years. People like Christmas, a sweet baby story, the comfort of carols. They might reflect later well nothing much has changed. As the sign says it might be dark. Sorry. Where’s the light and peace and goodwill? Christmas still has work to do in the world.
This doesn’t mean that Christmas failed. Far from it. It means that what God was doing in Jesus was always meant to be the beginning of something, not the end.
The New Testament and Christian writings from the first centuries have a clear expectation that the Christians will participate in, appropriate, or be absorbed into Jesus’ mission. Maybe we need a focus as churches in 2024. We join with him in incarnating the presence of God in the world. We join with him in calling oppressive authorities to account. We join with him in feeding the hungry and tending to the sick. We join with him in proclaiming good news, in freeing captives, in making peace — not the tentative ceasefires we call peace in our world, but God’s true peace of whole and healed relationships, which we call shalom.
This is the true work of Christmas. This is the life Christmas calls us to incarnate in the world, to offer to the world in and through our bodies. This is the Kingdom of God in action.
The words in Scripture about light and the testimony of Simeon and Anna are worth reflecting on once more today as we enter into the brave, new world that Christmas inaugurates and we stand near another new year.
I wish it could be Christmas everyday. Here’s how..
I will end with some powerful words from the wonderful twentieth-century American theologian Howard Thurman:
When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among brothers and sisters,
To make music in the heart.
Friends, continue to have a joyous Christmas and commit yourselves to live it in the New Year. Let’s transform the toilet door sign: The light is working. The darkness won’t last. Alleluia!
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