GOD-BEARERS - ChristMass 06

24th December 2005 : MIDNIGHT MASS : Year B

Up where we live in Beeliar the developers have opened a new estate called Mevé. In one part of the new area we have a series of streets whose names sound delightfully like a Rowan Atkinson sketch:

GECKO
BANDICOOT
BETTONG
GANNET
BEE EATER

No doubt the Royal Street-Namer imagined he or she was naming these nouveau-suburban thoroughfares after Australian birds and marsupials. Certainly a change from the prosaic Famous Faces or "let’s throw a dart at the atlas" approach.

And although sed Royal Street-Namer probably had no idea that she or he was creating the potential skeleton for one of Mr Atkinson’s pieces it just goes to show how even innocent and harmless entities like street names can become something other than their creator’s original intention.

Sometimes this can be a Good Thing, revealing the hidden, stimulating the imagination, throwing wide the doors of possibility and exposing breathtaking vistas of joy.

At other times the original creation is misunderstood and becomes perverted, or it’s twisted deliberately and becomes perverted. And sometimes it simply evolves into a form that is hardly recognisable as its descendant.

We find these sorts of things happening with the birth of Jesus, the Christ Mass, aka Christmas. Mostly we’re talking some form of misunderstanding but occasionally we get wilful twisting. Evolution appears not to enter the picture because the birth of Jesus, by definition, is a unique event. Nevertheless, Christmass keeps evolution within travelling-distance, albeit on the outskirts, because we all necessarily need to grow and change in our understanding of Jesus’ birth and its implications.

And those moments of what we rightly and properly call enlightenment are the times we see into the text and past the plastic, when we have clarity of sight instead of the blinding glare, wink and flash of millions of aimless light-bulbs. (Without question those bulbs help many experience the wonder, awe and delight which surely accompany our knowledge of Jesus’ birth but when our conversation turns to How many? and How much? and What about the electricity bill? and Is that the best one? then we have to wonder whether we’ve missed the point.)

And of course we don’t have to number ourselves among either the audience or the practitioners of these summer wonderland displays, or add ourselves to the grog-shop packs, or join the whirligig of car-parkers desperately searching the multi-storeys for parking spots that the divine has earmarked only for true believers.

The Church has long excelled at sucking the breath out of an event that ought to remind us of life and hope and yet seems to fall with terrifying ease into the hands of evil geniuses who hose down Jesus-God-with-us and cover him with layers of molten plastic that cools to a white Anglo-Saxon crust.

Surely Jesus is much more than this! Surely his birth speaks of proclamation-yet-to-come, a proclamation to which we are both heirs and honoured bearers.

But many years ago now John Bell and Graham Maule of the Iona Community had to ask a question still relevant tonight:

Lord, where have we left you,
somewhere far away?
alone and in a manger,
a stranger left in hay?

Lord, where have we left you —
somewhere all can view,
well polished and presented,
undented and untrue?

This Jesus was not born simply to delight and entertain our inner children! The shepherds who stared a-goggle and rattled off abuzz with awe were no bunch of Hollywood sentimentalists. They knew then what many have forgotten now: that Jesus was born for a reason and they who witnessed his vulnerability knew they were part of a story that had suddenly become his and theirs.

They saw Jesus and understood that their lives were changed. They saw Jesus and realised that the Living God had acted decisively. They saw Jesus and looked upon God.

As for us, what do we see when the world gives us a model manger and a plastic doll to put in it? Do we understand that the Living God invited the Jewish girl to become God-bearer? Or do we think, Mary had a baby boy …?

If Mary had a baby boy then we have little to offer the world around us. Even those for whom Chrissy is just another holiday know that much.

But, many will argue, these things are symbols, the words we use are metaphors that speak both about things eternal and hope present and future. These are mighty things, grand themes making robust demands.

And more than that – they are the background to God’s reasons for sending Jesus.

But when we behold the symbols and employ the metaphors, who or what has the power? Can we really stand firm in front of the plastic doll and search its production-line physiognomy without hurrying off to do some shopping or see to the roast, all with a warm-fuzzy feeling inside?

Not that we should decry warm-fuzzies – as long as we understand them as affirmations, expressions of care and respect.

But the birth of Jesus is not about such things. When we regard our symbols and utter our metaphors we need to do so with the willingness to stand long, until we flinch with the knowledge that this particular birth involves US, draws us into its life, offers up a purpose and a mission, commands us to live the lives about which these symbols and metaphors speak.

So let us by all means stand by our plastic Jesuses; but let us do so in the knowledge that Miriam was first God-bearer and not just another special young mum with a special bambino; that we are intimates, not spectators; that we are part of the story, not just listeners.

And that OURS is the part where we look at all the world’s pain and our own human, human hearts break and in the name of this Jesus whom we saw and recognised in the guise of a plastic doll, we say, This is not right and armed with the hope that is God’s own love and compassion, we move forward to be God-bearers in our own right, bringing hope and offering love.