Manger and Mystery

This Advent at our Church we are running a series called Manger and Mystery, based on a book by Marilyn Brown Oden by the same name. I have decided that every week I would post my sermon on this blog...because I can. Last week I did not preach so I cannot post my Colleague's sermon so we begin with Advent 2...the theme: Rekindling the Sacred. You may use the Sermon as a preparation help if you are a preacher some where else in the world...but please be original and don't plagiarise.



Manger and Mystery – Rekindling the Sacred

Aim: For people explore what sacredness is and how they can rekindle it this Christmas.

Readings: John 1:1-14



Introduction

As we go on this adventure called Advent and follow the theme Manger and Mystery we come today to the subject of Rekindling the Sacred.

Now if we sincerely prepare ourselves for Christmas, which is what Advent is about…not paging through the Shopper Supplement in the Benoni City Times for Christmas specials, we come to a number of realisations. One of them is that Christmas is a sacred time.

What does Sacred mean? Well when we look at a dictionary definition we find that it means 1 a : dedicated or set apart for the service or worship of a deity b : devoted exclusively to one service or use (as of a person or purpose) 2 a : worthy of religious veneration : holy b : entitled to reverence and respect 3 : of or relating to religion : not secular or profane. If we look at the synonyms we read words such as Holy, Sanctified, Blessed, Consecrated and so on. Do you get the picture?

The opposite of Sacred is of course Secular, that which takes no part in the Sacred. Now this is where the danger comes in for us. I’m certain that most people would agree that Christmas is set aside for the Worship of Jesus the New Born King. It is sacred for Christians and there are many sacred symbols and practices surrounding this Festival. But for the most it has become a Secular Festival, the sacredness has been removed.

Now Western Society has done an interesting thing that is quite foreign to many other societies and that is to make that distinction between the Sacred and the Secular. African, Middle Eastern and Eastern societies cannot see the difference. Therefore religion permeates all culture.

My challenge today is two-fold; firstly to begin to realise that we should not and cannot separate the Sacred and the Secular and secondly that we should re-inject the Sacred into Christmas.

1. Cannot and should not separate Sacred and Secular.

When we read John 1, we read of a divine interruption, if you will the sacred entering the secular. This is John’s nativity, the time that the Word, the LOGOS, who was and who is and who is to come…the true Word of God Christ removes his Glory as one would remove a cloak and enters the world that he created in the lowliest of forms…a human child. Perhaps even more lowly, the male human child (since we all know that girl children are far superior to their male counter-parts…coming from the father of a girl child).

So, we have had the Children’s Nativity Play where we saw the Nativity Scene but there is something missing that Catalonian folk add. They add someone called “El Caganer” – who can be loosely translated as “the one who is doing his business” or “the one who is going to the loo”. I thought of showing you a picture of the figure, but this might offend some people.

The business in hand must be taken quite euphemistically, when I tell you that El Caganer takes his place in the Christmas Crib, besides the Wise Men, wearing a peasant beret and squatting, with his trousers around his ankles. Now this might come across as quite sacrilegious but I think there is some wisdom in the little character.

In the midst of all this solemnity, there is injected a little earthly humour, a little humanity in the midst of all this Godliness. And I say, that this is a good thing, a very good thing indeed.

The Nativity Scene such as we saw performed by was first created by Saint Francis of Assisi. Francis sought to remind people what the nativity actually meant: to ground the event in reality – to remind people that the nativity was not a chocolate box affair of gleaming straw and sterile food troughs, but a dirty, smelly, cold, faeces-covered battle of endurance for a young girl and her much older husband.

The incarnation, the miracle of the incarnation was the choice of a God who was prepared to pour himself out for us: not only at the end of his life in the triumph of the cross, but at the beginning. The incarnation was an act of vulnerable humility, of great risk.

The heresy of docetism suggests that God only appeared in human form, that the incarnation was symbolic, that the crucifixion did not kill, that Christ did not need to eat or drink or even. Such heresy was rightly crushed by the Bishop Ignatius of Antioch in his writings and condemned by ecumenical council, but I suggest to you this morning, that there is an element of docetism in all of us, an unwillingness to accept the vibrant truth of the incarnation, a temptation to sugar coat the nativity: “The cattle are lowing, the baby awakes
But little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes”

…as that Christmas Carol goes. We willingly agree with the unrealistic, unincarnational concept of an unreal, docestic Jesus, when we should be prepared to grasp that uncomfortable truth: that God-is-with-us, that Emmanuel was incarnated as a human being and that he became one of us.

What is Away in a Manager trying to prove? That Christ was sinless? Certainly, Christ was sinless, but no child cries because of sin, children cry because that is how they communicate (I know all about that). The word, the divine logos, became flesh and his first communications with us were not the beatitudes, or even “it is finished” but a cry of hunger, of cold and for a clean nappy.

God had no intention that we might separate the Sacred and the Secular. In fact the secular is merely a human construct. To God all is Sacred…that’s why he chose to fly in the face of what was expected, rather than coming as a grown King in all his glory he came in the most unclean of places to the most unclean of people. The sacred became the Secular.

2. Re-inject the Sacred into Christmas

So here we are 2000 odd years later with our minds set on the 25 December, when it all happens. When we celebrate the opening of the presents that put our overdrafts into overdrafts…sorry, I mean when we celebrate the birth of the Christ child.

You have heard it all before and you all know it, Christmas has certainly become a Secular event. Some say that Christ is X’ed out of Christmas when we write Xmas. One of my first year Seminary lecturers (Rock in the Grass) reflects on the Americanism “Happy Holidays” as a very helpful greeting.

Because in South Africa we all say “Happy Christmas” instead. This essentially Christian greeting is said to everyone and anyone – irrespective of whether there is Christian or any other form of faith behind the greeting. He tells how he was greeted by a very drunk man, who sought to excuse his public drunkenness by telling him that “it is Krismis afterall”. Christmas became his excuse for inebriation.

He continues to say, “Just like Christmas becomes the excuse for overeating; and Xmas becomes the excuse for shops to invite us to max out the credit cards; and Kersmis becomes the excuse for nookie with the secretary at the office party; and Krrissmass becomes the reason for drunkenness and violence. And what we really mean is “Holiday”. These activities are really holiday induced. A mass for Christ will not invite people into gluttony, and debt, and debauchery. But holiday fever can.”

The truth is that we will probably never get away from what Christmas has become. It is essentially driven by economics and money always talks. Christians could protest but we would probably be ignored or even denied permit to protest. That doesn’t matter.

What matters is how we respond in our own lives. The first Christmas was clearly not a pretty picture. God did not hold back when he decided to inject the sacred into the secular. He went the whole hog. What we can do is re-inject the sacred into the secular. We are all going to celebrate in our own capacities, how about we take time in our families to bring Christ back into focus. Find ways to take what we already do and make Christ the centre of the celebration. Before you eat make a toast the honoured guest whose birthday it is. As you open gifts let that be a time to remember the gift given to us and what it means (not just try to remember if you still have the receipt if that shirt doesn’t fit).

Conclusion

In the beginning was the Word… and the Word became flesh. An interruption of divine importance but an interruption that was unexpected.

God does not mind his manners when it comes to us, he does what he pleases and it pleased him to come as a human (male) child. Is that interruption going to become the focus of our celebrations this Christmas or is it going to stay just that…an interruption.

God Bless you, Amen.