Fr David Ranson
Over the last four weeks our community has been preparing for this celebration. We have been marking this preparation each week by lighing a different candle on our Advent wreath, each one symbolsing an attribute that is given us through the story of Jesus’ birth. We have lit a candle for hope, a candle for peace, a candle for joy, a candle for love. In so doing we have reflected on the way in which the birth we celebrate this night brings a new kind of hope into our hearts, how it assures us that a promise made us from ancient times has been realised such that we can affirm that there is something more enduring than our own clumsy efforts, how this recognition quickens and rekindles our spirits, and how the hope, peace and joy at the heart of the story we now celebrate, overflow into the freedom to reach out in a new way to others, a way that is less-defensive, more hospitable – a way of love.
To have hope, to live in peace, to experience joy, and to share love: we know that these are the actions which give us our humanity with all its possiblity and beauty. We know that these are what make us whole and alive, and yet we know how fragile hope, peace, joy and love are. They are not given to us automatically; they are obscured by the fragmentation we experience in ourselves and in our world; they are fleeting in their quality and they disappear from our grasp as we look for them in all the places that cannot provide them. And this is why, year after year, we come back to this same story that we have just told again. It reminds us of something; it centres us. It speaks to us of the simplicity of the hope, peace, joy and love that we see especially radiant on the faces of our childen at this time. By them, particularly, we are reassured of the goodness and innocence of life so often lost in the struggle of life.
And to mark this goodness and innocence for which we long, and about which the Nativity story reminds us, we light the central candle on our wreath, our Christmas candle. The candle is white and new. Yet, like the light of every candle it flickers with fragility. To light a candle, though, is to affirm the power of its fragility. For no amount of darkness can extinguish the light of a single candle.
In the story of a birth full of promise and possibiltiy a light shines. It is the light which is the life of God, always fragile and precious, but unmistakable in its quality and power. A life that like the light of a candle gives of itself for the sake of others.
The new life and light we celebrate, though, is not simply an historical event. It is a current one. The life of Christ is born, now, in our own time, and in our own place, as a light shines in the darkness of our own self-preoccupation through the lives of those people whose self-giving reflects God’s own self-giving to us We all know them. They are not far from us. They live in this parish. They live in our streets. They live in our neighbourhoods. They are members of our own family. They may even be us.
The life of Christ continues to be born in stables, which at first might appear very ordinary and obscure – the house next door, the house down the street, our own struggling heart. Yet, often in these houses and hearts, there shines a light in the darkness - the light which is the life of God being birthed around us in undramatic, but nonetheless, silently heroic ways through lives which reflect God’s own self-giving.
I think, for example, of the people at Berowra Heights who experienced the destruction of the hail storm last Thursday and who, despite the damage to their own properties, could reach out to their neighbours with friendship and assistance. In their sense of community, a light shines in the darkness of individualism and self-protection.
I think of the parents who receive the trauma of a disabled child, and whose lives are never their own again, as they spend all their energy in the care of their child. In their life, a light shines in the darkness
I think of the mother or father of a teenager who is discovered with a mental illness, and spends so many years in anxiety, never really resting, coping with the unpredictability of the condition. In their life, a light shines in the darkness of a question that resists its answer.
I think of the person whose own mother or father is aged and frail, and who turns their life upside down, as they commit to an unknown future caring for their parent – the person who forgets their own needs and spends many years in care of someone whom they love. In their life, too, a light shines in the darkness of anxiety
I think of the spouse who watches in agony as their partner falls victim to a dementia, and who stays awake, in so many hidden ways, day and night to enable the one falling ill with dignity. Through their love, a light shines in the darkness of despair
I think of the person in a failed relationship, who despite the intensity of the hurt, refuses to extract vengeance on their partner, and who patiently and gently works for what might bring the most healing to all in the situation. In their openness, a light shines in the darkness of bitterness
I think of parents who have lost a child at the prime of their life, who ache with the sense of loss and absence, and yet who continue to put one foot in front of another, and who commit to recognise the beauty and the possiblity of life. In their hgopie, a light shines in the darkness of grief and loss.
I think of those people who spend untold hours in a volunteer capacity for many different causes, raising money, giving of their time, often with no gratitude or acknowledgement, but only with the commitment to make lighter the suffering of others. In their self-donation, a light shines in the darkness of our own selfishness.
Happy are we, if like the shepherds, we can see the light that shines in our midst. Happy are we who can, even now, see the newborn life of God in the lives of others. Happy are we when we can truly know how we are gifted by such lives, and how such lives make our world a very different place. When, though Jesus, we can honour and be full of gratitude for the ways in which God’s life is birthed even now, the sense of fragmentation we experience in ourselves and in our world gives way to wholeness and truth
And then the hope, the peace, the joy, and the love for which we most deeply long will be the true gifts that we discover have been given us this Christmas.