What I actually preached at Midnight Mass

The people who have walked in darkness have seen a great light.

It’s always better if you are an optimist!  If you can, and you must try hard, you must be the eternal optimist…

Now you’re thinking either…

1. Oh I don’t know about that!  He’s so unrealistic! Or

2. Oh, go on, I’ve had a few sherry’s today, I’m going to look on the bright side.

But, it’s Christmas!  And we are called to have hope, especially at Christmas…We are hearing the story a peoples journey with GOD, trusting that ONE DAY, God would put things right.  They were called to be a people of hope and not of despair!

And GOD brought it about in the most extraordinary way possible!  When his Son was born to a young woman in a far off land, in a stable indeed!…we all know the event, and because of that, we are called to have hope, we are called to live in the light and not in the darkness. 

The great reading we have at Midnight Mass, is obligatory each Christmas at one of the services, it is the prologue to John’s Gospel.  The people who have walked in darkness have seen a great light.

It is presented in Greek, and is a mystical reflection on the divinity and incarnation of Christ. The Logos the Word Made Flesh and it is one of the most theologically significant passages in the Bible.  It begins and ends in eternity and has God interrupting our human history.

It tells of a light that has been lit in the darkness, a light that will never be extinguished.  It tells us to

·     Build on the foundations of the past. 

·     Look to the future with expectation, and

·     Live with hope in the present!

I can identify with the idea of Jesus bringing light to the darkest of places.  And just a few days after the shortest day midwinter, it is easy to take comfort from that image of Jesus being the light of the world.

At baptisms, as we pass over the candle to the godparents, or the newly baptised, we talk about Jesus the light of the world.  “Walk in the faith, and keep the flame of faith alive in your heart, so when the Lord comes again you may be ready to greet Him.”  These words are the commission for the newly baptised (and us all) not to have a private faith that is held in secret, not to run luke-warm with your faith, not to be a nominal Christian….but this is the call to light up the world with  Christian Hope and optimism.

Optimism!

JOKE

A family had twin boys whose only resemblance to each other was their looks. If one felt it was too hot, the other thought it was too cold. If one said the TV was too loud, the other claimed the volume needed to be turned up. Opposite in every way, one was an eternal optimist, the other a doom & gloom pessimist.

Just to see what would happen, at Christmas their father loaded the pessimist's room with every imaginable toy and game. The optimist's room he loaded with horse manure.

That morning the father passed by the pessimist's room and found him sitting amid his new gifts crying bitterly.

"Why are you crying?" the father asked.

"Because my friends will be jealous, I'll have to read all these instructions before I can do anything with this stuff, I'll constantly need batteries, and my toys will eventually get broken." answered the pessimist twin.

Passing the optimist twin's room, the father found him dancing for joy in the pile of manure. "What are you so happy about?" he asked.

To which his optimist twin replied, "There's got to be a pony in here somewhere!"

Now that’s optimism – that is hope!

Well, Christmas Day is really the start of the New Year for me.  I like to think that we can start to think about what next year will bring, but also to thank God for all he has given us this year.

This year has been sad, as we have lost some really good people, who have gone to be with God, and we are building on their legacy here. 

But it has also been a year that I have witnessed wonderful things, random acts of kindness and thoughtfulness that make this church such a wonderful place to be.  I have seen people keeping hope alive and living the Christmas spirit.

And, tonight is a celebration of that, it is the day that we thank God for giving us the courage and patience and hope and optimism, to take that light to the people around us.

It’s not easy. It’s nowhere near easy, to speak about hope when the future is sometimes bleak…

When we leave here tonight, I pray that we will all be filled with the Spirit of Christmas, that Christmas Hope, to live each day as if it were still Christmas Day, with a vision for the future, and a commitment to work in the present that comes with it.

I rarely quote Helen Steiner Rice, but she once wrote;

“Peace on earth will come to stay,
When we live Christmas every day.”

You might be saying to yourself, “Well, he says that, but that doesn’t really apply to me”, but it does!  The Christmas Spirit is what it is!

The Author Garrison Keillor, writes;

A lovely thing about Christmas is that it's compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together. 

And here we are….in the middle of the night.  We must be mad!  Well, either mad, or we believe in Christmas.  The hope of a better tomorrow, a reason to work for good, and a belief that the story of the birth of a baby 2,000 years ago still has something to say to us today.

Over the last few weeks, people have asked me what I wanted for Christmas.  I said two things – world peace and a day off.  They always laughed – but that is the optimism, the Christian Hope to which we are called.

Midnight Mass Sermon 2012 - Merry Christmas Everybody!

Midnight Mass 2012

  

I started to feel quite Christmassy quite early this year.  It might have been that it's a new parish, it might have been that I've been looking forward to Christmas for months.  You see, Christmas is more than just another day for me, it is an attitude, it is a feeling that we can keep throughout the year, if we can understand what it happening this evening.

We are not just here singing and celebrating, we are actually writing another page in the story of Christmas.  We are adding to the story that is 2,000 years old…and it hasn’t finished.

We are making Christmas!

And down the generations, people have done the same.  There is no greater example of this than the carols we are singing this evening.

(14^th Century)

On the way in this evening we sang Adeste Fidelis the carol we know as O Come all ye Faithful. 

The original words are attributed to John of Reading, who wrote a book called “Prose for Christmas Day” around 1320. 

Much later, the tune (and some of the words) were changed by John Francis Wade, a Catholic Layman who fled to France during the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745. 

It’s suggested there’s a secret meaning to some of the words.  The return of Bonnie Prince Charlie and the secret followers of The Old Pretender Stuart are all supposedly mentioned.  The faithful are the ‘Jacobites’ who are being encouraged to return, and Bethlehem, was a code for them to mean England.  So this was a carol of rallying the people to return.

(18^th Century)

No midnight mass is complete without us leaving to Hark the Herald Angels sing.  This carol was written in 1739 by Charles Wesley.  Although he was a bit of a sober, sombre man, it’s still possible to sing this carol after a Christmas drink, as a few of you will know.   The words are triumphant!  In the last verse we sing “sing choirs of Angels”  I looked through every Bible I have, and according to them the Angels “spoke” not “sang”, but that’s fine.  It’s a good picture!

(19^th Century)

Then, before the Gospel reading we sang that calm and beautiful classic Christmas carol Silent Night.  The original lyrics were written in Austria in by a priest, Joseph Mohr.  The music was written by Xaver Gruber in 1816 and it was sung the first time on Christmas Eve 1818 in the Church of St. Nicholas, Oberndorf, Austria.

Nearly one hundred years later, in the 1914 Christmas truce of World War One, where troops stopped fighting and left the trenches to exchange gifts with the enemy, this carol was simultaneously sung in three languages (English, French and German) it was so widely known and sung.  This is the quiet colossus in the Carolling world!

(20^th Century)

Even though Christina Rossetti wrote her famous poem “In the Bleak Midwinter” before 1872, it didn’t appear as a carol until 1906, in the English Hymnal with a setting by the famous English composer Gustav Holst.  It’s got everything in – the birth of Jesus, the second coming, the simple surroundings of the birth and Mary’s love and care for her son.  It’s all there!

So we are hearing what Christmas meant to the people of the last seven hundred years, and we join with them in adding to that Christmas story!

Christmas has given us a wealth of art and music, poetry and philosophy, the story of God working with others…

And tonight, WE are adding to Christmas just by being here.  WE are part of the Christmas story, the story of God and his people, the greatest story ever told.

We are making Christmas!

That’s why I’m a Christmas person!  In Church we speak of the Incarnation – the birth of Jesus  - and at Easter, we speak of the Atonement; the crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus.  I understand you can’t have one without the other, but I have to say that Christmas is for me, as C.S Lewis calls it ‘That Great Miracle’.

However, the miracle doesn’t end here.  It can be Christmas Every Day.  If we are making the Birth of Jesus Mean Something for others not just at the end of December, but throughout the year.

You might think that I’m overdoing it a bit, but I’m not!

We hear lots of talk about the church dying, and I’m pleased to tell you that it isn’t happening.  In parishes such as this one, we have outreach into the community every day of the year. Dozens of people are doing hundreds of jobs to make life a little brighter and more manageable for others.

We start every morning with prayer in this church and many work late into the evening to keep Christmas going!  To make the incarnation of Christ mean something concrete, tangible and real.

We are making Christmas!  In December, January and even June!

A newspaper reported a couple of days ago that Anglicans give up 22.3 million hours every month to work that benefits their local community. The Sunday Telegraph asked church representatives of every Diocese to say what their church did that they were most proud of, and the response was overwhelming: night shelters, food banks, credit unions, housing trusts, legal advice, street patrols and support groups were all mentioned.

We get everywhere!

According to the recent Census, 59 per cent of people in England and Wales call themselves Christian. However, separate research shows that 85 per cent of us visit a church in any given year, whether to give thanks, pay respects, mark a significant moment or seek solace. The church provides a rallying point.

So, this Christmas, I’m not worried about the future of the Church!  Down the generations it has proclaimed the birth of Jesus, the Incarnation of God, and made that mean something to the people!  This evening, we are making more Christmas!

God has put us into the Christmas story in our time, creating something good and new, we are blessed indeed to be here this evening.

May God give you a time of peace and relaxation, and the joy of understanding your part in the greatest story ever told, in the name of God; Father, Son and Holy Spirit. 

Community Carol Service

This Friday at 7.00pm we have our Community Carol Service in All Saints' supported by James Summers Funeral Directors. We hope to use all donations to fund the 'Coffee and Cake Collective'. A quiet space for people who want to meet and chat.

Advent and Christmas

CHRISTMAS SERVICES

December 2012

Sun 2nd 6.00pm Advent Sunday Service at ASC
Fri 14th 7.00pm Community Carol Service at ASC
Sat 15th 7.00 pm Comedy Christmas Play ‘Rudolph You’re
Fired!’ (Free entry) at Pontprennau
Sun 16th 9.30am Christingle Service at ASL
10 am All Age Christmas Carol Service at
Pontprennau
11.00am Christingle Service at St David’s
3 pm Songs of Christmas Praise with Festive Bring
& Share Tea at Pontprennau
Sun 23rd 10.30am Nativity Play at ASC
11.00am Nativity play at St Davids
6.00pm Service of Nine Lessons & Carols at ASC
Christmas Eve
Mon 24th 10.15am Carols at Maelfa Shop
4 pm Christingle Service at Pontprennau
4.30pm Carols by Candlelight at ASL
7.00pm Carols by Candlelight at St Edeyrn’s
11.30pm Midnight Eucharist at ASC
11.30 pm ‘Carols by Candlelight’ Eucharist at
Pontprennau
Christmas Morning
Tues 25th 8.00am Holy Eucharist at ASC
9.30am Holy Eucharist at St Edeyrn’s
10.00am Holy Eucharist at ASC
10.00 am All Age Christmas Celebration with
Communion at Pontprennau
St Stephen Wed 26th 10.00am Holy Eucharist at ASC
St John Thurs 27th 10.00am Holy Eucharist at ASC
Holy Innocents Fri 28th 10.00am Holy Eucharist at ASC

Sun 30th 10.30am United service at Cyncoed Methodist

Advent Sunday - Last week's sermon

It’s ‘Happy New Year’ in church terms today, we start the liturgical year on Advent Sunday. 

I was thinking that Advent had crept up on us this year, until I read an article on the BBC website entitled ‘tis the season of ostentation’ that reminded me that the Christmas lights on Oxford Street have been lit since the 5th November, when ‘Robbie Williams was the celebrity switching the lights on…  In Cardiff, we held off until the festive 15^th of November before we turned on the lights.  I couldn’t work out whether they were turned on by Bjorn the Polar bear, or Bob the Builder and Wendy.  Someone said it was Dr. Who?

Such is the demand for a good ‘run up’ to the greatest shopping event this year.  There is nothing else that comes near…

We can go to visit Santa, we can visit a ‘winter wonderland’, we can even buy and authentic German sausage from a huge barbeque in the city centre.  We will make our own particular preparations…we are preparing in church too.

There’s the real challenge for us this ADVENT.  I believe that advent is a time of ‘great hope’  (an advertising executive might say that it ‘has great potential’). 

Potentially people might come through the doors of our churches to hear that message of hope and peace,

Potentially their lives will be changed,

Potentially we will understand a little more about ourselves and our relationship with God.

As we meet those who come through our doors this season, we are entrusted with the task of welcoming them into our family, as they share with us the Advent journey to Christ being born with us once again.

ADVENT, more than any other time in the Christian calendar, is the time when people come close to the gospel message, and the selfless love of God - that resulted in him sending his Son to us.

This Advent, we are entrusted with the task of sharing the meaning of the season with others, We need to build roads by making the Church and our worship available to all.  We also need to look for new ways to speak to those around us in our community – and all in less than four weeks. 

And there won’t be a German sausage or a polar bear in sight!

Don’t worry, help is at hand!  Through Advent, we will light candles on our Advent wreath to remember the Patriarchs of our faith, the Prophets, John the Baptist, Mary, mother of our Lord, and we then take our place in the line to be the next to remind people of the importance of these few weeks.

Last year, at the beginning of Advent our readings were a bit grim – this year we have Jeremiah speaking God’s words

‘The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfil the promise I made’

He is promising to bring a new covenant, security and safety.

This joyful theme is continued by St. Paul, writing to the new Christians in Thessalonica

“How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy we feel before God because of you?”

Even though the Gospel is continuing the apocalyptic theme, there is still reason to be encouraged, because we are challenged to be joyful!  It reminds us that there is a glorious connecting between God and his people in both the first AND second coming of Christ.  Charles Wesley once wrote…

Advent is a season of expectation and preparation, as the Church prepares to celebrate the coming (adventus) of Christ in his incarnation, and also looks ahead to his final advent as judge at the end of time. The readings and liturgies not only direct us towards Christ’s birth, they also challenge the modern reluctance to confront the theme of divine judgement:

Every eye shall now behold him robed in dreadful majesty.

I can’t imagine how that could be any better?  God is keeping his promises, we are being encouraged, and we are being reminded that Christmas is the past, present and future of our faith!

We might not have German sausages…or a polar bear…

What else could make church better?  Well…how do you fancy converting to become an ORTHODOX CHURCH?

The ORTHODOX CHURCH how they worship, live and celebrate, is always strangely attractive to me.  There is no ADVENT for the ORTHODOX church; there is a fast just like LENT.

Red meat and poultry, dairy products, oil and wine, eggs and fish are prohibited (there are a few exceptions – wine is allowed on a Tuesday and Thursday and meat is allowed on the weekends)

However, it gets better!

The Eve of the Nativity (24^th December) is a strict fast day called Paramony (or preparation), but then as soon as the first star is seen in the night sky the Nativity begins! It’s also called the afterfast and the celebration continues right through until January 4^th when presents are given.

This seems to be more sensible in a way - Lots of prayerful preparation and lots of celebration.

Do you think we should convert to become Orthodox Christians?

Well, I am growing a beard, and the service next Sunday will be four hours long…..

As our church prepares, this evenings Advent Carol service will take us right back to the beginning.  God is creating the light, the promise to his people and the message of the Prophets.  There will be no Little Town of Bethlehem, but there will be Hark the Glad sound!

Here are some things others have said about ADVENT;

Old-fashioned, Spiritual Christmas?. John R. Brokhoff, Preaching the Parables—Cycle C. p. 28.

"What has happened to the old-fashioned, spiritual Christmas? The cause is our disregard of Advent. The church set aside this four-week pre-Christmas season as a time of spiritual preparation for Christ’s coming. It is a time of quiet anticipation. If Christ is going to come again into our hearts, there must be repentance. Without repentance, our hearts will be so full of worldly things that there will be ‘no room in the inn’ for Christ to be born again.…We have the joy not of celebration. Which is the joy of Christmas, but the joy of anticipation."

Take Time to be Aware Edward Hays, A Pilgrim’s Almanac, p. 196

"Take time to be aware that in the very midst of our busy preparations for the celebration of Christ’s birth in ancient Bethlehem, Christ is reborn in the Bethlehems of our homes and daily lives. Take time, slow down, be still, be awake to the Divine Mystery that looks so common and so ordinary yet is wondrously present.”

My prayer for us all is that this ADVENT we might recapture some of those things we thought long past, and get ready, once again, to hear the greatest story ever told.

advent /ˈadv(ə)nt, -vɛnt/

advent /ˈadv(ə)nt, -vɛnt/ 
▶noun
1 the arrival of a notable person or thing.
2 (Advent) Christian Theology the coming or second coming of Christ.
■ the first season of the Church year, leading up to Christmas and including the four preceding Sundays.
– origin OE, from L. adventus ‘arrival’, from advenire, from ad- ‘to’ + venire ‘come’.