The Orthodox Parish of St Aidan & St Chad, Nottingham
ECUMENICAL PATRIARCHATE
EPISCOPAL VICARIATE OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND
Exarchate of Parishes
of Russian Tradition in Western Europe
In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
We are presented today with two remarkable stories, one quite startling and another quite shocking.
The first one is that God made himself vulnerable and became a child in the arms of his mother. And he did this out of his love for all his creatures. When they had been created in Eden, they were as yet incomplete, and in that incompleteness they went astray. And going astray, they were led into all sorts of difficulties and all sorts of disgraces. But God, seeing them in his love, came to put things right and to give them the fullness of life, that they had never had before. And that’s the startling thing.
But the shocking one is that men and women who were in charge of Israel, the king, Herod, those in government around him and the religious leaders of the time wanted nothing to do with this. In their inattentiveness to God they had not been put into the picture, that this great event was going to happen. They wanted nothing to do with it, they were alarmed, they were threatened, and their reaction was, as indeed sadly is often the reaction of human beings, to get rid of this thing which threatens. Because Mary and Joseph were in tune with God, they could respond again to the warning of the angel and be taken into exile and safety.
But tragically, shockingly, all the other young boys in the area under two years of age were slaughtered ruthlessly, mercilessly, by King Herod, aided by his government officials, and aided by the church leaders, either in their silence or in their complicity.
So here we have the child of Bethlehem, born into the loving arms of his mother, into the family life which we all aspire to, and wish for, but he was also born into a terrible world of conflict and violence. And that is the situation for us Christians even now. We are where we want to be, in the safety of our homes and our families but we also live in a world which equally and more than ever before needs God’s intervention. We have the choice - do we go on our knees to Bethlehem and invite the Christ Child into our hearts, into our lives, that we might have all the fullness of life that he has to offer? But it means change. Or will we stand afar off with Herod and the others wanting nothing to do with it? Certainly not to be challenged in the way that our Lord always challenges.
Another story that we think of at this time is of three wise men who travelled from the east. Three men who had all the knowledge that was available in that age. In those days
We are presented today with two remarkable stories, one quite startling and another quite shocking.
The first one is that God made himself vulnerable and became a child in the arms of his mother. And he did this out of his love for all his creatures. When they had been created in Eden, they were as yet incomplete, and in that incompleteness they went astray. And going astray, they were led into all sorts of difficulties and all sorts of disgraces. But God, seeing them in his love, came to put things right and to give them the fullness of life, that they had never had before. And that’s the startling thing.
But the shocking one is that men and women who were in charge of Israel, the king, Herod, those in government around him and the religious leaders of the time wanted nothing to do with this. In their inattentiveness to God they had not been put into the picture, that this great event was going to happen. They wanted nothing to do with it, they were alarmed, they were threatened, and their reaction was, as indeed sadly is often the reaction of human beings, to get rid of this thing which threatens. Because Mary and Joseph were in tune with God, they could respond again to the warning of the angel and be taken into exile and safety.
But tragically, shockingly, all the other young boys in the area under two years of age were slaughtered ruthlessly, mercilessly, by King Herod, aided by his government officials, and aided by the church leaders, either in their silence or in their complicity.
So here we have the child of Bethlehem, born into the loving arms of his mother, into the family life which we all aspire to, and wish for, but he was also born into a terrible world of conflict and violence. And that is the situation for us Christians even now. We are where we want to be, in the safety of our homes and our families but we also live in a world which equally and more than ever before needs God’s intervention. We have the choice -
Another story that we think of at this time is of three wise men who travelled from the east. Three men who had all the knowledge that was available in that age. In those days
you could be a professor of everything! And they came and they found the child they were looking for, and they worshipped him. And not only did they bring him gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, but more than that. As they put the gold at his feet, they gave him the whole of their lives. They separated themselves from all the power, the wisdom, the comfort they had had hitherto. Indeed, perhaps, like St Basil three hundred years later, they may have said that all the knowledge they had was now ‘as filthy rags’ compared to this knowledge and wisdom they were given by an encounter with the God made man.
And they also offered frankincense - frankincense which is of the spirit, which is of prayerfulness, also signifying that their life was changing; whatever they had in the material world was being superseded by the desire for everything they would now have, in the spiritual world they were now entering in its fullness. And they also gave myrrh, the bitter herb, Meaning that they were able to make sacrifice, even to give themselves to the point of death if necessary, to God who had done this wonderful thing, and they went away changed.
Remember that wonderful poem by T S Eliot, The Journey of the Magi, where they say,
Did we come to witness a birth or a death?
And they also offered frankincense -
Remember that wonderful poem by T S Eliot, The Journey of the Magi, where they say,
There certainly was a birth, we’ve no doubt of that,
but we also experienced a death, our death.
We went back to our homes, those now unfamiliar places,
the place where we no longer felt comfortable.
We went back to our homes, those now unfamiliar places,
the place where we no longer felt comfortable.
And at the end of the poem they say, we wish we could have another death, meaning, another conversion experience, meaning that in every day of our lives we are turning to Christ, we are becoming dead to the world behind us, all the material comforts, all the knowledge, everything that the world accepts as desirable, and we turn to Christ. These knowledgeable and sophisticated men, with their access to the deepest knowledge available in their time, turned from this to the infinitely greater knowledge of Christ, and we too must not be naively seduced by what passes for wisdom in our own time.
And so the challenge to us today is to come to this beautiful icon of the Nativity and give ourselves again to the infant Jesus who will not only change our lives, but He will give us fullness of life, as we have never experienced it before. The danger is that we put the icon back on the wall and forget it for another year. The challenge is that we take that icon and carry it with us in our hearts every day of the coming year and be transformed.
Fr David, 7/1/07
The Feast of the Incarnation
The Feast of the Incarnation