Christmas Day 2024

A Happy Christmas to you all!

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a paradox as:
a seemingly absurd or contradictory statement or proposition which when investigated may prove to be well founded or true.
Or a person or thing that combines contradictory features or qualities.
A paradox is a seemingly absurd or contradictory statement or proposition which when investigated may prove to be well founded or true. Or a person or thing that combines contradictory features or qualities.

I can’t resist mentioning in passing the fact that the Oxford English Dictionary then goes on to give its example of the use of the word, paradox, as "Cathedrals face the paradox of having enormous wealth in treasures but huge annual expenses.” Well, indeed.

That is not the paradox, however, that I offer for your contemplation this morning. Rather, it is the paradox of Christmas as a whole that I think we could helpfully think a little more about.

Christmas is a time to reacquaint ourselves with our ways of celebrating. Many of you will have particular traditions, rooted deep, that must be observed at this time of year [Bishop – having to weave unlikely gifts into his Christmas Day service]. If you have children, even grown-up children, then you will be familiar with being told what must happen – the somewhat moth-eaten stocking that must be hung by the mantlepiece, to be filled by Father Christmas; perhaps you have certain foods that always get eaten on this day, or a film that must be watched. In the church context, I have learnt that you change the Christmas services at your peril; well-loved carols must be sung (even if the theology, or understanding of childhood, within them is a bit dubious); and our packed Cathedral for all our Christmas Services speaks to that enduring power of celebration rooted deep in our traditions. Christmas is a still point in a turning world; it offers a nostalgic return to childhood in a world where being an adult is more and more difficult, stressful and frightening. And yet, and yet, at the heart of Christmas is the announcement of something new, the arrival of the One who turns everything on its head. The Christmas paradox is that the new is announced in the midst of doing the same old, same old things.

But the paradoxes don’t end there. Christmas is after all, a burst and celebration of joy, whilst simultaneously we know that it is a time of huge pain for those who gather with loved ones now missing. As a recent survey reveals, 1 in 11 young people will spend this Christmas alone; some choosing, some not, to spend this great communal festival by themselves.

Christmas is a feast of consumption in a world of scarcity; where we can party like there is no tomorrow, as we wonder (or perhaps to avoid wondering) what tomorrow will look like in our over-heating planet. And our excess lies alongside, and exacerbates the financial anxiety and plight of many in a society of increasing divides.

It’s a time of enormous generosity: in the looking out for others, and in the giving of presents. Whilst at the heart of Christmas, we are first invited not to give, but to receive the gift, given in grace, that is Christ.

Maybe we are tempted to think that Christmas drowns under the weight of these paradoxes; that it has become simply a festival of excess; or a festival for children, those yet to grow up out of mystery and paradox. A festival that the rest of us celebrate for the children’s sake, not our own.

A paradox is a seemingly absurd or contradictory statement or proposition which when investigated may prove to be well founded or true. Or a person or thing that combines contradictory features or qualities.

The paradoxes take us to the heart of Christmas. For paradox is nothing new, it is there from the beginning. This is the celebration of God in our humanity; of the eternal given in this sliver of time and place, of the Maker of all things born to a woman in the obscurity of a stable in Bethlehem. The Creator and Giver of life is now cradled on Mary’s lap, for the all-mighty comes in humility. We are well used to power wielded with authoritarian menace, but God comes to re-shape the world from below. Christ is announced to despised shepherds and not by royal proclamation. The ruler of the stars will himself be menaced by the arbitrary exercise of brutal power.

Paradoxes reveal a depth to what we might dismiss as shallow; they are the entry into a deeper searching. For today, our Christmas celebration, is the beginning of the story; the mysterious entry into deeper mystery. We celebrate today in Christ a human being who embodies the God who turns all things upside down; who revels in paradox because the world is contradictory. The world doesn’t yet make sense, but here is the gift that can begin to make it do so. Christ is the bringer of joy because he comes to bear the world’s pain.

So lean into the paradoxes of Christmas – allow the joy to re-shape you; for this is what truly matters. Learn again what it is to love those given to you to love. Allow the gift of Christ to bring you out of your isolation into communion with others.

In a world of increasing mis-trust, God trusts the gift of Christ to be handed into our hands. Here he lies in Mary’s arms. Here he gives himself in bread and wine into your hands. What will we make of that gift?
Amen.