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Epiphany 2007
SERMON - 10.15am, Emmanuel Church, Pokfulam, Hong Kong
Sunday 7th January 2007
Revd. Matthew Vernon
Bethlehem is the focus of our attention at this time of year.
Today we celebrate the arrival of the wise men in the town of David.
There was an article in the Economist, the special Holiday edition, on Bethlehem as it is today.
Its gritty, realistic reading on the plight of Christians and Muslims in Bethlehem now.
Quite a contrast to the sentimental images of so many Christmas cards and religiousity.
"O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie! Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by"
Its one of my favourite carols, but like many carols it risks sentimentality.
Jesus warm and cosy and safe.
That's the danger of all of our Christmas celebrations.
The birth of Jesus becomes a sentimental fairy tale,
• rather than a story with deep meaning for Bethlehem now and our lives in 2007.
"O little town of Bethlehem" was written by Phillips Brooks,
• a famous American preacher in the 19th century.
His visit to the Holy Land in 1865 inspired his words.
A more recent visit to Bethlehem in 2001 inspired a new version of "O little town of Bethlehem" by Wendy Ross-Barker.
O sad and troubled Bethlehem
we hear your longing cry
for peace and justice to be born
and cruel oppression die.
How deep your need for that
great gift of love in human form.
Let Christ in you be seen again
and hearts by hope made warm.
While morning stars and evening stars
shine out in your dark sky.
Despair now stalks your troubled streets
where innocents still die…
Bethlehem today is not unlike Bethlehem of Jesus' time.
An occupying army patrolling the streets.
Poverty and need common place.
Innocent children killed.
Remembering the situation today and recalling the Bethlehem of Jesus' time snaps us out of cosy, comforting Christmas image.
The Archbishop of Canterbury went to Bethlehem just before Christmas.
He visited the Holy Family Hospital where they care for abandoned children:
• children who are abandoned usually because they'd been born to single mothers in what's often still a fiercely patriarchal and puritanical society.
The hospital has the best resourced maternity unit in the whole of the West Bank,
• equal to the best in Israel.
In the intensive care unit are babies born at twenty five weeks.
They have survived thanks to the care offered by the astonishing staff of the institution.
But because of the current storms of political conflict within Palestine
• and the local and international sanctions against the Palestinian government,
• no-one is sure where the next month's salary is coming from.
For the state-of-the-art equipment, they depend on foreign donations.
Keeping a child alive in the neonatal units costs at the very least hundreds of dollars a day; and there is no governmental budget to help.
It's a continuing miracle that such standards are achieved.
Standards that Queen Mary Hospital would be proud of
• with next to no reliable fallback in financial and organisational terms.
Of course there was no hospital maternity ward for Mary to give birth in.
Some people have translated Jesus' birth to present time.
Alix Brown has written Bethlehem 2002.
Suppose he had been born today in an occupied country.
Joseph would have telephoned for the ambulance because it was her first and they had nowhere to go.
The walls of the inn had been smashed by tanks so they were hiding in the cellar.
The ambulance was shot at anyway, two paramedics died.
No one came.
He was born, placed in an old basin.
There was no water – a bomb had split the main.
He was wrapped in a dirty towel still stiff with the innkeeper's blood.
Suppose the shepherds had tried to visit.
They wouldn't have got through the cordon.
Shot before they got close in case their warm clothes were just a disguise
and they were intending to blow up the command post.
And the lamb would have been highly suspect.
The wise men from the east would never have made it past Jerusalem.
Their camel train torn apart in a search for illegal weapons.
Their gifts blown up just in case they were booby-trapped.
And both sides would report that missiles were fired from helicopter gun-ships to counter a potential aerial assault.
The angels never stood a chance.
Bethlehem today is similar in many ways to Bethlehem 2000 years ago.
An occupying army patrolling the streets.
Poverty and need common place.
Innocent children killed.
Remembering the situation today and recalling the Bethlehem of Jesus' time snaps us out of the cosy, comfortable Christmas image.
The wise men save us from the Christmas fairy tale.
Their visit involved Herod:
• paranoid, cruel Herod,
• who, according to Matthew's Gospel, turned to infanticide to protect his crown.
This story doesn't spoil the story.
The Christmas story makes much more sense if we include the unpleasant parts.
Of course we don't want to upset the children, we want to shield them.
But lots of bad things happen and children know about them.
To include Herod and his terrible murder of children in the Christmas story only serves to show that Jesus was born in the real world.
Horrible though it was, it's no worse than many things that happen today:
• whether in Bethlehem or Baghdad or Bangkok.
When we ask "where is God?" in the catastrophes of life, there are no simple answers.
The Christmas story is fantastic, but it's not fantasy.
It's fantastic because of the good news that God became human.
We turn it into fairy tale if we make it all cosy and nice
• if we avoid the uncomfortable bits.
Cosy and warm is fine for a short while;
• it soothes and refreshes us.
But the good news is God in the midst of the light and the darkness,
• giving us strength and hope for the long haul of life.
For Bethlehem today as well as 2000 years ago.
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