Sermon for Midnight Mass 2019

By The Revd Preb. Marjorie Brown

If Dust and Daemons mean anything to you, you’ve probably been spending the past few Sunday evenings the same way we have been in the vicarage, watching the TV adaptation of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials. 

For those who’ve managed to miss the books, the play, the film and now the TV series, Pullman has written a series of books about an alternative world. It’s a world that can be entered by cutting a window in the air from our own world with a special knife. In it children are accompanied everywhere by a shape-changing animal called a daemon – this is not a devilish creature in Pullman’s books but the child’s other self, their soul if you like, the constant presence in their lives, their dearest companion.

When they reach puberty, the daemon settles into one animal that represents the character of their human, and a new element enters in. This is Dust, a sort of cosmic substance that marks the dawning of adult self-consciousness. To the evil power of the Magisterium, this is dangerous stuff that threatens their control.

What the Magisterium fears is the power of imagination and possibility. What this controlling force wants is an obedient population of robot-like creatures with no power to imagine a different sort of world, with no souls if you like.

You may or may not enjoy this sort of fantasy. Rowan Williams, as it happens, is a big fan of Philip Pullman, because he values the ability of stories to expand our imagination and involve us in worlds beyond our own everyday experience.

The great mathematical genius Albert Einstein once said: “If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”

Stories build up the pathways in our brain. They help us to connect different events, to inhabit different characters, and to focus on moral problems. In Frozen II Anna learns how to do the next right thing, no matter how hard it seems. In The Rise of Skywalker the focus is on the redemptive power of self-sacrifice. If we enter into these narratives, our imagination expands and our lives are enriched.

So what do we make of the ancient and beloved story of the birth of Jesus at Christmas? I suggest we enter it like a child, open to all its magic and wonder. The point of a story is not to dissect it like a traffic report, measuring the accuracy of witnesses and the probability of events. There is no need to be anxious about how historical the census was, or exactly where and when Jesus was born, or who came to visit him. 

The very first Christians, including St Paul, seemed to know nothing of the birth stories of Jesus. If we’ve managed to keep our childlike delight in narrative, then we can and should enter gladly into the mystery and wonder of these ancient stories, not worrying about the details. But if we are the kind of person who is put off by the hint of embroidering cold hard facts, then we can leave them alone. They are not essential to our faith.

What is at the very heart of our faith is something that visits from angels and guiding stars simply point us towards. Christianity boldly declares that when Jesus was born, however we tell the story, a window was cut into our world from the realm of God, and through that window stepped divinity itself.

That is why the prologue to John’s gospel is always one of the Christmas readings. The Word became flesh and lived among us. Add shepherds and wise men if you like, but don’t confuse the trimmings with the essence. Something that has never happened before or since occurred when Jesus was born. The Creator who made the universe chose to enter it as one of his creatures in a particular time and place.

This is an absolutely stupendous thing to believe. Everything hangs on it. If it is not true, then Christianity folds completely. It is just a way of remembering a remarkable human being and trying to live in imitation of him. There is nothing wrong with that as a philosophy. But it is not the gospel.

Nobody would say that it is easy to believe this. Everyone finds it hard, even impossible, on some days to trust completely that God has entered our world and lived as one of us. If you watched the excellent new film Two Popes on Netflix, you will hear even popes saying that faith comes and goes.

That is why the Church for many centuries has put it into black and white in the Creed that we will all say together in just a few minutes. We need to hang onto this amazing statement of faith, letting it hold us even when we are unable to hold it. Tonight, rather than simply let the words wash over you, I would ask you to notice something very odd. In just a few sentences, we move from the sublime and ineffable - God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God – to the local and historical. The death of Jesus is linked with the name of a provincial Roman official, Pontius Pilate, who had a post as governor of Judaea from the years 26 to 36 of the Common Era. It’s like saying a hole was cut into our world from heaven in the year 2019 under a government led by Boris Johnson. If that shocks or amuses you, it should. It’s an extraordinary juxtaposition.

Because that is how God works. It may be hard to believe for many of us. It may be impossible for some of us. But if we have been fortunate enough to have our imaginations expanded by stories throughout our lives, we may just be able to lay down our scepticism long enough to hear the angels sing tonight 

What will it mean for us, to believe? It means the possibilities are endless. Like a child in the Pullman books, constantly in dialogue with their daemon, we are never alone. Like the adult surrounded by Dust, we are free to be creative and rebellious; we have the power of moral choices. Like Anna in Frozen or Rey in Star Wars, we can exercise the gift of courage and self-sacrifice.

The entrance of Christ into our world as one of us transforms everything. It gives our lives a trajectory. We are going on a journey that will lead us home to God. Whatever happens in this world becomes part of who we are, but it does not define or limit us. Our sorrows and losses are the sacrifice that love requires. But suffering is not the whole story. There is a light that leads us through the window of this world into an eternal place of beauty and joy.

There is a very ancient prayer that is said at night by many Christians, in the office of Compline, that goes like this: Be present, O merciful God, and protect us through the silent hours of this night, so that we who are wearied by the changes and chances of this fleeting world, may repose upon thy eternal changelessness.

John’s gospel speaks of that eternal changelessness: in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. We are constantly being invited into that eternity of loving relationship. Perhaps the invitation is particularly pressing as we meet in the midnight of the year to gaze in wonder at the ineffable light that shines from the most vulnerable thing imaginable, a helpless newborn infant.

What a story. What an invitation. What an extraordinary gift. May we all, tonight, suspend our cynicism and enter into the stable to see the wonder of all wonders. May our inner child teach us to open our hearts, our minds and our imaginations to the deep magic that invites us in.