Christ Church,
Sheffield Massachusetts
Last Month of the Year
Sermon by Fleming Rutledge Christmas
Eve 2007
…They
say to you, “Consult the mediums and the wizards…should not a people consult
their gods, the dead on behalf of the living?”
…Surely for this word [of death] which they speak there is no dawn. They
will… [look] upward [to the stars], and they will look [downward] to the
earth, but behold, distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish; and they will
be thrust into thick darkness.
But
there will be no gloom for her that was in anguish…The people that walked in
darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of
death, upon them hath the light shined. (Isaiah 8:19-9:2)
***********************************************
When
I was a child at Christmas, I was keenly aware that there was this thing called
“the midnight service.” One of my parents would go to it while the other one
stayed at home with me and my sister. It was clearly understood that when we
got old enough, we too would be allowed to go to the midnight service. It was a
very big deal. I will never forget the thrill of going to that service as a
young teenager. It began at 11, so that every one was receiving communion at
midnight. It was a rite of passage; faith in Santa Claus was taken up into faith
in the Lord Jesus. Those who attended were all adults and older children, plus a
significant number of college students—many of whom were a bit inebriated, but
never mind—there was a glamour and excitement about it all that remains with me
to this day.
I
hope you are glad to be here tonight. I hope some of that midnight thrill
remains for you. Here in the Berkshires where it is wintry outside, it is all
the more wonderful to be together in the church on Christmas Eve.
But
for what purpose do we come together? What brings us here? Is it mostly
sentiment, nostalgia, and wishful thinking?
Last
week in The New York Times Book Review
section on children’s Christmas books, a reviewer had this to say:
In
terms of plain narrative, the Nativity story is hard to beat. It has pretty
much everything: a journey, a baby, a mass murderer, music, animals, refugees,
the kindness of strangers, and big, big special effects.
But
then, this admirable reviewer goes on to complain about “sappy,” sentimental versions
of the biblical story, with all the added paraphernalia of baby angels and
little drummer boys. She thinks the story from St. Matthew and St. Luke stands
best by itself, and surely we must agree. King Herod needs to be in there
somewhere, to remind us of the nature of the world that the son of God was born
into.
There
is a great deal to be learned from the words of the genuine Christmas carols.
Everybody loves the tunes, but the words can sometimes be genuine
revelations. One of my favorite discs is Home
For Christmas, a crossover album by the distinguished classical singer Anne
Sophie von Otter. Ms. von Otter is Swedish, and her disc is redolent with the
atmosphere of a snowbound land where “the great darkness of the Northern
winter” reigns for eighteen hours a day.
The
highlight on the disc, for me, is “O Holy Night.” We think of this number as
the soprano showpiece par excellence, but this version is something else again.
She sings it in the original French, and the words are dramatically different
from our familiar English ones. Ours begins, “O holy night, the stars are
brightly shining/ it is the night of the dear Saviour’s birth.” This puts us in
a mellow mood. The original French words, however, are utterly different.
Listen to this; it begins this way:
“Minuit,
Chrétien, c’est l’heure solennelle...” This means, “Midnight, Christians, is
the solemn hour...”
You’ll
agree, I think, that this is a startling contrast to the sweet and gentle “O
holy night.” Moreover, the French words when sung sound even more portentous
than they do when spoken; the cadence of the four-syllable word
“sol-en-nel-le” evokes the tolling of the bell, as if the day of judgment were
about to strike. Ms. von Otter deliberately darkens her voice and refuses to
give us any of the flamboyant high notes that we have learned to expect and
wait for.
The
disc overall has the character of darkness. One of the traditional Swedish
songs has the recurrent refrain, “No daylight is yet to be seen...” She sings
the American song, “Have yourself a
merry little Christmas,” but she sings it with an ironic twist, especially when
she gets to the line “from now on your troubles will be out of sight.” You can
tell she doesn’t believe a word of it. For
this word which they speak there is no dawn. Something more is needed in
our world than wishes. The people look upward to the stars for inspiration, the
people look downward to Mother Earth for reassurance, but for this word which they speak there is no dawn. Something more is
needed here than horoscopes and nature rituals.
The New Yorker magazine had a startling cover two weeks
ago. At first glance I thought it had something to do with the Three Wise Men
because there was a midnight sky full of stars, one very big star, and a yellow
desert. On second glance I saw that it had nothing to do with the Wise Men at
all. It was a picture of a helicopter, dramatically lit from below by a garish
yellow light that could be fires, or an explosion. What I thought was a big star
was actually the rotor. The picture shows the two gunners and the pilot of the
copter looking out grimly from their posts. Inside there is an equally
grim-looking passenger. It’s Santa Claus.
He’s in a war zone. He can’t use his sleigh. He has to be transported by a helicopter.
This
is the world into which our Saviour was born. For this word which they speak there is no dawn. Something more is
needed here than sentiment.
On
the radio one time I heard a breathtaking African-American spiritual that I had
never heard before. It had a question-and-answer format, or, rather, call-and-response:
What
month was my Jesus born in? Last month of the year.
What
month? January? No...February? No... March? No…
Last
month of the year…
Born
of the virgin Mary.
What
does this suggest to you? I think it means that the tide of human possibility
was running out. Month after month, we thought that we could fix whatever was
wrong. New resolutions, new products, new leaders, new technology, new
strategies, new medicines, new regimes—surely we can fix it. Month after month
the statistics tell the story: better lives for rich Arab sheiks, worse lives
for Chinese peasants. Better lives for Scandinavian welfare recipients, worse
lives for Congolese children. Better conditions for Baghdad,
worse for Kabul and Islamabad. Put your finger in the dike here,
a leak springs over there. We look to the
stars, we look to the earth, but for
this word which we speak there is no dawn. Human potential has been explored
to the nth power and it is a dead end.
What
month was my Jesus born in? Last month of the year.
What
month?
Last month of the year…
Born
of the Virgin Mary.
What
does this suggest? When the tide of human possibility has run out, divine
intervention take its place. On the stroke of midnight when the executioner is
due at the prison door, there is a blaze of light. At the farthest extremity of
human hope, the Lord God Almighty slips into the world in disguise. Last month
of the year; born of the Virgin Mary. It is no accident that these words appear:
the Virgin Mary. The singer wants us to know that a miracle has occurred. The
early Christians recognized that Isaiah’s prophecies meant that something had
happened that had its source in another sphere of power. The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light.
Notice
the words of the hymn that we sang, “In the bleak midwinter.” Christina
Rossetti wrote this; she was a very interesting woman from a fascinating
family. She was of Italian parentage but was herself English, a devout
Anglo-Catholic Christian. She wrote the words of this hymn in 1872. Listen to
the first two verses:
In
the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth
stood hard as iron, water like a stone…
[Barren,
fruitless, sterile, closed in, shut down, locked. It’s midnight.]
Our
God, heaven cannot hold him, nor earth sustain;
[the people look to the stars, they look
down to the earth, but from these sources there is no dawn]
Heaven
and earth shall flee away, when he comes to reign.
In
the bleak midwinter [last month of the year], a stable place sufficed
The
Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.
And
so the prophet Isaiah declares: The people that walked in darkness have seen
a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them
hath the light shined.
Is
there anything true in all of this? The
Spectator, an English magazine, recently asked a whole assortment of
prominent people whether they believed in the Virgin Birth of Jesus Christ. One
of them was a very well-known clergyman in the Church of England. He said categorically
that he didn’t believe it. He explained that it was “probably legendary.”
Another English intellectual said contemptuously, “you are going to have a hard
time finding any educated person who believes it.”
But
lying at the heart of the entire Jewish-Christian enterprise are the words at
the end of our Scripture lesson from Isaiah: The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this. If we do not
believe that God does things, performs things, accomplishes things according to
his purpose, then the whole story collapses. This is what faith knows: heaven
cannot hold our God, nor earth sustain him. In the last month of the year “a
stable place sufficed [for the birth of] the Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.”
When the very last human hope is gone, the
people who walk in darkness have seen a great light; they that dwell in the
land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.
Back to the
midnight service. Most of us here tonight are far past the age of wishing we
could be with the grown-ups. We are
the grown-ups. We don’t necessarily like that. We would rather be back in
January, or February, with our futures lying open before us. Listen: at this
point in my life I’d settle for October.
At
precisely this point in our lives, whoever we are and wherever we are in our
struggles, whatever our disappointments and failures, whatever our anxieties
and fears, this Word arrives. In the
last month of the year, at the last tick of the clock, at the bottom of the world’s
midnight the message comes: our future is in God through the Lord Jesus Christ,
born of the Virgin Mary, “God of God, light of Light, very God of very God, begotten,
not created.” These heavens and this earth will flee away and as the book of
Revelation promises, we will receive a new heaven and a new earth.
There will be no gloom for her that was
in anguish…The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they
that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.
Joy to the world! The Lord is come!
