Christmas Eve - 24th December 2022
Through Advent we have been dwelling with the expectation of the coming of the light and this evening this comes to its culmination as we enter into the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. Here is ‘the true light, which enlightens everyone, … coming into the world.’ In this child is the light that reveals the truth of the God of Love.
This child grew up to be a man who posed questions that broke open peoples’ lives, that challenged their religious certainties. He welcomed the rejected and marginalised, all those inconvenient people we’d rather keep out of the way. In his whole way of being he shone light into the dark places of the lives of individuals and of his society. To those with eyes to see, ‘who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God’. Along with him they were drawn into that place close to the Father’s heart. In the wonderful Prologue of John’s Gospel this message has been treasured, passed on through the generations and is now proclaimed for us to hear. If we receive him we too can dwell in that place of intimacy with God and so bring more of God’s love to birth in the world.
But John’s Gospel also recounts the reactions of many who rejected him, for whom the challenge of the light was too much. ‘He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him.’ I find myself wondering whether I would have seen and received the light, or preferred to stay in the dark with my familiar certainties? How do I feel when the light shines into dark places in my heart and reveals the depth of my sin? Can I allow myself to be seen by the loving eyes of Jesus, knowing he sees my sin and yet loves me deeply and longs for my growth and transformation? It can feel hard and humiliating to see the ways in which we have gone astray from the path of love whether unconsciously or through wilful choice. But if we can open to Jesus’ call to conversion, let go our pride and humbly receive God’s forgiveness we can find the salvation that is the message of this season.
Jesus said ‘I am the light of the world’ but he also said ‘You are the light of the world’ – that means each one of us who follows him. As we allow the transfiguring light of Christ to shine into our hearts, however uncomfortable that feels, we are changed and in our turn we become channels of that light to others. In our life here at the Abbey we are committed to conversion of life, living that out day by day in all the mundane details of our life. Through our daily fidelity over time the light shines more and more brightly as God’s refining fire gets to work and burns away the dross.
This can be a fearful process, as the prophet Malachi says “Who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap;” Kathleen Raine, in the powerful poem we heard earlier this morning, speaks of a coming that asks us to open to the pain and fear, the storm and darkness. She ends:
Let in the wound,
Let in the pain,
Let in your child tonight.
As we let in the wounds and the pain of the world and of our own hearts, we also let in God, the God who comes as a vulnerable baby who invites us to respond with open hearts in love and wonder at the mystery of God-with-us. There is a gentleness in this coming, a tender mercy for our frailty, even as it is a coming that challenges, refines and changes us.
At this season we remember the once-for-all birth of Jesus more than two thousand years ago but also his birth in each one of our hearts. In the birth of Jesus God came into a dangerous and violent world to live out the truth of his love. God also comes now through each one of us who receives him, coming into our dark and perplexing times. I pray that this Christmas the tenderness of God’s coming will touch each of our hearts so that we can shine as light to the world and bring more of God’s love to birth in a world that so desperately needs it.
Amen, come Lord Jesus.
Mother Anne - 24th December 2022
From Part Four of Kathleen Raine’s Northumbrian Sequence:
Let in the wind
Let in the rain
Let in
the moors tonight.
The storm beats on my window-pane,
Night
stands at my bed-foot,
Let in the fear,
Let in the
pain,
Let in the trees that toss and groan,
Let in the
north tonight.
Let in the nameless formless power
That beats
upon my door,
Let in the ice, let in the snow,
The banshee
howling on the moor,
The bracken-bush on the bleak hillside,
Let
in the dead tonight.
... ...
Gentle must
my fingers be
And pitiful my heart
Since I must bind in
human form
A living power so great,
A living impulse great
and wild
That cries about the house
With all the violence
of desire
Desire this my peace
Pitiful my heart must hold
The lonely stars
at rest
Have pity on the raven’s cry
The torrent and
the eagle’s wing,
The icy water of the tarn
And on
the biting blast.
Let in the wound,
Let in the pain,
Let
in your child tonight.