silent, holy ...

SERMON PREACHED at HOLY TRINITY,
RINGWOOD EAST

Christmas Eve

(December 24^th) 1989

READINGS

Isaiah 7:10-16
Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19
Romans 1:1-7
Matthew 1:18-25
 

Silent night, holy night. A night far removed from our experience of Christmas. We celebrate the birth of our Saviour by cluttering our lives with noise, and tinsel, and expense, and money, money, money. We destroy ourselves and our loved ones on the road, and again and again fail to heed the warnings of police – and common sense.

We celebrate less the birth of a gentle saviour than a frenzied demon. The god of commerce masquerading as the God of love, making a parody of the Saviour whose birth we rejoice in, the Saviour who cried out, “How blessed are you who are poor.”

The Children of Israel had crushed God out of their lives. Consideration of all that God had desired for them had been given away. Love of neighbour, love of God – love of God above all – love and consideration for the poor and the have-nots, the down-trodden. All was forgotten in a orgy of self-importance.

This had been a decade of fraud. The demise of the televangelists and the continuing exposé of Queensland’s God-fearing but corrupt leaders[1] become useful symbols of all that Isaiah despised and mourned as he looked at his people. He – and he was at least three people spanning 225 years – saw all that his people had done to neglect the longings of God, and sought to tell of impending downfall, and yet of God’s continued love.

Jerusalem fell. The city was sacked, the women pillaged and raped, the males slaughtered, and the survivors carried off into exile. Sometimes it seems as if we have approached, in the last decade, similar disaster. Afghanistan, the Falklands, Eritrea, Iran and Iraq, are all global nightmares revisited.

But the greatest nightmare is the damage we have done to our planet. Chernobyl, and countless lesser ecological disasters, demonstrate clearly that we no more listen to our prophets than did the Jewish people to Isaiah. And the televangelists and moral majorities continue to make their millions.

We have begun to pull back from the brink of ecological collapse.[2] It may be too late. While we cry out “How can God let this happen?” we continue to ignore God, ignore God’s tears for us.

Silent night, holy night. The Child-God was born unwanted, lived primarily unwanted, an embarrassment to his family and his people, and died unwanted. Even the miracle of his resurrection was seen at first only by a few timid women.

There is no glamour in Christianity. In the ’80s we have sought gloss and glamour, a Christianity of signs and wonders, of Kodachrome and hi-tech. If we are to be effective witnesses to Christ in the 1990s we must touch those who are born in a manger and those who die on a cross, and must be part of the movement that seeks to pull humanity back from disaster.

Silent night, holy night. Silent because holy. The other kind of silent is silent only because all is dead.

Let us be still, now, and know the silence of the God who is about to be born in our midst.

 

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[1] The Commission of Inquiry into Possible Illegal Activities and Associated Police Misconduct (the Fitzgerald Inquiry, 1987–1989) released its findings in July 1989. Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen resigned in disgrace. Three former state cabinet ministers and a police commissioner were jailed.

[2] Or so it seemed as the 1980s came to a close.