Christmas Midnight Mass by Rev’d Lucy

Isaiah 9.2-7, Titus 2.11-14, Luke 2:1-20

Christmas Eve has come around again. Another year has passed.

This night draws many of us back to church, some by habit, some through conviction and some almost without knowing why. We come carrying a mixture of memory and expectation.

Many of us know the story well enough to recite it. Others know it through fragments: a half-remembered carol, a line of Scripture or an image that has stayed with us longer than we expected. Whatever brings us here, we hear the story again, after another year has been lived.

Our gospel reading from Luke begins with a census decree from Caesar Augustus, under which Joseph and Mary travel to Bethlehem. Luke doesn’t pause to interpret this for us, or to describe what it costs them. He simply places the birth of Jesus within that flow of obligation and displacement and lets the detail stand. It is the kind of movement many people today still recognise, travelling not because it is chosen or desired, but because a decision taken elsewhere requires it.

The child is born with no space prepared. He’s wrapped and laid where animals feed.

Out in the fields, shepherds are keeping watch. They’re not looking for anything in particular. It’s another ordinary night, until it is interrupted.

An angel stands before them, and the night they were keeping watch over is no longer the same.

“Do not be afraid,” the angel says, “For see, I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people…”

What follows are names:

“To you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord.”

The announcement is choral rather than explanatory. An ecology of names, each carrying its own weight.

-     A Saviour. The language of deliverance and rescue.

-     The Messiah. God’s anointed. The one Israel has waited for through centuries of exile, oppression and hope deferred. The one who will restore the kingdom, vindicate God’s people and establish justice.

-     The Lord. Kyrios. The language of authority - master, ruler, sovereign. And in Israel’s Scriptures, the name for God.

These are not emotional titles. They are political and theological claims.

Then comes the sign: “You will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” The contrast is stark. These are royal, military, political, divine expectations. And the sign is not a throne or a victory, but a child wrapped and laid where animals feed.

The angels withdraw and the shepherds go to Bethlehem where they find the child. They speak of what they’ve heard and Luke tells us that everyone is amazed at their words. Mary treasures and ponders them in her heart. The names spoken by the angels – Saviour, Messiah, Lord – do not explain themselves. They ask to be held and understood over time. Meanwhile the shepherds return to their watch, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen.

Isaiah’s words are older than this night, but they are heard again because of it.

Isaiah spoke when Judah faced invasion, when the kingdom’s future looked fragile. Into that moment of threat he spoke of light appearing in darkness:

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.”

And he spoke of a child:

“For a child has been born for us, a son given to us. And he is named Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

These titles – the ones we hear read at carol services – are not the kind of names a child answers to. They belong to the language of rule rather than to personal address. They are throne-names. In the ancient world, kings were often named by what their reign was meant to establish. The name did not describe the child. It named the hoped-for character of the rule.

-     Wonderful Counsellor: A king with wisdom like Solomon’s. One who makes just decisions, who governs with insight, whose counsel can be trusted.

-     Mighty God: Language that stretches beyond ordinary kingship. A warrior-defender whose strength comes from God, who fights with divine power behind him. A king strong enough to deliver his people from their enemies.

-     Everlasting Father: A king who provides and protects like a father cares for his household. Care that endures, that can be relied upon, that does not fail.

-     Prince of Peace: Not merely the absence of war, but shalom – wholeness, prosperity, right ordering. A reign under which things flourish.

These are the expectations Isaiah’s names would have set up, but Isaiah adds a line that matters:

“His authority shall grow continually.”

The authority is named in full, but its reach unfolds over time, until God’s purposes are brought to completion.

Nothing in the stable itself explains the weight of what is being said. That weight is carried by the words spoken by the angels, and by the prophets.

Prehaps that’s why we keep coming back to Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve – because we are hungry to hear these words again.

Many people are finding things difficult. For some, this has been a hard year to get through. As the year comes to an end, we wonder if maybe next year will be better?

The names we hear tonight do not promise that things will suddenly improve. They tell us something else: that God’s purposes have not been abandoned, and that they are still being worked out within history.

This is where the letter to Titus helps us understand the time we are living in.

“The grace of God has appeared,” it says, “bringing salvation to all.”

Grace appears. It enters history. It’s not just an idea or an aspiration. And yet the same passage speaks of waiting, of what is still to be revealed.

We live after grace has appeared, and before everything has come to completion. That is the shape of Christian time. We’re not waiting because nothing has happened. We’re waiting because something has.

This is why the promises spoken long ago are not exhausted. Not because they were unclear when first spoken, and not because God was absent in the meantime, but because God’s faithfulness continues. What was spoken before can be heard again, not as repetition, but as disclosure. The words remain the same. History moves on, and they address new situations.

They do so because God continues to act, not only in the past, but within the unfolding of history itself.

Tonight belongs within that pattern. Grace is named again in the same way it first appeared, in the birth of a child, within the world as it is.

In a few moments, doves carrying prayers for peace will be brought to the altar. They carry words written by hundreds of members of this community, naming places and situations where peace is still longed for, and placing them into God’s care.

They are brought to the altar as an act of keeping faith with what has been given.

This night doesn’t complete the story. It places us within it.

The names spoken in the Gospel and in the prophets are not confined to the night of Jesus’ birth, or to this night when the Church hears them again. They name what God has already begun, and what God remains faithful to bring about.

Saviour.
Messiah.
Lord.
Wonderful Counsellor.
Mighty God.
Everlasting Father.
Prince of Peace.

Authority has been given, and its reach will grow.
Grace has appeared, and it will not be withdrawn.
Peace has been named, and God remains faithful to establish it.

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

This is the good news of Christ’s birth, given to us again tonight.