First Sunday of Christmas by Fr Jack

Isaiah 63.7-9
The Letter to the Hebrews 2.10-18
St Matthew’s Gospel 2.13-23

‘It was no messenger or angel but his [own] presence that saved them; in his love and in his pity he redeemed them. ‘He became their saviour’. So writes the Prophet Isaiah today to us, even though he was writing 700 years before the first Christmas, he was writing of Jesus and he is writing to us.

The saviour, Yeshua, Jesus. The redeemer. Not God issuing an edict from on high, or circulating a memorandum. Not a piece of divine admin’. No, that is not how God chooses to do this. He chooses to come and dwell with us. He didn’t need to. He chose to. Because we know this story from the other end, looking backwards. We might forget that this wasn’t necessarily how it had to be. God’s workings are not bound by some Standard Operating Procedures - He chooses to be the Incarnate Lord, to save the world by littleness, and abiding, by sharing life with a real family, in real communities. This tells us a lot about who God is.

And, as I said on Christmas Day, Jesus saves us not only by shedding His blood on calvary, but He is saving us here and now, as He lays in His mother’s arms. By sharing our flesh, our life, our humanity in all its everyday things, Jesus hallows, sanctifies and redeems our flesh, our life, our humanity in all its everyday-ness. His whole life, and death is what changes things for us, for ever, and opens this life, and even death itself, to be a doorway home into the Divine dance of the Trinity. All this is happening even in the little baby sleeping on Mary’s lap.

That’s what the letter to the Hebrews is driving home today. Look again at the reading: Jesus, our sibling, sharing life with us, and hallowing our human experience of life, thereby defeating all that would reduce or demean that life (that is hell, satan and all that other stuff that Jesus has come to bin), so that those things no longer define us. He, the Lord of all, has ‘shared our flesh’, and our great ‘high priest’ (as Hebrews says today) changes us forever by sharing our flesh.

And long before his agonising march to calvary, already there is cost. If it were not a Sunday, today would be the feast of the Holy Innocents. We hear about them in today’s Gospel. The capricious and pathetic Herod orders the slaughter of the children who could be Jesus, because he fears a rival ‘king of the Jews’. Isaiah’s prophecy has come true in Jesus. Sadly, so has Jeremiah’s, as St Matthew reminds us. And those little lives are ended. Singing the Coventry Carol, which I love, always sends shivers down my spine. And now, St Matthew tells us, Jesus and his family become refugees in Egypt.

This will not be an easy journey for Jesus. The shine has come off the cosy stable rather quickly. It is a conversation I have a lot with people - at no point did Jesus say that following Him would be easy. At no point did He say it would provide comfort, stability, wealth, health or anything else we might want. I certainly want those things! But Jesus says precisely the opposite. He tells us we will have trials and difficulties. But, more importantly than those things that are simply part of life, He tells us that no matter what, whether we know it or feel it or not, no matter what, He will always be with us. Jesus’ birth, life, death and resurrection, have opened this way to life in God now and forever. Not comfort, riches or a lovely lifestyle, but something more than that.

But that is hard news when we fall ill, or someone we love dies, or relationships die, or work falls apart. That is more than hard news for the parents of The Innocents. Or for our sisters and brothers in the human family who live under Herods today in so many parts of the world, their lives being tossed aside.

It is not very Christmassy.

Nor are the quiet holy feasts we keep in these first days of Christmastide. St Stephen on 26th, a deacon of the Early Church, post resurrection, stoned to death by the religious authorities. St Thomas Becket of Canterbury tomorrow. That troublesome priest bashed in by heavy blows of knights’ broad swords in Canterbury Cathedral.

Not very Christmassy!

But maybe its we that have got it back to front. Actually the love and costliness of Ss Stephen and Thomas is a wonderful gift. Actually the reality of the refugee Holy Family shows exactly God’s solidarity and purposeful working through the margins, the fragile, the partial and difficult. Maybe is is exactly what God does, even in the loss of these little ones, so tragically, that is not God’s doing, but Herod’s, and even this darkness of the worst of humanity’s fearful violence, even here, the story does not end, and more can be hoped for. Not an easy redemption, not a quick fix, but the real thing.

Perhaps Christmas is - in God’s eyes - not the time to sanitise and sweep under the tinsel-y carpet, to find plastic smiles to match plastic toys. Perhaps this is precisely a yearly gift of bringing all the mess and pain, the marginalised, the things that fear and hurt us, and bringing it all into the light, without looking away. Because, as we heard on Christmas Day, this light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness will not, cannot overcome it.

Grace and mercy are not first aid, redemption is not quick fix. At the turning of the year, we are being invited with hope, to loosen our grip on the things that are not grace and mercy and be brave enough to step into this promise. The promise of this Child, the promise of His life with us, the promise of His death and resurrection. The promise, not avoiding all the sadness and troubles of the human condition, but bringing all that with us, into the light of His promise. That is Incarnation. Anything less is just an elaborate pantomime.

So take some time this week, amongst everything else, take some time. Maybe come to the Eucharist here, or just slip in and spend time with the crib. Or catch those early quiet parts of the morning at home, or the stillness of the night. And spend some time in prayer, bringing the world, and bringing your life, its threads and complexities. Things, good and bad, from the year that is closing, and honestly, openly, bring hopes and fears for 2026, and bring them into the light. Lay them out before Jesus. Not for a quick fix, but in order to live them with Him, in Him.

Because as Isaiah says, His love is steadfast, His mercy redeems, and as Hebrews says, He calls us His brothers and sisters, and so we are.