The Feast of the Nativity 2008

When you have sung "Once in Royal David's City" for the 500th time, it begins to lose its appeal, no matter how good the treble soloist who sings the first verse. It's even worse for choristers for whom the whole, rather narrow, gamut of Christmas Carols gets trotted out at each festival service over Advent and Christmastide. It's interesting that the same tunes are always used despite the fact that there are others. "While Shepherds watched their flocks by night" has at least 3 tunes that I know, and I am convinced there are more than that. Yet it's always Winchester Old that seems to be used here in Blighty despite the fact that it goes very well to Cranbrook, better known as "On Ilkla Moor Baht 'at".

There are many who want Christmas to be the same each year - the same service of Nine Lessons and Carols, the same Midnight Mass, the same turkey dinner with the same number of cranberries in the sauce, the same amount of wine in the glass and the same television programmes on the box. These are also the same people who claim to be Traditionalists, but they labour under a misapprehension.

As I often find myself saying on this little blogling, Tradition is the life-blood, the DNA of the Church which connects humanity to humanity via the divine humanity and human divinity of Christ. The Church carries the details of God's plan for humanity - the laws that He instigated at the beginning of the universe and thus the consequences of our transgression of these laws, the high standards that He has set for His Creation and thus the dreadful realisation that we miss those standards by miles, the good news that, if we but trust Him, if we do not lose hope and believe that He can, this Universe will be perfected and us with it.

Tradition is nothing to do with stagnation. There are things which will necessarily always remain the same and there are things which will change and develop. The sacraments will not change, their form and function remain immutable to provide the same nourishment, assurance, hope to humanity now and ever more as at the beginning. The interpretation of Holy Scripture will not change or alter, for, like the history of humanity, it is already fast. However, our society changes, and we often perceive it to be for the worst. Humanity does not change in its capacity to sin, but attitudes do change.

The expression of brokenness, of heartbreak, of bitterness, of frustration and misery changes even if its cause does not. The world cries out for its Christ to be born in its midst, but the poor creature is blinded to the fact that that Christ has been born, has suffered, has died, has risen again. All of Creation groans to give birth to the new Creation and despairs because the baby that has been born lies hidden under the veil of 2000 years of history. How can this weary world reclaim its sight of that birth?

The answer is simple - through the Church. That's what the Church is for - to point out what has been, what is and what will be. The Church cannot induce labour to bring about the birth of the new Creation, indeed sometimes the Church behaves as if it were the new Creation with its cry of "We are the One True Church". Yet this is not true.

The Church exists carrying within itself the eye of Tradition which allows the view of Christ born, crucified and risen and points to Christ ascended and in glory. The Church exists to pick up the pieces, to minister to those in pain and to pass on this message of hope that the pain will not last much longer. The Church exists to make the blind see the coming of Christ again in the clouds to make clear the Reality of apotheosis.

And the Church forgets this.

Sometimes the Church believes that it has the Holy Panacea - she doesn't. She can only hold those who are in pain and offer them some Unction in the sacraments. Sometimes the Church tries to force eyes open to witness only a meagre facet of the Truth, a facet which the eye does not recognise to be true. Sometimes the Church tries to lay aside the weight of her Tradition to attract those in pain with distractions but in doing so, distracts the sufferers from the Truth. Sometimes the Church becomes obsessed with doing things the same time and again that she fails to engage with anyone but herself, indeed seeks to separate herself from herself in order that she might be pure.

Yet, this is not Church-bashing, this is honesty and demonstrative of one key fact, that the Church has the characteristics of humanity, gloriously contradictory, paradoxical, infuriating, and yet with the freedom that God gave her in the first place. So glorious is this humanity, that God is pleased, not grudging, to become human Himself, to enjoy life with human beings and to redeem the whole stupid lot of them because, despite their stupidity they are so superb a creation that they are worth saving.

The little baby in a manger that we see year after year is our sign of hope. If we are insisting that our celebrations do not change, then our hope is too small and we point ourselves inwardly and away from the Christ-child. If we loathe Christmas because it has become too materialistic, then how do we expect it to improve if we do not seek how it is supposed to improve. It's our job as a Church to prepare the world for the second coming - however it is supposed to happen. We have to carry the gravitas of the past with our eyes fixed on the future of Christ to come.

O holy Child of Bethlehem!
Descend to us, we pray;
Cast out our sin and enter in,
Be born in us to-day.
We hear the Christmas angels
The great glad tidings tell;
O come to us, abide with us,
Our Lord Emmanuel!