Christmas: Listening to the Voices

Isaiah 9.2-7

Psalm 96

Titus 2.11-14

Luke 2.1-20

Perhaps it is because there is a long tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas, or perhaps it has been the recent rains, but as I thought about preaching tonight a line from one of my favourite poets – Edna St. Vincent Millay – returned to me over and over: “…the rain is full of ghosts tonight that tap and sigh upon the glass and listen for reply.”  And if tonight is not exactly full of ghosts, it is most certainly full of voices – voices that tap and sigh upon the glass of our spirits and listen for reply.  It is a night full of demands and requests, of voices issuing commands, making invitations, singing praises; voices of emperors and of angels, of wanderers and of shepherds.  The night carries with it the booming voice of power and the silent voice of the heart.  All of them within the context of this one magical and mysterious night, the night when earth and heaven meet and the Word is made flesh.  On this night it is God seems almost desperate to get our attention.  In the night – in the dark – when our vision is compromised and our hearing sharpened, it is the voices which we hear most clearly; it is often when the presence of God is most keenly felt.  The dark almost seems to prepare us to listen to God, and sometimes to attempt to make a response.  Diane Reiners was  a volunteer at St. Paul’s Chapel – the church closest to Ground Zero in New York City in the aftermath of 9/11.  With others, she provided hospitality and care for those still working in the rubble and debris of the World Trade Center.  In an interview at the time, she said, “We will generally have about 600 people come through each night.  The night visitors are quieter, they tend to come in alone or in pairs.  Conversations about religion, about faith and God, seem more frequent at night.”

So we come together tonight, in the dark, to hear the voices once again: the voice of the great Emperor Augustus that makes itself heard all the way from Rome even to the small village of Nazareth in far away Judea; the voice of Joseph seeking a place to stay for himself and his pregnant wife, also the responding voices of inhospitality; the terrified yet determined voices of the shepherds; the heavenly voices of the angels, telling the birth of the Christ, singing the praises of God and announcing peace: “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favours!” (Luke 2.14); the unspoken voice of Mary who “treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart” (Luke 2.19); the eternal voice of God proclaiming the divine word in an astonishing way – in the person of a new-born baby.  Tonight these voices all make claims on us.  They all “tap and sigh upon the glass and listen for reply.”  And they come in the dark, so perhaps we can listen just a little more carefully.  They come in the middle of the night, so perhaps we can engage with them with fewer distractions, a little less protected, a little more vulnerable.  Perhaps in the quiet and dark of the night we can listen to them afresh and hear the good news in a new way, an inspiring way; a way which will carry a message for us; a way which move us to make a reply.

To each of us different voices will speak, different parts of the story will be relevant, and reveal for us new things.  Some days ago someone told me that for the first time she realized that Jesus’ birth in the stable was a real birth, with all the pain, mess and blood which a real birth entails.  For her, the voice of the Christmas story was the voice of Mary crying out in the pain of childbirth; the voice of the undoubted midwife who must have been there, encouraging Mary to continue pushing, as she wiped the dirt and sweat from Mary’s brow.  In a sense, this was her good news for Christmas, the deep realisation that the Son of God became a real flesh and blood human being, and came into the world in a real flesh and blood way.  Whose is the voice that speaks to you this Christmas?  Augustus, Joseph, the shepherds, the angels, Mary?  Whose is that voice which springs to you from the story?  In the dark of the night, whose voice comes to the sharpened ears of your spirit, tapping and sighing on the glass?  Whose is the voice that carries for you the good news of Christmas and the incarnation?  In the bustle – even chaos – we have created around the the celebration of Christmas, is there enough night, enough dark, enough quiet to hear any voices at all?  If we are to listen to the voices of the Christmas story, then we must be willing to tune our ears and hearts – because they will not yell at us – willing to live with the story, willing to carry it with us in the depths of our being in such a way so that we are able to really hear the voices, and hear them speaking to our lives and our experience

In the quiet and dark of the night the voices of the Christmas story speak to us powerfully, but they also “listen for reply.”  The message they bring to us demands from us a reply, a response.  They ask that their words be vindicated by our own illumination and conversion.  I suppose the voice that speaks most clearly and deeply to me in the Christmas story this year is the voice of the angel to the shepherds: “Do not be afraid.”  I am reminded that every time angels appear in the New Testament they always say these words first: “Do not be afraid.”  Certainly this past year has brought much to make us fearful and anxious.  Increasing divisions in our country, continuing economic difficulties and uncertainty; and of course, the terrible murders at Sandy Hook Elementary School have again disturbingly reminded us how unspeakable violence and cruelty can make itself known even in the most peaceful of places, even in the most unexpected of circumstances.  But I still hear the angels say: “Do not fear, see – I am bringing you good news of great joy.”  I am not always sure exactly how that good news will manifest itself, but I am convinced that as individuals and as communities our response is to be one of trust.  Our reply to the circumstances of our lives and of our world must not twist us into a hopeless, frightened little people, but draw us closer in trust to the God who sends angels to shepherds with astonishing news.  My response to the Christmas voices that speak to me this Christmas season must be one of trust – to trust and to keep trusting; and one of hope, hope in the God who makes light to shine in the darkness. The voices of the Christmas story require of those who hear them a response, and each of us must make the response which our own spirit calls us to make.

If we read and re-read the Christmas story without paying heed in a deep and creative way to what its voices are saying to us, the story will become for us just another story among the myriad of stories which we know; simply a part of our inherited customs to be taken out, dusted off, read once a year, then returned to its place of distant honour.  It will cease to be for us a living word with the power to  challenge and transform lives.  But if we take it seriously, its voices will not let us rest.  Like the ghosts in Millay’s poem those voices will haunt us, in the best sense of the word.  They will continually and persistently come to us.  In the night, the dark, the quiet, they will “tap and sigh upon the glass” with their message and their invitation.  They will invite us to get caught up in the message that they bring, they will invite us to make a response – a reply – which draws us closer to the Great Voice, the one who spoke all things into being.  Carry the story and its voices around with you and allow its voices to haunt you.  Find the voice in the story speaking to you.  Allow a place of darkness and quiet for its power and challenge to come rushing to you.  So that you may make your reply, and with the shepherds glorify and praise God for all you have heard and seen, for all that has been told you. (cf. Luke 2.20)