MIDNIGHT DREAMING

Sermon preached at Christmas Midnight Mass

By Fr Tony Noble

Isaiah 9:2 “The people who walked in darkness had seen a great light, those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness on them has light shined.”

A number of people have asked me, is Christmas in Australia any different? Well, there is the climate. There Midnight Mass is always held at the peak of summer: it’s usually a very hot church – and you should try a hot church with incense – the priest usually sweating under the vestments. Afterwards, being midsummer, and being Australians, and being Anglocatholic, they always have a party which goes to about 3 o’clock in the morning. That the difference - but they do decorate their homes like Americans, with trees – usually with snow of some sort on them. They have huge dinners, often roast dinners in the heat. They send cards – usually with snow on them – and give gifts.

However, last year I was given a gift which made me question the taste of Australians! It was given to me by one of my parishioners in my last parish. And I though you might like to see it. So I’ll come down and show you. (shows a flashing cross with lights!) Isn’t that nice? It’s got lights! And of course, light is the theme of my text tonight. Because Christmas is light.

We have the star, we have the shepherds with the angels, when a great light surrounded them, we have candles in Church and home, we have lights on our trees. Light is the great theme of Christmas, and especially as we come to Midnight Mass.

Isaiah 9:2 ushers in a sense of atmosphere - if you like, the mystery of it all - as we come to worship Jesus at this Midnight hour. Midnight Mass has a dreamlike quality about it, doesn’t it? It’s not an hour we associate with going to Church. Rather an hour perhaps of dreams, of hopes, perhaps of romance, perhaps of peace – that’s what we associate midnight with. And somehow, I think, that’s what we want to associate Midnight Mass with: dreams and hopes, romance and peace. For I have a feeling this year not all is quite as we would like it. That somehow as we come to Christmas, we are pausing to think about the sort of world we live in. The recent fires which heralded my arrival in this parish, plus the subsequent earthquakes recently, remind all of us how fleeting life can be, and how transient our hopes can be.

Secondly I sense that there is a dullness about Christmas because the war on terrorism is taking its toll on us emotionally. It’s been going on for too long, and we want peace, but wonder if it will ever come. And somehow I think we delight more in the odd victory than a coming of peace. And we are indifferent in our modern world to conflict between groups that don’t concern us. We think we have enough on our own doorstep without worrying about those people on the other side of the world. Have we become (I hope not) a little hard?

Sometimes in our own lives, things get us down. Often if we look for some solace in a Church or a religious experience, we are subject, not to an outpouring of God’s love, but, to a conviction of sin. It seems to me our greatest struggle as Christians is not with sin, but with receiving the love of God.

Perhaps tonight, perhaps this Christmas, Isaiah’s words may have meaning: “Those who dwell in a land of deep darkness.”? Does our world to seem to be in darkness more than it used to be? Is this how we feel? Perhaps Isaiah’s words apply not to some far-off land or to some distant past, but to us, here and now?

Well, all that is about to change!

For Isaiah’s prophecy about light comes true for us tonight yet again. And yet again we need not only to hear the message of light that Christmas brings, but to claim it as our birth-right. Tonight in the pageantry and symbolism of Midnight Mass, in the soaring music and familiar carols, in the Christmas Creche and the ceremonial of High Mass, light shines in the darkness.

And light shining in the darkness is not only the message of Midnight Mass, it is part of our midnight dreaming. It is our hope tonight, it is even part (I suggest) of our romances, our joys, and our peace. It will not have escaped anyone that the message given at the first Christmas was peace on earth, and every year we hear it again! In this year of 2003 the world is no more, or no less evil than the world which heard those words 2000 years ago. Nothing has changed. And therefore, we still need to receive the love of God at Christmas. And that is what we gaze upon tonight in the Creche, in the hearing of God’s Word, in the receiving of the Blessed Sacrament. And because that is what we gaze upon tonight, this Midnight Mass begs us to hope yet again. Indeed because this event is so full of hope, we must begin it at midnight - because it is so special.

We cannot wait to see the hope of peace in Jesus, but also that he himself is the bearer of peace incarnate before our very eyes. And the word “incarnate” has a wonderful ring about it this year. John 1:14: “And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.” The Word of God became flesh, he became part of his creation, he became one with us. And that truth is so impossible to believe, and yet, so magnificent, that every time we say the Creed in this church, we go down on our knees at those words - because we are both humbled and excited.

God one with us, purely for love. Love of the world he created, love of you and I. Loving us all so much he becomes one with us, and part of this world. There is an English carol for Christmas that says: “Behold the Creator makes himself a house of clay”. To see this truth in the manger, in the Creche, is to understand that God only wants the world to be a place of peace, and love, and joy. Tonight, here, we experience the veil between heaven and earth as particularly thin. Tonight we come close, so close to God, as we do every time we come to his altar. So tonight you and I will sieze these words of Isaiah and say “Yes! The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light! On them, light has shined.”