Well, the watching and waiting in which we have been engaged during the Advent season has now finally come to fruition.  ‘Let there be light’ was the great cry these past weeks, and now Christ, the Light of the World, has arrived in a stable at Bethlehem, and come amongst us.  The prophesy of Isaiah, which we heard in our 1^st reading, has been fulfilled – the Word has been made Flesh, and God has kept his promise.

Christmas, without doubt, is the time of year which most catches the public imagination, whether the individual is religious or not.  The whole business of the Incarnation is so improbable that, were one setting out to invent it, this is the last conceivable way in which it could ever have come to pass – pun intended!  The King of Kings and Lord of Lords, an outcast from the outset, born in a stable because there was no room for the Holy Family in the inn.  Who on earth is going to believe that, when most people would have had the birth take place in a palace, as befits his exalted state.  That would be the way of man, but fortunately not that of the God, who sent his Son into the world to redeem it and save us from our sins.  To quote the children’s hymn: ‘It is a thing most wonderful, almost too wonderful to be, that God should send his only Son, to die, to save a child like me’.

However, this was no ordinary baby – this was no ordinary birth, witnessed as it was by the whole company of heaven, and revealed first to shepherds, who were watching over their flocks by night, in fields just beyond the perimeter of the town.  Clearly these humble men, not remotely the first people who one might reasonably have expected to be given the news of the birth of the Saviour, were frightened out of their wits when a great company of angels appeared, glorifying God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill towards men”, just as we have done at the start of thisEucharist.  They were told clearly where to find the baby, wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.  So, when the angels were gone away from them into heaven they had no hesitation in leaving their flocks sleeping in the field, and going to see this thing which had happened, and the Lord had made known to them.  Now, in normal circumstances, it would be quite unthinkable for shepherds to abandon their charges to the mercy of wolves and the wild beasts of the field, but such was the impact of what they had experienced, that they had no hesitation and went without delay to adore our Lord and Saviour.  Will we do likewise?  Sadly, many of our fellows will not!

As believers, it is our incredible joy and privilege to go now with the shepherds in heart and mind unto Bethlehem and witness for ourselves the stupendous gift of God to all mankind – ‘O come, let us adore him, Christ the Lord’, we sang as our Entrance Hymn just a few minutes ago.

A matter for great sadness, however, is the fact that there are those who have glibly accepted the invitation to the Feast, even though not specifically invited and ‘on the guest list’, who then do not come to adore.  In other words, they have gate-crashed the party and have no real business being there in the first instance.  Take the Christ out of Christmas and what is one left with – a mass, or more properly a mess!  Let us all then try to put Christ back into Christmas in a sceptical, unbelieving, and increasingly hostile world, where a lack of love and compassion totally belies the message of ‘peace on earth, good will to all people’, which Our Lord came to bring.

There has rightly been total abhorrence at the way the Chinese are currently abusing their Uyghur Muslims, and our neighbours, the Rohingya people have been treated in Myanmar by the Buddhist majority – driven out in tens of thousands of a land which for centuries they have regarded as their home, and forced into exile in Bangladesh, with their women raped, their homes utterly destroyed, and the authorities making every effort to bring about ‘ethnic cleansing’.  To those of my generation this brings back abhorrent memories of the Nazis in Germany, stopping at nothing in order to rid themselves of an entire race of people they considered sub-human and undesirable.  Nothing new here, alas, for as you will recall, Herod was guilty of infanticide in his determination to rid himself of this new ‘King of the Jews’, who represented such a grave and wholly unacceptable threat to his own position.  Subsequently, alas, there have been further attempts at something similar, not least in Yugoslavia and various other places in the years following 1945.  This sort of thing brings out the very worst in human nature, and there are those now who make it their business to strive constantly to cause unrest and interracial tensions.  One of the worst outcomes of Brexit in the UK has been the demonising of various sections of the community, not least in anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim movements, and all the hatred which this has engendered, alas.

We hear much these days about ‘political correctness’ and that in nominally Christian countries, Christmas therefore must be ‘neutralised’, so as not to antagonise those of other faiths and none.  Here it would be well to remind ourselves that Islam recognises Jesus as a Prophet, but not as the Son of God.  According to the Koran, his mother ‘Maryam’ gave birth to him under a palm tree in an unspecified location, and so, whilst not nearly so evocative as the stable in Bethlehem, there is insufficient reason for Muslims to be ‘upset’ by traditions going back many centuries than the ’politically-correct’ brigade would have us believe!

In our conflict-ridden and increasingly broken and divided world, there has never been a greater need for the Light of Christ to shine again in the hearts of all people – for the Light to shine in the darkness, which cannot overcome it, no matter how great the darkness, and how relatively little the light.  This supports the sense that in the end good must always triumph over evil. However, this will not happen if good people, the silent majority, sit on their hands and do nothing, as we have seen throughout history and in the events of our own lifetime.

All those who were present in the stable in Bethlehem, including by some poetic accounts, also the animals, were in absolutely no doubt as to what they had witnessed.  We will go out from here and immediately be surrounded by partying hoards, indulging up to the hilt in ‘sanuk’, as the Thais call it – never ones to turn down any opportunity for a ‘knees-up’, but their celebrations will be entirely hollow and meaningless without the love of Christ, which makes all things new, and is manifest so completely in the Child in a manger – utterly helpless for the moment, despite being the Word Incarnate.  God on earth now, of course, has no hands but ours, no feet but ours, no chance therefore of bringing about the coming of the Kingdom without human intervention.

So, as we come with the shepherds to the stable and bow the knee in adoration, let us reflect on those beautiful words of Christina Rossetti in her wonderful poem ‘In the bleak mid-winter, which is often sung in this season of the year.  “What can I give him, poor as I am?  If I were a shepherd I would bring a lamb.  If I were a wise man I would do my part.  Yet what I can, I give him – give my heart.”  Only by so doing can this or any other Christmastide have any spiritual significance – let us not be guilty of taking part in an empty and utterly meaningless celebration!

Amen.