I called in at the butcher’s yesterday to buy some mince and he looked so frazzled that, in the spirit of one Christmas worker to another, I asked, ‘Sick of turkeys yet?’ No. His problem was not surfeit but shortage.
‘A few years ago we did 150 turkeys at Christmas,’ he said. ‘Do you know how many we’ve done this year? Forty-two!’
Excellent, I thought, there’s the beginning of my Christmas sermon – and then remembered I retired three years ago and won’t be preaching this year, the 20th since I was ordained.
But vicars are perpetually on the look out for something to kick off a sermon, something topical, relatable. You know the kind of thing: ‘I was at the butcher’s the other day… and in a very real sense aren’t we all really hankering for a proper turkey this Christmas? Hmm?’
Never more so than for Midnight Mass. We all know what happens, the familiar cast of angels and shepherds and wise men from the East, all turning up on cue, and – honestly – when you’re preaching about it for the 40th time it is difficult to find anything groundbreaking to say.
I sometimes wonder if this lies behind those terrible moments when vicars at school assemblies, in front of 100 sobbing tots, question the logistics of Santa making all his stops on Christmas Eve.
As a vicar, ever more marginalised at the one time of year when we most want to be at the centre, you might, in frustration, think that this is the sermon you want to harangue the newcomers with; but it is not what congregations need to hear.
A nativity scene once found an unlikely addition during Midnight Mass
Rev Coles fund that pitching a festive sermon is a tricky business
And while there is always a tension between what we want the gospel to say and what it actually says, there is a time and place to challenge your congregations.
It is not Christmas Day, when many people make their one annual visit to church.
I remember preaching my first sermon at Christmas. It was just before I went to theological college and I was serving as a pastoral assistant in a traditional church in a traditional town, average age probably 80.
I ascended the pulpit to preach 800 words on the star of Bethlehem and in a rookie way remarked that the star probably had more to do with the prophet Micah, who foretold the birth of the Messiah at Bethlehem, and the star of Jacob prophesied in the Book of Numbers, rather than an astronomical phenomenon.
As I descended the pulpit one of the more forbidding members to the congregation, a clergy widow, said loudly: ‘Rubbish!’
It can go the other way. A friend of mine preached an excellent Christmas sermon last year, hitting all points deftly and memorably, only to be harangued by a member of the congregation in the porch for not denouncing the price hike for first class stamps.
Feed my sheep, says Jesus to his disciples, don’t irritate them or scare them away or – worst of all – bore them. I remember one Christmas the preacher saying: ‘I just want, briefly, to sketch six points…’ which caused a collective groan from worshippers.
So what to preach? Keep it short and to the point, keep in mind the reason for the season, don’t try to reinvent the wheel and don’t
forget: the congregation’s familiarity with the church’s traditions and doctrine may be as uncertain now as buying that whole turkey from the butcher’s.
I’ve shifted on this, by the way. As a priest I am, ex officio, a custodian of tradition (among other things) and turkey was standard for me until I admitted I didn’t like it that much and now it’s a rib of beef or a goose or a capon (if you can find one) or venison, even though it seems a little heartless to eat a variant of Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer after his exertions the night before.
A part of me still feels a little defensive about this. As I have got older, and acquired experience as a parson, I have come to value tradition more, and want to uphold those things of lasting value entrusted to me in a world in which influencers beguile us with trinkets paraded like items on the conveyor belt from The Generation Game. Swipe left, swipe left, swipe left.
Sometimes sermons write themselves. This happened to me only last Sunday when I was on the Queen Mary 2 sailing to Southampton from New York.
A ‘carol service’ ended with the lighting of Hanukkah candle as news broke of the Bondi Beach shootings
They asked me if I would take the Carol Service, a splendid affair conducted round a giant Christmas tree at the foot of the spiral staircase in the grand lobby.
‘Carol’ is today a loosely defined term, including White Christmas and Chestnuts Roasting etc etc alongside Good King Wenceslas and Hark The Herald, and I did not preach so much as ‘say a few words’.
But as we gathered in our hundreds news broke of the shootings at Bondi Beach and I did not have to say very much at all as our service segued into the lighting of the Hanukkah candle.
Peace on earth, goodwill to all. A big ask in our divided world but it always was, from the first Nativity in an insignificant corner of the Roman empire 2,000 years ago when people discovered that the fulfilment of their hopes and the end of their fears was not a warrior with a flaming sword but a tiny baby – his breath misting in the cold night air with that of farmyard animals and uncomprehending strangers.
I remember once preaching a sermon to this effect at Midnight Mass which I thought rather fine, if I say so myself, and after saying goodbye to the congregation at the door I noticed them stopping at our nativity scene in the churchyard. Result, I thought, we gather tonight at the crib as we always have to worship the mystery of God incarnate.
When I went to switch off the lights I saw that someone had replaced Jesus in the crib with a plastic velociraptor.
Yet still we come, year after year, for reasons that may be obscure to us let alone anyone else, reluctantly, gladly, in joy and sorrow. And we stand at the edge of a mystery that still compels.
For me, Christmas-weary as I am, it still offers hope and faith and grace in a tough world and an indifferent age.
If you come, and I pray you do, I hope you find that too.
