Cork, Cloyne and Ross on Christmas Day 2003

ACNS 3723 | IRELAND | 28 DECEMBER 2003

Sermon Preached by the Rt Revd Paul Colton, Bishop of Cork, Cloyne and Ross on Christmas Day 2003

St Fin Barre’s Cathedral, Cork

Our telling of the Christmas story is diminished because we focus almost entirely on those characters in the unfolding drama who seem to respond with devotion and obedience: an obedient Mary, an acquiescent Joseph, unruly, but nonetheless responsive herdsmen, perceptive philosophers who enter on bended knee.

The two Gospel writers who tell the story of the birth appear at first glance to collude with us in this. No doubt this suits their neat theological purposes.

But what of the others in the story? The Inn, for example, was full. Perhaps other travellers trying to have an early night so that they will be well rested for an early start to get first place in that long and tedious queue the next morning at the census? Or locals meeting with friends or relatives who’ve arrived in town, catching up on family news? Groups of men talking politics earnestly over a few drinks? Maybe even a few serious troublemakers in a quiet corner plotting mischief against the Roman occupiers? And, out on the town, reluctant soldiers, on duty in a foreign land, thinking of home.

A more careful reading of the Gospels releases us to detect a certain reluctance even among those who do feature in the story.

What about the shepherds, for example?

In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night…. When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” (Luke 2.8 and 15)

Did they all get up and go, of one mind, happy to abandon their life’s work and security – the sheep? Surely not! They were hardy men and boys, not highly thought of in society, no doubt worldly wise, and so among those who rushed to Bethlehem on foot of the Angel’s message, there must have been some who held back, even a little.

The 17th Century poet Henry Vaughan in The Shepherds mentions this initial reticence:

How happen’d it that in the dead of night You only saw true light, While Palestine was fast asleep, and lay Without one thought of Day? … Perhaps some harmless care for the next day Did in their bosoms play, As where to lead their sheep, what silent nook, What springs, or shades to look: But that was all; and now with gladsome care They for the town prepared; They leave their flock, and in a busy talk All towards Bethlem walk To see their souls’ Great Shepherd, Who has come To bring all stragglers home;

And over the centuries artists would also have us believe that some of those shepherds were stragglers. In paintings all of the same title, The Adoration of the Shepherds, the 17th Century artists Fabritius, Rambrandt and Reni depicted some of the shepherds hesitating in the background, outside all together, or in the doorway at the half light, afraid to approach the full light surrounding the baby in the manger. One of the artists even shows some not-so-eager herdsmen still out on the hillside, not having bothered to pay attention to the message at all: no journey made to Bethlehem.

There is something of the straggler in all of us: the incarnation is after all a mystery, and faith is spring-boarded from a significant leap of heart and human spirit. Some do not like what they see in the institutional manifestation of the faith and others have felt profoundly hurt by the Church.

For our part, we as the people of God, the Church, have made much, especially in recent decades of our solidarity with the stragglers – those we say are “on the edge”, the marginalised.

To see their souls’ Great Shepherd, Who has come To bring all stragglers home;

The present controversy about homosexuality within Anglicanism is now calling the Church’s bluff about this professed preference to be, like Christ, among those on that edge. We have claimed to be on the side of those who were oppressed by society and consigned to its margins. But how are we faring? This edge place is where most homosexuals were forced to live prior to decriminalisation and the arrival of equality legislation, but where, in spite of immense changes in society, many still find themselves – especially those within the Church. The Church has been complicit in the resulting injustice and immense human suffering.

Part of our responsibility centres on our acquiescence in the misuse of Scripture, caused by our inertia on the one hand and by our fear on the other of giving intelligent people of faith the tools for handling God’s word rationally.

The sincerity of our profession to favour those on the edge, and our inclusive charter is being put to the test now, and so far we are not faring very well: much of the debate has centred on protecting the structures of the institution rather than on people, understanding their situations and showing them Christ-like compassion.

Within the New Testament itself, for those early followers of Jesus Christ who were all Jews, the first cathartic decision came in relation to gentiles, the uncircumcised. Since then the Christian story has been one of prejudice being overcome step by step: slaves, Jews, science, single mothers, children born outside marriage, people in interchurch marriages, victims of suicide, the downfall of apartheid, divorcees, women (first in decision-making in the Church and then in the ordained ministry); standing up to racism. Think in your own lifetime of how, arising from our sense of the love of Christ, our attitudes have changed in the Church to many of these people and issues.

Christian history is full of people who, from being on the outside at one time, have, through a change heart of the Church, found themselves on the inside of the story. At the time, such changes were, what the Roman Catholic theologian James Allison calls, “ruptures of the impossible”. Every so often, he says, we have to make “…an incursion into impossibility….[so that]….what looked like an impossibility is a fading taboo, and that all the violence which goes along with its maintenance is also fading.” Today – nothing new it seems – we are challenged by another group in the Church to make a similar incursion into what we once deemed impossible.

For generations the Church of Ireland, the Church of England and many of our other sister Churches in Anglicanism have fully and happily utilised the talents of gay people – lay and ordained – while, at the same time, articulating a different official public line.

Of such people in this congregation, in congregations all over the Church and throughout our communities, I believe the time has come – too little, too late I know for many – humbly and contritely to ask forgiveness.

This debate is our current issue. In the midst of our preoccupation (over-preoccupation even) with it, we ought not to lose sight of the straggler in all of us. Whether Christmas is the one time we come in from the hillside or whether we bend our knee day by day at the feet of the incarnate God, for all of us there is our profoundly demanding, distracting and sapping humanity. On this journey through life, the pilgrimage of faith is not easy for most people.

The good news is that again and again, God comes to those in the darkness of night, or in the half light or indeed to those still on the hillside – in those places of our doubts, and in our sense of not belonging. The light of the Christ-child beckons to us to come in. God comes to us and meets us.

He has come “…to bring all stragglers home;…”

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