It was 24 December 1988 and my first Watchnight Service as minister of St Paul’s. It was something I had looked forward to. A guaranteed pack out in the church and the opportunity to preach the greatest event in human history: the birth of the Son of God as one of us and the hope of all humankind. This year, though, a shadow had fallen on the whole Christmas season. On 21 December Pan Am Flight 103 had exploded over Lockerbie as the result of a terrorist bomb. All 243 passengers were immediately killed along with 16 crew, and it would be revealed later that lives had been lost in
Lockerbie itself. The events were powerfully dramatized in a recent BBC mini-series.
As I prepared for the Watchnight Service, I was conscious that this would be in the minds of all those who would gather for worship. I was conscious, too, that families in St Paul’s had been affected. We had several police officers in the congregation. All police leave was cancelled, so no Christmas celebrations with the family. Not to mention the harrowing experience of duties related to the aftermath of the bombing.
So, preparation was challenging. Writing of another tragedy, the Dunblane massacre, a journalist wrote that preachers had become ‘theologically disarmed’. That could have been applied to Lockerbie. The persisting argument against the existence of a God of love had gained new momentum in face of this senseless loss of life and the horrified grief experience by those close to the victims. But people would be there at the Watchnight Service, and I had 20 minutes or so to grapple with this and, by the grace of God, bring some reassurance from the Word of God.
It's 37 years ago. I can’t remember all that was preached. And I’m not one of those who carefully files away all his sermons so no archives into which I can plunge . But I do remember focussing on the name that arose from the prophecy of Isaiah concerning the Messiah: ‘Immanuel’ which means ‘God with us.’ God with us in every circumstance of life, and the fragile baby honoured in the Christmas season is the ultimate assurance of that. He would become ‘the man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.’ (Isaiah 53: 3). The apostle Paul absorbed this and was convinced that there is nothing in heaven or on earth that will ever be able to separate us from the love of God.
So many people had been saying that this was just the worst time of year for something like this to happen. I preached that this time of year was the best time for this to happen. Forced to face the evil in the world we are called to focus on the One whose birth, life, death and resurrection provides an assurance that there is a hope that no darkness will ever overcome. Not even that which arises from a terrorist’s bomb.
‘The best time for this to happen.’ As I set this down, I can see that I was asking a lot of those who gathered on that Christmas Eve 1988. Words are powerful to convince but the same words can also be taken in various ways. Not to mention the politicians get out, ‘taken out of context.’ But in the end, we are not called to be theologically disarmed but to face the darkness generated by broken humanity and proclaim the light that the darkness has never, nor will ever, overcome. (John 1: 5)
