My first Christmas as the minister of St Paul’s took place in the shadow of the Lockerbie bombing. On 21 December 1988 Pan Am Flight 103 was destroyed by a bomb that had been planted with the loss of 270 lives on board and on the ground. It affected our congregation since we had a number of police officers whose Christmas leave was cancelled as every resource available was channelled to the stricken town.
As I was preparing for the Watchnight service I was sure that the atrocity would be much in the minds of those who gathered. In those days we could depend on a pack-out. The challenge then was to speak some Biblical truth into the horror that had cast such a shadow on our Christmas preparations. The cry was often heard that this was just the worst time of year for something like this to happen. But if we focus on the truth that lies at the heart of Christmas then there is encouragement and hope. People celebrate Christmas in their own way and they should be free to do so. But if it is a celebration of the birth of the Son of God then that powerful truth can speak to us in the midst of our worst experiences.
We need to take time to revisit this devotionally. If Christmas is to mean anything to me then it is an opportunity to reflect on a God who became one of us and in His human life and death experienced physical pain as well as psychological disturbance, spiritual abandonment and the annihilation of death. His life among us is the fulfilment of the ancient prophesy which said that he would be ‘Emmanuel’, God is with us. With us to the end. Not that it was the end. His resurrection showed that the darkness of pain and death does not have the last word. Paul was to say that the resurrection is ‘the guarantee that those who sleep in death will also be raised.’ (1 Corinthians 15: 20 GNB). It is in light of the resurrection that we have to view everything in our experience that threatens to take us apart physically, psychologically and spiritually. In that light we can view the birth of Jesus as a new beginning for humanity, showing that God is with us, and even in the midst of the worst human tragedy is working towards the day when nothing that has ever made us cry will be part of our experience.
This is not an easy message to preach. I have always been conscious of the view that it is easy to stand in a pulpit and say things but not so easy to live it out. (Actually, it is never easy to stand in a pulpit!) But in the end a preacher has to preach the God he or she knows, the God the apostles knew, the God who was not defeated by the worst that humanity could throw at Him, but continued to move towards the final redemption of Creation, evacuated of everything that was an affront to Him and a source of pain to the humankind He loved.
This is what Paul was given to understand as he unpacked the truth of God with us. In Romans 8: 31-37 he reflects on the worst things that could ever break into human experience, much of it he himself had gone through. He recognises the power of these worst things. They threaten to separate us from the love of Christ. But the reality of his coming amongst us, God in a human personality, is the ultimate assurance that his love is not extinguished by ‘trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword.’ (Romans 8: 35).
It was a tradition in the St Paul’s Watchnight service that the lights were dimmed before the Word was preached. That in itself was a powerful symbol on Christmas Eve 1988. Light in the darkness. And a spotlight lit up the cross behind the Lord’s Table. A reminder of the purpose of Jesus’ coming, to give Himself to show that in the eyes of God humankind had a future where sins could be forgiven, where lives could be shaped according to the pattern of His life, where a Kingdom awaited its time when the Risen Jesus would announce ‘I am making everything new!’ (Revelation 21: 5).
There is hope that can be preached in the face of every human tragedy if we preach the reality of God with us. But it doesn’t stop there. The apostles held out the love of Christ as a comfort, encouragement and inspiration but also as a human aspiration. As we reflect on the meaning of the Season it falls to every believer to reach out in compassion to those who feel consumed by the darkness of human experience. Paul’s hymn of praise to the Son of God ‘who made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant’ and became ‘obedient to death - even death on a cross’ - begins with the challenge: ‘In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus.’ (Philippians 2: 5-11.).
‘O holy Child of Bethlehem
Descend to us we pray.
Cast out our sin and enter in,
Be born in us today.
We hear the Christmas angels
The great glad tidings tell;
O come to us, abide with us.
Our Lord Immanuel.’
