Why Christmas Night is Different

Why is this night different from all other nights? Most nights, you’re not sitting in a church at six o’clock. Or any o’clock. So why tonight? What’s different?



If it’s true that we are again becoming more open to entertaining thoughts of the divine (and not just in middle-aged, middle-class, rural middle England), then perhaps it’s because we like to play a sort of game of chicken; not with God, but with ourselves: as if, just once a year, we dare ourselves to indulge the possibility that here in church, in this ‘serious house on serious earth’, we might just find the sort of priceless treasure that Jesus says is worth selling all we possess to make our own.



And you can easily see why Christmas would be the time. What’s not to like about flooding with light the deep solstice-darkness of December? And who doesn’t rejoice in the birth of a child; or welcome talk of peace in a world perpetually at war?



Christmas, you see, is a kind of multi-coloured swap-shop, in which our humanity and God’s divinity are brought into a new relationship. The Bible, in Genesis, that book of poems about the making of the universe, describes humanity as ‘made in the image and likeness of God’: that is, with some of the character of God within us. However imperfect and prone to messing up we humans might be, we are nonetheless capable of joining in with God’s creativity in the world. We are designed for truth, beauty and goodness. And for this, God has endowed us with reason, setting us way above the beasts who – despite all the cute videos on TikTok – really are confined to the limits of their animal instincts.



And now we celebrate the fact that, in taking on our nature, in borrowing it back for a while, God is enhancing our dignity yet further. For, if God becomes human in Christ, then every human becomes a sort of Christ. As Jesus himself puts it, What we do (or don’t do) for one of these little ones, we do (or don’t do) for him. We buy a sandwich for a beggar? We buy a sandwich for Christ.



So Christmas gives us humans our identity. And it gives us our dignity. And it gives us our morality. This isn’t entirely new. We have always known that living an entirely moral, generous and beautiful life does not remotely require one to be a Christian. We see it every single day, not least in the villages that make up this parish. There must be other reasons for choosing to play a part in this particular drama; for stepping into the stable and deciding that the story of Christ is a story we wish to make our own.



For me, it will always boil down to recognising in the life of Christ, the life of God: knowing that, when you have dealings with Christ, you are dealing with the absolute power and truth and wisdom and reality that we call God; and that in accepting the claims of Christ, we are claiming acceptance by God; that our lives, even the most seemingly modest of human lives, are lives of significance, value, love, and an immensity of meaning.



Why is this night different from all other nights? What more does it offer us than a new cashmere cardi and a vat of Bombay Sapphire? This night invites us to look again at life through the lens of Jesus Christ. It invites us to share his vision for the establishing of peace and justice, and for the entire re-making of the world in the image of our loving and purposeful Creator; so that what matters is not the colour of your skin, or the colour of your passport, or the colour of your money; not who you fall in love with; not what sort of chromosomes you have, or how many; not how healthy or young or strong your body is; not how closely you resemble those deemed beautiful by the advertising agencies; not who or what, if anything, you worship as your god. No. What matters solely in giving you and everyone absolute, unarguable and inalienable value is that, like Jesus Christ, you possess in any of its wild diversity the nature and identity of a simply human being.



And that is Christmas. That’s what makes this night different from all other nights: a night when we stop, and even for just a minute, examine a belief about God; a belief about human beings; even a possible belief about how, in one man (born a long time ago in a Galilee far, far away), those two lives coincided.



And as that play rolls on – now in its third millennium! – you have contributed a verse tonight. But be careful. If you do take a peek behind the stable door, and your eyes meet his; well, your life may never be the same again. Hashtag Just Saying. Hashtag Happy Christmas!