Sermon preached at Midnight Mass based on Isaiah 9:2-3, 6-7 and Luke 2: 1-14 .

May I speak and may you hear through the Grace of our Lord; Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

‘It came upon the midnight clear’… ‘that glorious song of old, from angels bending near the earth to touch their harps of gold.’ The beginning of a poem by Edward Sears and tonight we are celebrating those angels bringing heaven to touch earth. Regretfully, we are not singing the carol of the same name this evening, but if you want to look at the words then you can find them as number 14 in your carol sheets [See full lyrics at end].

It’s 11:50, only a few more minutes and it will be midnight, and once again we will remember the baby born in a manger, over two thousand years ago. A baby born into a land where its people were subjugated to Roman rule; a people who were waiting for the long-expected Messiah, a people who for hundreds of years had only heard the silence of God’s voice in the darkness.

Now those same peoples were listening to the song of the angels and the glow escaping from a crack in the stable door would soon grow to be a blaze of light, flooding the people and nations with a new sense of God’s purpose – love.

Love was indeed the message that God wished to share with the world. A love so deep and so strong for his creation, that he emptied himself and came in flesh and was to live among us.

The hundreds of years of people turning away, of following their own ways would surely now end. Here in amongst them was the Christ child, God in person living with his people, experiencing their joys and their gladness, their pain and their suffering, and he would show them that there was a different way to live, that gave them the freedom they craved, a revolution that didn’t have to lead to their blood being shed, an eternity of peace for the whole world.

How then to get this radical new way of living underway. Announce the arrival of a new king to the rulers and leaders, those in authority who had the most influence, who could make things happen by decrees, and had the greatest communications network? That would indeed light a fuse to set ablaze the old way of doing things, but it would also meet the most opposition for those who felt threatened that their own power was under attack.

The fact is the smallest of lights shines brightest in the darkness and this was to begin as a grass roots revolution. In the dark of night Jesus was born and God knew exactly whom he needed to tell. Those whose position in society was not revered, ordinary people, doing an ordinary job, which some considered made them outcasts because after all who wants to associate with a ragbag bunch of smelly shepherds.

Yet on the hillsides of Bethlehem he sent his messengers, a heavenly host of angels, radiating the glory of God and singing of God’s love. The shepherds were not to be fearful, but to be filled with great joy – their Saviour was born and they were to go and find him in the most unlikely of places, so that they could testify what they had seen and heard to his family.

But most importantly, that they could return to their work, ‘glorifying and praising God’ as Luke tells us in the next part of his gospel. I often wonder what impact the shepherd’s story would have had when they told others about what had happened. Did they meet with total disbelief or did some hold that hope in their hearts that things would be different now?

The fact is we don’t really know much more about the baby that was to grow into a man and be revealed to the world in his epiphany moments. The hope that was revealed on that hillside would be raised again in a man who had grown up within an ordinary household, learned what it meant to be part of an ordinary family, with all of its trials and tribulations, learnt a trade, prepared to begin his mission of reuniting all peoples with God.

Surely, his authority would be established and his role as a peacekeeper would bring about this revolution of love… but humans are fickle and resistant to being told to submit to a greater power than themselves.

When Edward Sears wrote his poem in 1849, he was suffering from a spell of personal melancholy, living in Massachusetts, it seemed that the world had once more sunk to an all time low, with news of widespread social and political revolutions. Called the Springtime of the Peoples, some fifty countries in Europe had been affected by these uprisings including France, Prussia and Austria.

Class differentiation fuelled the realisation that the world was not a place where all were equal. For workers who had no choice but to spend half of their income on food, which consisted mostly of bread and potatoes, the failure of several harvests and widespread potato blight triggered mass starvation, migration, and civil unrest, most keenly felt in Ireland.

Hence, the ‘babel sounds’ and ‘the woes of sin and strife’ were enough to drown out the ‘heav’nly music. Yet still God’s messengers to the world came, ‘with peaceful wings unfurled.’ That was just one moment in human history, but how many others both before and after have blocked out God’s love song to his people.

We can all think of times within our own lifetimes when the wars and conflicts of ‘men of strife’ have pushed us to block our ears to hearing the message of the angels of ‘peace on earth’.

This very night there are those who will be trying to find the Christ child among the rubble and razor wire, as Christians in Manger Square in Bethlehem hold muted celebrations. Instead of a hay-filled manger their baby Jesus has been wrapped in a black and white keffiyeh and lies among broken breeze blocks and paving slabs.

Surely now is the time that we look beyond factions and cliques, beyond race and religion, beyond political power and military strength, beyond gender discrimination and racial hatred. These ‘crushing loads’ are not what life should be about. That is not the song that the angels sing.

Each of us has an opportunity to show God’s love to every single person that comes in contact with us. To share the Good News, and hope that they too will hear the song in our words and our actions and go and share it with others.

We too are the people walking in darkness, but we have also seen a great light. The light is shining all around us this Christmas Day and it is a light that will never be extinguished.

So let us rejoice together, and hear the angels sing, ‘for unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, authority rests upon his shoulders; and his name shall be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.’

Amen

It Came Upon The Midnight Clear by Edward Sear

It came upon the midnight clear,
that glorious song of old,
from angels bending near the earth
to touch their harps of gold:
“Peace on the earth, good will to men,
from heaven’s all-gracious King.”
The world in solemn stillness lay,
to hear the angels sing.

Still through the cloven skies they come
with peaceful wings unfurled,
and still their heavenly music floats
o’er all the weary world;
above its sad and lowly plains,
they bend on hovering wing,
and ever o’er its Babel sounds
the blessed angels sing.

Yet with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long,
Beneath the angel-strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not
The love-song which they bring—
O hush the noise, ye men of strife,
And hear the angels sing

And ye, beneath life’s crushing load,
whose forms are bending low,
who toil along the climbing way
with painful steps and slow,
look now! for glad and golden hours
come swiftly on the wing.
O rest beside the weary road,
and hear the angels sing!

For lo! the days are hastening on,
by prophet seen of old,
when with the ever-circling years
shall come the time foretold
when peace shall over all the earth
its ancient splendours fling,
and the whole world send back the song
which now the angels sing.