Christmas and the real world: Midnight Mass 2007: Revd. Canon Alan Winton

I want to begin this evening with one of the great cultural icons of our time; an image and a narrative that boasts the power to transform people’s lives; what you might call a potent vision of human wellbeing. Well, you’ve guessed it, I want to talk about the Spice Girls’ Christmas advert for Tescos.

If you never watch television this bit might not make much sense, but don’t worry it won’t last too long. But it has been a bumper year for supermarket adverts on the telly. Don’t you just love that one with Lulu walking down an idyllic High Street, where all the stars seem to live, and I use that word ‘stars’ with some reservations. Bing Crosby must be turning in his grave whenever the advert starts with the lovely Lulu telling us that she’s not dreaming of a white Christmas, she’s dreaming of a fresh Christmas. There will be no tired old turkeys at Morrisons, everything will be fresh!

But it’s Tescos who’ve really captured the zeitgeist, the spirit of the moment, with their Spice Girls advert. The five old favourites are reunited around a blazing log fire, but immediately the trouble begins. Oh no, they just can’t agree on what to eat for Christmas dinner. Ginger, a traditional girl if ever there was one, likes turkey, while sporty rather predictably favours beef, baby has a surprising liking for goose and scary prefers salmon, and to top it all off, would you believe it, the posh one wants lobster. But never fear, Mr Tesco can cater for any taste – choice is the watchword of this advertisement. Don’t worry if you can’t agree with one another over what you want, everyone can follow their own path, everyone can have just what they want – there need be no tears this Christmas in supermarket world.

These adverts paint idyllic pictures for us, of cosy log fires and streets where smiling, pretty, famous friends can gaze through the windows and wave to their smiling, pretty, famous neighbours, where food is plentiful and interesting, and old friends and colleagues are reunited, and in spite of disagreements that may have gone before, still keen to spend Christmas in each other’s company.

Have you noticed that when people are trying to sell us something, the world they create is a positive, optimistic one where all our best dreams are easily able to be realised, the future is appealing and our idyll lies just around the next corner, just beyond the tills?

I suppose the other side of this televisual coin would have to be found where the lights are not so bright and the music not so jaunty, among the news and current affairs programmes. Here the positive is rarely played up and optimism is in short supply, dreams are there to be squashed and behind every idyllic scene is a lie to be uncovered or a sleazy transaction to be brought to light. If the world of advertising is in the business of painting rosy pictures, the world of journalism tends to be painted black. At the moment it feels as though we are all teetering on the edge of financial ruin, if the banks don’t go bust then, thanks to a few lost discs, we’re all likely to have our identities stolen with drastic consequences; the planet is getting hotter and no-one seems capable of agreeing what to do about it, the nation’s waistlines are getting too big and we’re all drinking too much; conflicts around the world are set to go on and on, and our overpaid footballers can’t even qualify for the world cup.

So we find ourselves flitting between the brightly-lit optimism of the advertisers and the dark pessimism of the journalists, in both cases the world seems to be presented to us in the starkest possible terms. So where does the church position itself in the midst of this world of stark opposites?  Well, at times, and in parts of the church, we seem to side wholly with the pessimists, speaking unfailingly of sin and judgment, painting a picture of human intentions and human achievements that sees little hope, focusing on a holy God far removed from human frailties.  At other times, and in other places, we seem to side wholly with the optimists, joyfully declaring good news on smiling faces, even in the face of injustice and suffering, bursting with hope and possibility, focusing on a God who is spoken of casually as our closest friend and buddy.

But the Christmas story that we come to celebrate today charts, I think, a better way for those who would view the world through the eyes of faith. For the Christmas story is neither an idyllic world where everything is rosy and easy, nor is it about unremitting bad news, sin or disaster. Strange to say there is a realism about the Christmas story that often seems absent from the extreme positions taken in what we fondly describe as the real world of modern life. Vicars often hear about how the real world is only what goes on out there in the realm of business and commerce, in the arena of the media and the opinion formers. But I think that as Christians, we should look at things differently, we should take our base line on what is real from the story of the Christ-child coming into the world, a story that rejects the false extremes of empty optimism or faithless pessimism.

For the Christmas story is about God wanting to tackle the reality of human life, coming to live among us, as one of us, to understand our lives, our temptations, our choices, our dreams and our fears, coming to transform our lives from where they really are to where he wants them to be.  And Jesus’ life is lived powerfully between those twin poles of pessimism and optimism. 

What we are here to celebrate this Christmas is a story about a saviour who is born into a degree of poverty and insecurity that is the lot of probably still the majority of people in our world today. His parents struggle to find a roof over their heads on the night he is born, and immediately he learns what it is to be a refugee, his life endangered through the all-too-common misuse of power.  And he lives a life spent facing constant opposition, confronting injustice and championing the cause of the poor and the despised, showing compassion for the sick and rejected, those who are so easily left behind by life. And through all of this he comes to speak of a kingdom that is to come where the humble are exalted and the peace-makers are blessed. Out of his engagement with the realities of life he offers hope that is real and tangible.

He is abused and made the victim of people’s fears and hatred and suffers death upon the cross, but it is through confronting and challenging all those pessimistic powers of sin and cruelty and evil that he is able to bring hope, for his resurrection signals the ultimate triumph of goodness over evil.  This is a story where the realities of life are understood and confronted: a story in which hope is carved out of deep and costly experience.

I have no argument with the advertisers who are required to create illusions for us, dreams that will probably never be fulfilled, always raising our expectations and urging us to grasp all those beautiful things for which we aspire.  And I have no argument with the journalists who are required to play on our fears and our suspicions, desperately trying to fill 24 hours with stories to grab our attention and pictures to catch our eyes.

But the strange truth is that if we want to understand the real world, we have to turn our attention to the story that begins for us in a stable in Bethelehem. For we celebrate a story that is truly rooted in reality: between the empty optimism that is often directed at us in our consumer society; and the faithless pessimism which refuses to see any hope.  Christmas is about allowing this wonderful story, of God with us, to challenge what we believe to be real. And so, as we come forward to share in this communion, whether we receive the bread and wine or come forward for a blessing, we ask God to help us see what is real and true, so that we can confront what is cruel and evil and hard in our lives, and find hope that is firm and true and real in the one born in a stable at Bethlehem.

It feels as though Betjeman wrote his much-loved Christmas poem with this moment in mind, as people gathered in an English Church for Midnight Mass, contemplating the truth of what the Christmas story claims, and so I end with his words:

And is it true? And is it true? - This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window’s hue, - A baby in an ox’s stall?
The Maker of the stars and sea - Becomes a child on earth for me?
And is it true? For if it is, - No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies, - The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent - And hideous tie so kindly meant,
No love that in a family dwells, - No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells - Can with this single truth compare –
That God was man in Palestine - And lives today in bread and wine.

Amen.