Sermon for Christmas Eve

Friday 24th December 2010

Preached by Rev Paul Hewtt

There hasn’t been much on television to whet the appetite these days unless you were in to ‘Strictly’ or ‘X Factor’ (by the way, in case you’re interested, our household voted for Matt – twice!). But one thing caught my eye, and perhaps I was looking for it in the wrong place but I couldn’t find it on iplayer; it was called something like “The Decade of Discovery”. Now, your mind could take off in several directions and think of technology and science and the fact that this generation has seen more ‘inventions’ than all the generations before, or even you may this of the industrial revolution or something like that. But this was a programme about discoveries in the animal kingdom, not in the last century, but in the last ten years!

How can we, in this day and age, still be discovering completely new species of plants and animals when you would imagine that every square foot of the earth has been stepped on by somebody by now? Seemingly we know more about the moon than we do about the seas around us. Even if we ever dare to think it, we will never know everything about our world. It is a constantly fascinating place, and we’re still only scratching the surface, whether it be the tiniest part of an atom to the furthest star in the galaxy, and even beyond that again. What an extraordinary and wondrous place we live in.

Whether you want to use the word or not, there has been an evolution in our thinking and in our understanding of the world around us.

In what we believe, there has been a development of understanding and thinking, an evolution, if I could use the word, in what we once thought was untrue turns out to be correct and vice versa. There are very few ‘absolutes’ left, if I could put it that way. So to be so dogmatic and intransigent about certain aspects of faith seems rather infantile and immature – but I digress!

If our thinking about our world and about our faith has ‘evolved’ over the years, there’s no doubt that “Christmas”, as we know it, has evolved also.

I have this little theory that what we now call and recognise as ‘Christmas’ was actually invented within a twenty year period in the 19^th century. I know, I am definitely a grumpy old geezer, but hear me out.

No one has done more to bolster our modern day of Christmas than Clement Clarke Moore. I’ve preached on him before! He wrote the wonderful poem, ‘A Visit from Santa’... “Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse...”

That was published in 1823! Twenty years later the novella, ‘A Christmas Carol’ was published, and written, of course by Charles Dickens. I’ve no qualms in saying that these two pieces of literature have given us “Christmas” as we think we know it today! It’s an invention! And it’s getting more complicated and more out of hand every year.

What a humbug I have become, but I believe there is a song in the charts at the moment with a line in it that says, ‘All I want for Christmas is New Year’s Day’! Can’t wait!

Speaking of evolution and invention and all the rest, according to my book based on the series “QI”, there is genetic evidence that suggests that one of the first populations outside Africa were the Andaman islanders, off the coast of India. Seemingly, they have been isolated for 60,000 years – longer even than the Australian aborigines. There are fewer that 400 Andamanese left. Half of these belong to two tribes: the Jarawa and the Sentinelese, who have almost no contact with the outside world. So isolated are the 100 or so Sentinelese that no one has ever studied their language.

The Andamanese are one of only two tribal groups in the world who are not able to make fire. Instead they have elaborate procedures for keeping and transporting embers and smouldering logs in clay containers. These have been kept alight for millennia, probably having originated in lightening strikes.

Here’s the extraordinary thing: though this seems strange and quite fantastic, they have a very familiar idea of God. Their supreme deity, Peluga, is invisible, eternal, immortal, all-knowing, the creator of everything except evil; he is angered by sin and offers comfort to those in distress. To punish men for their wrongdoing he sent a great flood.

With all our ‘evolution’ and with all our ‘invention’, isn’t it about time we got back to basics?

I want to join the Andamanese people! There would be food and water and it would be warm.

Isn’t it extraordinary that our thoughts and beliefs in an all-powerful, all-loving God, seem to be a part of our make up as human beings? They are no ‘invention’. Our belief systems are as much a part of us as human beings, as our arms are a part of our bodies.

Acknowledging that our God would want to come to be a part of our humanity, acknowledging his love for us through this Christ-child, acknowledging what he was prepared to go through, all for us and the cosmos, is what makes you a Christian and it is what really makes Christmas, Christmas.

With all of that in mind, may I end by saying a, “Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night”