So where did you learn the Christmas story? Where did you first hear about the baby in the manger?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot since a sermon that one of my colleagues preached earlier this year in which he suggested that in fact more people know about the story of Bethlehem from the film “The Life of Brian” than those who know it from the bible.

This is a particular achievement here in the City of Glasgow as the Life of Brian was banned from cinema screens for 30 years.

I remember when I first heard about this 30 year ban asking someone who had lived here then about it.

He claimed to have seen the film when it was first released. “But how did you see it when it was banned in Glasgow,” I asked.

“Oh,” he said, “you had to travel to see it. You had to go to the fleshpots on the edge of the city… places like Bearsden”.

Anyway, I’m sure that it is true that a lot of people do know about the nativity story from a film which was all about a neighbouring boy, Brian, being mistaken for Jesus.

Say anything about the coming of the Messiah amongst a certain generation and you are likely to get the response, “Oh, he’s not the Messiah, he’s just a very naughty boy”. And that applies to talk about Jesus as the Messiah. Or any Messiah. Or even a performance of Handel’s Messiah.

It was a film that was promoted with the tagline: “A motion picture destined to offend nearly two thirds of the civilized world. And severely annoy the other third.”

Yet the judgement of the self-righteous has mellowed somewhat over the years since it was first on show in cinemas all over the world (except in Glasgow). Time has scattered the proud and the haughty in the imagination of their hearts

This year there was a theological conference on the Life of Brian with an collection of worthies rightly realising that the film was a satire on those who get the wrong end of the stick about religion not particularly a satire on those who do love the Lord.

And yet there’s still plenty who do get the wrong end of the stick when it comes to understanding what religion is all about. People still often think religion is there to stop people having fun when the very opposite is true. And it is the birth, not so much the death of the beloved child of God who allows us always to look on the bright side of life.

For the birth of the Christ Child marks a moment when the world could never be the same again. A moment when all the angels sang and all of heaven danced for joy.

For the birth of the child tells us that God has come into the world and is interested in what it means to be like us.

Rather than Brian being confused for someone divine, someone divine became one of us. God got all muddled up with being human. So much so that words themselves were not enough to speak of what had happened.

For the Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us.

Words were never going to be enough. Only life was enough.

And so God came amongst us in the form of a child.

Tonight we celebrate that birth and in doing so we celebrate that life. We celebrate that God loves us in the dark times. That’s why we always mark this moment at midnight I think – when the world is darkest we celebrate that light will always win out. But this moment also marks a time when we know that God loves us when things are going well too.

That’s the point. God came to earth – came to live one of our lives here on earth and knows, profoundly knows what it is like to be here.

Knows hurts and sadnesses. Knows joys and delights.

And the truth we proclaim here is that God’s coming into the world means that God knows you too.

Knows you and loves you. Whoever you are and whatever you think of yourself – you are utterly and most profoundly loved. Christmas means that that’s fundamentally who you are – someone who is loved completely.

When we sing out carols at Christmas we are collectively sharing our joy that God became one of us. And the stories tell us that we are only adding our voices to a heavenly choir that sings at the birth of the babe. Announcing it to shepherds on the hills. Disturbing the sleep of Magi even yet on their way to worship. It is a birth that upsets the tyrant and yet comforts the poor and the lonely. A birth that meant that the world would never be the same again

And all this focussed on the image of a child in a manger. A new-born child who does not yet speak or teach. Does not yet heal or preach or raise the dead.

Just a babe in a manger who represents the enormous truth that you are completely loved.

I have no idea what kind of boy he grew up to be. Scripture is mostly silent on his childhood apart from one incident when he seems to have run off from his parents. But I do know that he’s not just a very naughty boy. This one actually is the Messiah. And he loves you very much indeed.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Here’s the sermon I preached yesterday

 

You can’t beat a good quiz on the internet. Two minutes completing a set of multiple choice questions and some computer somewhere out there gives a verdict on what kind of person you are.

Thus is was that this week I followed a facebook link and found myself looking at an interesting quiz about attitudes to religious and philosophical questions at just the moment when I probably should have been settling down to write a sermon.

Oh goody! I cried. A diversion.

The first question was rather profound:

“Why are you good?”

I wondered briefly whether I was in fact good at all. I’ve a hunch that it isn’t the first attribute that people think of when they think of me. But there it was – the first question in the quiz. “Why are you good?”

And the answers were these:
a) Because if I’m bad I’ll be punished in the afterlife. (No – that couldn’t be right, I think God loves me anyway).

1. b) It’s how my parents brought me up

(No, I’m not convinced by that either – I think parenting is about relationships that are very much more complex than a polarity between goodness and evil)

1. c) I’m just playing the game.
   (No – I think it is worth trying to be good even if I don’t know I’ll always succeed).

And d) I’m good to others because I think that’s the best way to be.

Yes! At last an answer I can wholly agree with.

I clicked d and moved on.

The next one was What is the purpose of life and my answer was “It’s up to us to give meaning to life. I want to help other people and make the world a better place.”

Goodness – I think I’ve preached that a few times from here.

And with almost all the questions, I was lucky – there seemed to be one each time that I agreed with.

The next one – Should everyone be treated equally?

Yes – there’s my answer: every person deserves equal respect and opportunity, irrespective of what they believe.

Click!

And so it went on.

I completed all these questions. Moral. Ethical. Personal.

And at the end – one final click. And the verdict.

YOU ARE A SECRET HUMANIST.

This is perhaps not surprising. Not because of my views but because when I looked again at the top of the webpage I realised that I was on the page of the Scottish Humanist Society. Indeed, before I left the site it had invited me to sign up.

Soemhow the humanists had produced a quiz where the most reasonable answers to the questions resulted in the inevitable view that the person answering is in fact a humanist.

It was a bit of fun and I was amused. And also very much aware of the longstanding tradition of humanism amongst religious people.

After all, I believe in my heart that God put us on earth to spread holy wisdom which also goes by the name of holy common sense. God puts us here not with a mandate to impose God’s will upon all we encounter but put us here with a mandate to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with God all the length of our days. God put us here not to impose a monolithic view of God on one another but with the divine gifts of discovery, discretion and delight in what is good that lead us not into enslavement, conformity or repression but into ultimate freedom.

You can call that humanism if you like. I’ll not be upset if you call me that. But it won’t stop me being convinced that it is what God has been up to from the beginning.

But this I do know – that the days are surely coming when all this will matter very greatly.

The days are surely coming, says the Lord.

There will be signs in the sun and the moon and the stars and on the earth distress amongst the nations.

The days are surely coming, says the Lord

People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming to the world.

The days are surely coming and will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth.

It seems to me that this Advent as we read of the portents in the heavens that there will be rather a lot of preachers who go on and on about how relevant it all seems this year.

For there is real fear about. There is war and talk of war. The clouds do seem to be gathering. The end times sometimes seem to be being played out on our television screens.

And people want real answers as to what to do next. And there are really difficult questions that are worth wrestling with.

Why are you good?

How do you do good?

What does goodness look like in this complex and perplexing situation?

The days are surely coming for wrestling with these questions.

Because of Isis? Because of Syria? Because of talk of war?

Well, yes and no – the situation we are in does demand some religious thinking – a much greater understanding of the religious understanding of those who would do us harm is essential to dealing with that which threatens us now.

But the truth is, advent comes around each year and each year it seems appropriate.

It is always the time to work out ultimate questions and to remind ourselves that Christians have answers as to how to deal with them.

Stand up says the gospel – don’t be cowed down. Stand up straight and raise your heads – for your redemption is near.

And that isn’t a threat, it is the promise of something good.

We see street preachers sometimes bearing placards saying “that God’s judgement is nigh”. The truth of the gospel is that is not that threatening things are nigh but that God is near. Peace and love and justice and joy are near at hand. That’s the promise we believe. So we hold our heads up and live the reality of knowing God is near.

Jesus says in our gospel that his generation would not pass away until all things have taken place. That’s at the heart of my existential version of how to live as a Christian. It isn’t that the apocalypse is around the corner it is that in every generation the things that religion talks about are all true. Yes – for some this day the apocalypse is real. No doubt for those fleeing from Syria it feels as though the end times are upon them. Yes – for some this day redemption is nigh – for people live through the rollercoaster of betrayal, death and resurrection that we call holy week in their lives all the time – sometimes in a single day.

And yes – reality is always true –that God is near. That love is near. That God can be known. That life is good and wonderful and precious.

God is near to you and near to me.

The day of the Lord is nigh.