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Fr David's Sermon 25th December 2007

Christmas 2007

Do you enjoy camping? If so you’ll enjoy the fresh air, the freedom and the simplicity. If not you’ll think of cold, muddy fields with no loo’s or showers. It could of course just be a boy/girl thing but may be not!

Apparently camping has become fashionable in the last few years. The rich have run out of expensive places to visit. One hotel seems much like another. Also there is nostalgia for long ago childhoods. I know people often begin planning next year’s holiday on Boxing Day but what has all this got to do with Christmas you are probably thinking?

The answer is that at Christmas we celebrate God going on a camping trip with us, his people. How do I know? Because St. John tells us that ‘the Word became flesh & dwelt among us’. ‘Camping?’ you will still be thinking. It is to do with translation. The true sense of St. John’s Greek is that the Word became flesh & pitched his tent among us.

St. John had plenty of time to think about the meaning of Christ’s life on earth. He used the ideas of Greek philosophy. Jesus was the Word of God made flesh, literally meat, and a shocking idea.

From Matthew & Luke we are used to the idea of the infant Jesus spending a lot of time in temporary accommodation, homeless in a cattle stall, as a refugee in Egypt.

· But St. John is getting at something else. It is in the person of Jesus Christ that God pitches his tent with us. He makes his home with us, so that we can be at home with him.

The people of Israel often found themselves on the move, in the Exodus when they escaped from slavery and in exile from their home.

Yes, they did build a fixed temple in Jerusalem but it was often destroyed. Stronger still was there sense of God with them, in the Ark of the Covenant, when they were on the move.

Christians too are a people on the move through life, a pilgrim people. The good news of Christmas is that God in Christ is with us in all the circumstances of life, good & bad, even when he seems absent. God in Christ has pitched his tent among us.

Happy camping, Happy Christmas!

Amen

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