The Parish Church of St John-at-Hampstead

From our reading, you could be forgiven for thinking Zephaniah was an optimistic, cheery prophet who, while he may recognize threats and anxieties, is confident that God will dispel them among much rejoicing. That is indeed the import of what we heard, but it follows on three chapters of depressing premonitions of suffering and terror in store for Israel and its neighbours. And what Zephaniah is talking about to the daughter of Zion, is not in the present tense; the rejoicing is something that will come about; it will be salvation emerging from misery and destruction. This sense of hope in the midst of despair is characteristic of not just Advent but so much of Christianity itself; we are surrounded by the dark, by shame and despair, apparently trapped in a material world governed by death and decay but yet sustained by hope, aware of a light that goes on shining, sometimes at the end of a tunnel but also ready to burst out above the shepherds in fields outside Bethlehem, and again in the Garden on that first day of the week as it dazzles the first witnesses of the Resurrection.
The story of John the Baptist shares this ambivalence and gives us a sense of the darkness that we are in, and the light which we can hope for. You might wonder what was his Good News? The prospect of being chopped down like tree or being swept away and burnt like chaff? Why were so many attracted to this strange and rebarbative man? Artists, playwrights and composers have given a decidedly erotic twist to his simultaneous appeal and repulsion. I don’t think this is entirely their invention. John’s call to repentance and release, fuelled by threats and punishment have quite a bit in common with the strange but enticing mixture of pleasure, power, beauty, shame and fear which along with much else make up human sexuality. Was it a similar impulsion that made the soldier or the tax farmer go out into the desert to be named, shamed and persuaded to give up their perks and profits? Nevertheless they were ashamed and through that shame sought release from this uncompromisingly wild man. They could see the darkness of their condition, and through shame could also see a way out of it.
Shame too is behind Zephaniah’s call to rejoice; its cause is that Israel’s shame has been- or will be removed. It is not so much the destruction, death, enslavement and misery of defeat that hurts, but the reproach that these bring. Israel can rejoice when its renown is restored, when if not itself victorious, its God has brought down its enemies. A large element of salvation is the restoration of reputation and the respect that mankind can enjoy when relations with its God are restored to the order intended for them in Creation.
There is shame too in the Gospel story, although I think we sometimes find it hard to see. The story of the Nativity in the stable is shocking but  we are conditioned to miss the shame in it. We have rather an ambiguous attitude to poverty; to be sure it is shaming for the poor, and there are philosophers and economists who see poverty as individual failure, but on the whole our society sees poverty as society’s fault, not the individual’s. We do not think the poor less worthy of respect, or less fully human than the rich. Pity is more likely to be our reaction and indeed, pity is a rather more useful emotion, which may provoke us to do something to help the poor, bring them out of their shame and restore their dignity- in short, and in a small way, bring them salvation.
That is how I think things are now; it was otherwise in First Century AD Judea; the cosiness of so many paintings and Christmas cards has taken all the shock from the story of a birth in a stable; we feel the warm breathe of the ass and hear the gentle lullaby of the ox’s lowing, we don’t smell the dung and urine. We are attracted by the rustic simplicity of the scene; we prefer to ignore Joseph’s ignominy as he is turned away from the inn with suggestion that his wife can bed down with the animals. Perhaps we are misled, at this Eucharist, by the irony the manger and don’t fully appreciate how unsuitable it as a cot. Such scenes may have been familiar to contemporaries but I think their reaction- and the reaction that Luke intends- would be of shock and reproach. Any family that got itself into this disgraceful situation would not deserve pity- still less absurd worship, but then the shepherds were a pretty reprobate lot too.
In this, as in other respects, the nativity shares characteristics with the Crucifixion.  Both, in our artistic tradition, are dominated by the idealized nude male both baby and young man beautiful in their human and divine perfection. The swaddling clothes are frequently forgotten- despite the cold winter weather. But in contrast to this idealism, and heady spirituality, the manger in which the baby lies and the cross to which the young man is nailed are both made of wood; the Greek word for wood, hyle, is also used for material generally-and means matter as opposed to spirit. On the two principal occasions of his glorification, when we recognize him as God, Jesus is also very human- lying in and attached to the material world; very mortal too as he is just born and about to die. It is the glorification that we tend to see; the divinity shining through the humanity; we tend to miss the disgrace. Although, as Paul tells us, the crucifixion was a scandal. A crucified man was to be spat at and reviled; these attitudes are still prevalent today as a cursory glance at newspapers headlines will confirm. A crucified man was unclean, untouchable just as Mary having just give birth, was, according to the Law, in no condition to be receiving visitors. But I think, I hope, enlightened opinion now does not see punishment as revenge or destitution as somehow deserved; we don’t revile the condemned or the outcast but rather seek though pity to restore them to a proper place in society (indeed, we tend to think it is society’s failures that are the root of the problem).
A good part of the Gospel is a challenge to conventional thinking and I believe the shock and shame of the Nativity and Crucifixion give us paradoxically the hope in darkness that Zephaniah discerns and finds a cause for rejoicing. It is a question of recognizing our condition, and the extent to which our God is prepared to share it with us. The incarnate God demonstrates his humanity in this shameful condition; but out of shame comes hope; the Soldier and Tax Collector see how they are and can then move forward, forgiven and renewed. Jesus, having touched the bottom of the human pit can emerge divine- to a ministry of healing and re-creation and to the new and permanent life of Resurrection. And we, recognizing that shame, sympathizing with it and pitying it can share in that divine work of healing, helping and restoring as we see helpless or starving children or men and women ground down by poverty and cruelty. We can see our God in them and play our part in restoring their true nature-made in the image of God. Because we know we all have that potential, we can rejoice with the Children of Zion, and it will not be hollow sound that we make, if we can be aware of the cold silent desolation to which humanity can fall. We need to recognize the depth of the darkness so to discern the spark of light that will begin to ignite the world again this Christmas. Amen