To-day we celebrate the naming and circumcision of Jesus, but it is also of course the first day of a New Year, so I shall begin by wishing you all a very happy, peaceful and joyful New Year. To-day’s readings launch the fragile vessel of our best hopes for ourselves, for our families and for our communities, into the New Year on a great wave of peace and joy. First we were reassured by the tenderness of the Aaronic blessing, which rests on us as it did on the Israelites in the wilderness. Then we heard Saint Paul describing the joy of our salvation in terms of the difference between being a slave and being a son and heir. Finally we rejoiced with the shepherds around the manger, and with Mary and Joseph as they took Jesus to the temple to be named and circumcised. The meaning of his name the Lord saves is in itself a powerful reminder of the ultimate source of the peace and joy which radiate from the babe in the manger. Three profoundly joyful readings.
Let us pause for a moment to savour the joy of Christ’s nativity. Those of us who have had children or grandchildren of our own will remember just how dependent a tiny child is on its parents to understand its needs are, and to act on them. In our imagination we reach out in love to the baby Jesus in his mother’s arms, and we echo in our hearts the words of the Aaronic blessing which may well have been spoken over Him as he was brought to the temple to be named and circumcised. In any case we can be sure that Mary and Joseph will have prayed, as we are moved to pray for our own children, that God’s blessing would rest on the child and keep him safe, that God’s light would shine upon him, that the Lord would look kindly on him and give him peace.
If there was joy in Jesus’ birth and naming, St Paul sees reason for even greater rejoicing in our own adoption as God’s children. As slaves to sin, we had no claim on God’s love at all, but he loved us so much that he not only sent his Son to buy us out of slavery, but to raise us by adoption to the privileged status of sons and heirs. When we pray to God as Father, as Jesus taught us to do, we know in our hearts that we can rely on His love as absolutely as any child should be able to rely on their parents’ love.
So much joy, so much peace, so much love. These are the gifts that the Christ child brings to us every year. We see the crib, we hear the Christmas story, and our hearts are stirred. We go with the shepherds to the stable, and when we get there, we want to make our own joyful and loving response. But what response can we make? In a recent book about Christian Imagination in Poetry and Polity, Rowan Williams uses this quotation from William Temple. Defining the Church as ‘the fellowship of Christ’s disciples, welded together by the operation of his Spirit within them into the organised society which is His Body’, Temple asserts that the distinctive activity of the Church is ‘worship, the imparting and receiving of the Word and Sacraments, and the self-dedication of its members to His service in the world.’
What more do we need as the basis for our new year’s resolutions? We come together in this place, to recall and to celebrate God’s love, to remind ourselves that together we are His Body, to comfort and strengthen one another, to draw on the rich resources of His grace in Word and Sacraments. And we should resolve to do that, Sunday by Sunday, to the very best of our ability, whatever our role may be in sustaining the worship and fellowship of the Church. For each one of us it is our duty, yes, but it is also our privilege and our joy, to contribute to the worship of this place not just in its conduct as servers and readers and intercessors, but equally in our congregational participation, in the leadership of our children’s groups, in the care which goes into sustaining the social fabric of our Church community as well as our church building, in the cleaning of the brass and the making of the coffee, in the welcome at the door and the ringing of the bell. And then there is the giving of our money to support the staff who do so much to make this place run smoothly, as well as paying for heat and light and good music, and for the support of the charities that help to meet the needs of others. Each of us has our own part to play, and our own contribution to make.
We recognise at once that worship is the distinctive activity of the Church, but Temple goes on to refer in the same breath to the self-dedication of the Church’s members to serving God in the world. We go out from here to be the Church in the world, doing in God’s name and for His sake whatever it is He has called us to do as bankers and businessmen, teachers and students, doctors and nurses, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, friends and lovers, in every corner of our lives, as workers, as family members, as citizens. And that too we are called to do as well as we know how, for nothing but the best will do as we serve God in the world. It is a demanding calling, but it is how the life of the Church, which we share in this place and within this community, reaches out to pervade the structures of our society, to be His body in the world.
Worship and service are not alternative activities, but integral to one another. If we fail to offer to God in and through our worship what we do in our daily life with the gifts He has given to us our bread and our wine – then our worship will lose touch with reality, just as our life in the world will lose direction and power if it is not constantly refreshed in worship. As individuals our new year resolutions will differ widely as we reach out into all the different relationships and families and communities to which we belong, but if all our resolutions reflect our commitment to all that is best in worship and in service, then together we shall have resolved to do those things which make us collectively Christ’s body in the world. And we shall be the Church.
Handley Stevens