Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols 6.30pm 20th December 2015

        Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols 6.30pm  20^th December  2015

I can smell the mince pies from here! For some of you this evening, the question will be ‘How many’ mince pies can I fit in?’ But the question before each one of us tonight, whether we like it or not - after all, we’ve made a decision to come to this service and to join in the celebrations - is ‘Is it true’?   Is it true that there is a Creator of our world, the Creator of our existence, the one who built into you and me the very ability even to ask that question, who actually became one of us 2000 years ago in Bethlehem? That is what Christmas, God taking human form, asks us to believe.  Now it may be, for some, that your ‘world view’ - your view of how the world is and how it came into being - would not normally allow you even to ask that question, because you’ve heard somewhere or other that the world’s existence and its origin can be explained by chance rather than a Creator. But tonight our carols and our readings invite us, indeed they challenge us for this short hour of celebration, to consider the truth of the Christmas story – that God became man.

We have already read what scholars call ‘the infancy narratives’, the accounts of Jesus’ birth: and I have just read from the prologue of John’s Gospel which reveals to us the meaning and significance of those accounts. But are they true? Is that what happened? Is there a God outside of a world he created who chose to come, miraculously, inside it, in person, in order to reveal himself, and with a very specific purpose - to save us? Was Jesus supernaturally conceived, or is the whole shebang at best a naive myth, at worst a despicable hoax invented by the writers of the four Gospels?  Well, those gospels certainly don’t read that way. They read as four different records written by ordinary people for ordinary people in order to communicate an extra-ordinary set of events. Read Luke’s Gospel and we are compelled at least to admit that Luke was writing out of a conviction of certainty – certainty that he was recording events that actually happened. And we must note that whenever Luke’s historical accuracy has been called into question, the archaeological evidence has always found in his favour.

Of course, it’s very easy to avoid having to make a decision about all this, even if the evidence and this Creator are challenging us to do so. It’s very easy, not to mention convenient, to carry on either in the bliss of ignorance that it does not matter – ‘I’m very happy as I am, thank you, without having to stop and think about all this’ – or in a dogmatic refusal even to look at the evidence objectively and honestly - ‘I mean to say, in the light of all our knowledge and understanding  of the science of it all, it is just too ridiculous for words even to consider such an intrusion from outside - and by a virginal conception? Impossible! Why should we believe what we can’t explain just because the Church tells us to?’   Well, I agree the incarnation of God challenges the naturalistic view of the universe (a view proposed, most famously perhaps, by Stephen Hawking and Richard Dawkins), the view that there is no God and that eventually we will be able to explain everything about the universe, including its origin, purpose, and destiny, from the inside. Oh, yes, this intrusion by God that first Christmas raises huge doubts about so many of the scientific theories that dogmatically exclude him from consideration.

But this belief in naturalism is just as much a position of faith as my belief in God and in his coming to us that first Christmas: if Jesus was whom he claimed to be, it makes best sense of the evidence, it explains it. I don’t understand how God could be born as a human being, but on the basis of the evidence, together with trust in who it is we are actually dealing with here, it is perfectly reasonable and rational to believe that he could. And in his coming I also find the answers to life’s most profound questions, the one’s science by its very nature cannot answer. 

In some key areas Science only actually has best guesses: it’s surprising how much Science cannot explain. Scientists admit that they don’t actually know what conscience is, what energy is, what gravity is, even what light is. But they believe in these things because they have explanatory power; that is to say, they explain, for instance, why we can see and why things fall. 

And so it is with God. God has given us sufficient evidence on which to believe in him, to trust him. If God designed the universe, why could he not enter it? Why can he not break the laws of nature? After all, those laws are only humanity’s understanding of how a rational universe works.

One Nobel Prize winning scientist – not a Christian – said this; ‘It seems very clear now that some one has written his mind into every cell in the universe’. 

The Christian faith, the Incarnation, the virginal conception, the miracle of Jesus and the miracles of Jesus and his resurrection make the best sense of the evidence, of the facts, if Jesus was whom he claimed to be.  Christianity is an evidence-based belief; it is not a leap into the dark but a step into the light, the light not just of understanding the truth about the world and about ourselves, but also that the Creator of our world loves us so much that he entered our world with a specific purpose: that purpose was to save us, to save us, he himself said, from the sins that separate us from him. This he chose to do through a person’s faith in Jesus. Through faith in him and through him alone God our creator calls us to enjoy a relationship with him that can begin now and last forever. This is the Christmas story; this is the wonder of it; this is the truth of it that our carols and our readings speak of and challenge each one of us either to accept or to reject.

 For those who are seeking him, and humble enough to admit their need of him, I pray that the words of the carol might become true for you: ‘O Holy child of Bethlehem descend to us we pray, cast out our sin and enter in, be born in us today.’

And for those who are still not sure but would like to learn a more, do ask me afterwards; take a booklet from the font as you leave, or give me a call. May God bless you all this Christmas; but above all I pray that you will come to know him or to know him more deeply, his truth and his love for you, his saving grace in your life.