A Sermon preached at St Martin-in-the-Fields on December 6, 2023 by Revd Sally Hitchiner
Our title tonight is Joy to the World, which leads us to a very important question. When is too early to say Happy Christmas? For the purists say you shouldn’t say it till midnight on Christmas Eve and not a minute before. For others, any time in December is game. For the enthusiasts December starts after Bonfire Night.
Perhaps to work out when we can legitimately say it, we should establish WHAT we mean by the phrase. I have three suggestions.
The first is probably what you’ll mean when you say it to your colleagues “Happy Christmas!” By this, I think we mean I hope it’s fun and festive without too much family drama. I hope you enjoy it. In Hebrew it’s the word Chadah – pleasure.
This isn’t bad, but it’s open to what the philosopher Seneca called “thin” happiness, coating an otherwise broken life. I’m terrible at making Christmas cake. But it’s amazing what you can cover up just with a thin layer of icing. The first kind of happy Christmas is fine but not fully satisfying: enjoyment, fun – Chadah.
But there’s another Hebrew word – Shalom. Shalom implies contentment, inner peace, but it doesn’t stop there. Nightclubs sell Ecstasy tablets but not Shalom tablets. It wouldn’t make sense in Hebrew. Shalom isn’t just in your head. Shalom has to be good for everyone. It’s about the world being put to rights.
Have you ever noticed, the things that give us the most intense joy are usually the things that we were not expecting. As any child longing for one toy but getting another knows: joy is only discovered by those who aren’t expecting something better.
Mary has her moments of joyful clarity at a time when she is fleeing honour killing.
The shepherds, migrant workers, were trying to keep their heads down. Like a call for them to go to the headmaster’s office, an authority figure in the sky, was most likely Bad News for them. Hearing the Angel say it was Good News, that God had come to save them, would have been such intense relief and joy they could barely contain it.
For us too, Christmas Joy can be found with those for whom happiness is not expected. Christmas encourages us to be a friend to someone living on the streets, to call the person in our lives we know who is going through a hard time and spend time listening to them. In those conversations, along with the blunt reality and pain, we may find the funniest jokes, intense gladness when something good finally comes, the deep peace of having nothing to prove. Shalom.
But then there’s a third sort of Happiness.
Surprisingly this takes us back to Chadah – pleasure – fun. The same word that we said was terribly superficial a few minutes ago. This is the Hebrew word for the joy of the Wise Men, the Shepherds and Mary. It’s also the word the Angels tell us God has for us. The Christmas story says you make God happy.
Have you ever imagined how they celebrate Christmas in heaven? Surely, they wouldn’t miss an opportunity for a party. Do you think they have presents? Music? Turkey? Perhaps not turkey.
So here’s a thought. What if the phrase “Happy Christmas” is not primarily a statement about you or me. If God is happy about Christmas, surely, it’s first and foremost a statement about God. God is also the happiest person in the universe at Christmas. Christmas makes God happy, more happy than anything. Because at Christmas God fulfilled his dream to finally join our species and know us not just as authority figure but as Compadre – our brother from another mother… or father in this case.
This happiness changes everything. It’s not thin icing on an otherwise broken Christmas cake. This is more like the icing on a lemon drizzle cake, it seeps down into the otherwise bland sponge making it all taste of lemon and sugar like pancakes on Pancake Day.
And you can catch happiness like this. Anyone who has been welcomed by a dog or a small child who loves them after a long absence (like 40 minutes) knows that. God’s happiness can make a tangible difference to life.
God’s happiness means his Spirit will never leave us and we are never really alone.
God’s happiness created church, a community who try to live this out in every country, every city in the world.
And God’s happiness means that somehow all the evil and death in the world cannot have the final word.
So say Happy Christmas as early as you like. If people tell you off say a vicar told you it’s fine.
Because it’s about wishes of fun and enjoyment and who could be against that. It’s about solidarity and a finding love in a hopeless place. But ultimately Christmas is happy because God is happy.
And God is happy because Christmas meant that God gets to be with you.
