The Ledger

A sermon preached at St Martin-in-the-Fields on December 24, 2023 by Revd Dr Sam Wells

Reading for address: Luke 2: 1-20

I know a person who was once kidnapped and put in the boot of a car. This was before the days of mobile phones, and she had no idea where she was or how to communicate with the outside world. She couldn’t comprehend why this had been done to her or when her ordeal would end. She was quickly missed, and dogs were sent to sniff out her whereabouts. The police found her after a few hours, and were able to open the boot and set her free. The distress of the incident has never completely left her, but when she told me the story, she lit up when she recalled the moment of seeing another human face again. ‘I felt seen,’ she said, ‘when I’d felt profoundly invisible for what seemed so long.’

Her experience is an extreme version of what many people feel when they are a part of a social group that doesn’t seem to count in society. Many who are part of a visible racial minority testify to the sense of being invisible to the majority population, as if they are present but aren’t seen. A similar pattern is often the testimony of those with a disability, who speak of being treated as if they were not present, or not capable of speaking for themselves.

It’s common for those in minority groups and their advocates to describe their life as a struggle for justice. But I wonder if what many people who describe their quest in this way are actually looking for is recognition. They might say, ‘It feels the world cannot see me, cannot see my plight, cannot turn its gaze to what I’m going through.’ And the sense of invisibility in the present moment connects to an even more profound sense, shared with everyone – the despair that says, ‘In the light of eternity, I’m just a tiny speck on a faraway planet, and my life doesn’t matter and will come to nothing and eventually be obliterated forever.’ At the root of our desperate search for recognition is our intuition that recognition is the only form of fundamentally mattering, not just now, but forever.

Kemal Pervanic was born into a Muslim family in Bosnia in 1968. In 1992, when he was 24, after the fall of the Soviet Union, social groups started to divide according along lines of ethnicity and political movements emerged to exploit such previously insignificant differences. The newly formed Bosnian Serb Army was targeting Muslims, and Kemal’s village was attacked. He was taken to the Omarska concentration camp in the north of Bosnia. There his experience was like that of the person I knew who was locked in the boot of a car. His plight was invisible to the world. Conditions were terrible; food was scarce, overcrowding was intense, there were only two toilets for 1000 people. He had no notion the rest of the world knew or cared where he was or what was being done to him.

Late in 1992, three British journalists discovered the camp and alerted the international community. Before long, the International Committee of the Red Cross arrived. Eventually Kemal was transferred with 1250 other people to another camp. Finally he was able to leave the country. When Kemal spoke with one of the journalists after his release, he said, ‘I now think of my time as a prisoner as divided into two: one half was before the officials of the Red Cross were given access to the camps; the other half was after. Before,’ he said, ‘we felt as though we didn’t exist. We’d been wiped from the face of the earth. We were no longer human beings. The world didn’t know we existed. And because our story was not known to anyone but ourselves, there was a sense in which we actually didn’t exist. But afterwards, once we’d been acknowledged by these representatives of a world beyond the perimeter fence of our prison, we had hope. Someone had come and written our names – our names! We had names! – in a ledger. We had hope. It gave us back our humanity, this connection with the world, however tenuous.’

Kemal had been given recognition. He was not locked in the boot of a car. He was not a tiny speck on a faraway planet in a universe that ultimately had no meaning. He had been seen. He had been seen by representatives of the Red Cross, an organisation that stood for the profoundest kind of recognition by the widest sort of international agency available, and by journalists who could communicate his suffering and his story to the widest public possible. He existed.

I want you now to think about what’s happening in the Christmas story. Just for a moment take away the tinsel, the antler ears, the Santa hat and the mulled wine, and focus on the raw details of the first Christmas. Bethlehem is in occupied territory. The Romans are in charge. Couples like Mary and Joseph are shifted around by a census, a ledger that doesn’t care who they are but is only interested in how they can be useful to the Roman Empire. They’re in such a bad way Mary has to give birth in a stable and lay her baby in an animal feeding trough.

Now think about how the story of Kemal and the International Red Cross maps onto the story of humankind and Jesus. Remember how Kemal said, ‘Before they came, we felt as though we did not exist.’ And then recall how Kemal went on to say, ‘Afterwards, once we’d been acknowledged by these representatives of a world beyond the perimeter fence of our prison, we had hope. Someone had come and written our names in a ledger. We had hope.’ Think about those words: ‘Once we’d been acknowledged by these representatives of a world beyond the perimeter fence of our prison.’ See how that’s exactly what’s happening in the story of Mary and Joseph. Humankind is acknowledged by the representative of a world beyond the perimeter fence of its prison. That’s what happens at Christmas. We are the ones in the car boot, and someone is coming to realise we are here. We are the ones in the Omarska concentration camp, and Jesus is the representative of the Red Cross, who comes from beyond the perimeter of our prison to write our name in the heavenly ledger, that we may no longer fear we are forgotten or abandoned or alone. Christmas is when we’re written into the heavenly ledger forever.

Christmas means exactly this: heavenly recognition. However much despair we may be in, however pointless we may sometimes feel our existence is, however isolated or oppressed, or confined or alone we may feel, we have been recognised. We have been seen. We’re not shut in a confined space without any prospect of anyone finding us. We’re not in a concentration camp with no contact with the universe or eternity. Jesus has come from eternity to find us now. Jesus has come from beyond the prison walls, found us, met us, seen us and recognised us. Someone has come and written our names in a heavenly ledger. Therefore we have hope. We have been given our humanity. We exist. We matter.

This is the good news of Christmas, as powerful to us tonight as the discovery of the kidnapped woman in the boot, as transformative as the coming of the Red Cross was to Kemal Pervanic in that concentration camp in Bosnia. We have been seen. God has recognised us, in all our diversity, in all our particularity, in all our eccentricity, in all our humiliation, in all our imprisonment, in all our fear, in all our bewilderment.

You can’t get a more biblical word than ‘behold.’ Well, think of that word as the word that sums up Christmas. Behold the face discovering you as you’re trapped. Behold the one discovering you in your prison. Behold: you have been beheld by God, whether you’re a lowly shepherd or an exalted king. Behold: you are now beholden to the one who has beheld you. Behold: you are beholden in belonging to God. Behold: you have found out who God is and who you are. God is the one who beholds you forever. You are the one who is beheld; and you are beholden in belonging to the one who beholds you.

Behold, I bring you tidings of great joy: beyond beholding, beyond belonging, you are beholden in belonging to God.