Christ rebuilds our ruined lives
It is when all our world comes crashing down around us,that we find Christ reaching out to offer hope and joy – that was the message of the Rt Rev Wyn Evans in his first Christmas sermon as Bishop of St Davids.
The Bishop delivered his sermon at St Davids Cathedral, where he was enthroned at the beginning of December.
He said, “It is in the person of a defenceless child that God comes to us at Christmas. Not in the person of the successful, the economically successful, the financially successful, the politically successful, the rich the powerful, the movers and shakers, the drivers, those who have fantasies and dreams of success and who bend the world to their desires. Not in any of those, those who want to control the world and shape it in their own image, for their own comfort and security and success.
“But in the person of a baby. Defenceless. Completely dependent on others. Not powerful in any way. It was with those who had lost out. Those whose world had crashed. Those who had run out of road in their lives and lost their way and everything else. Those who had found that they had lost sight of the landmarks of their lives. And those who had never been allowed to enter the world of power and privilege in the first place; had been very firmly kept out and stigmatised. It was with those whose lives were ruined or who lived among the ruins that God in Jesus of Nazareth identified. From the very beginning.”
And it is up to each of us, said the Bishop, to do the same.
“The test of the good news of Christmas is that it can heal ruined lives; that it can set before us those whose hopes are ruined and whose dreams are dashed. That happens through us. The joy of Christmas and the hope of life, of rebuilding and recovering ruined lives cannot be kept to ourselves but has to be proclaimed and lived. We bear, we carry out into the world the light that shines out of the stable, the light of life, the new life of the kingdom which came to us and abides with us this Christmastide and always.”
The full text of the Bishop’s Christmas sermon follows. For more information, please contact Anna Morrell, Archbishop’s Media Officer, tel: 07 9191 587 94 email: annamorrell@churchinwales.org.uk
Sermon - Christmas Day 2008
St David's Cathedral
The Bishop of St David's, Rt Revd Wyn Evans
Isaiah 52 9, Break forth together into singing you ruins of Jerusalem
Ruins are a powerful symbol. And of so many things. Some people actually like ruins. They find them picturesque; a symbol of the romantic past inducing a feeling of gentle melancholy. Ruins for them are features in a landscape belonging to a half forgotten and a much-imagined romantic yesterday which in so many ways was so much better than the bleak present past. A past which has gone and passed with regret but still past. And into which they can escape. Ruins are to be preserved as found , certainly not restored, for they are seen from the superior viewpoint of the present; the new and the relevant, however bleak. The bare ruined choirs syndrome. Better when snow covered and cloaked in nostalgia.
But it is certain that the Israelites did not look on the temple at Jerusalem, which was in ruins when the words of Isaiah’s prophecy were proclaimed, it is certain that they in exile in a foreign country far from Jerusalem and from their country in long and bitter exile, their hopes dashed, their freedom lost, their lives in ruins, it is certain that they did not think that the ruins of the temple had anything romantic about them. Symbol of better times yes. But romantic: no. They certainly did not contemplate them with any sense of gentle melancholy. But with bitter regret.
For ruins stand for so many things. A ruined building is sad. And more than sad. It is a symbol of abandonment. It is a lasting sign of destruction. It is a metaphor for the failure of hopes and dreams, hopes and dreams which were realised and expressed in stone and wood and bricks and mortar. It speaks of the destruction of a way of life; of the ruins of the very structures of life, the economic and the political and the religious, all of which were expressed in buildings.
Ruins are the symbol so often of failed investment. And not just financial —the cost of building and then the cost of waste represented by their abandonment— but also the emotional investment; the imaginative investment. They are as much Spanish castles of the imagination or houses of cards as they are solid brick and mortar. They are, or were before they were ruined and abandoned, expression of yearnings and hopes and a future. As ruins they stand for hopes that have been dashed; gambles that have failed and dreams that have shattered. Mutely and silently, they speak of so much more than ruined buildings.
Even to mention ruins when so many people are facing ruin of one sort or another seems at best inappropriate. To a people facing disaster, mentioning ruin of any sort, buildings, cities or otherwise is surely tactless. To refer to collapsed buildings when so many people face the real possibility of having to abandon their homes or leaving factories half built or not even being built, let alone tenanted or occupied, because the chances of doing so are receding rapidly, as the flood tide of money has ebbed so rapidly. And undermined what seemed to be firm foundations as it did so. Houses built on sand and water indeed. To mention ruins at all, whether of houses or cities or any buildings, seems somewhat insensitive in the current financial and economic climate.
To a world standing on the edge of a precipice which might just possibly leads to financial collapse, and all sorts of other collapses, personal and political, talk of ruin is what it surely does not want to hear. And of what possible earthly value can talking of ruin in the past, and the distant pre-industrial past as that past, have to face the desperate situation facing all of us in the developed world in the present as the debt spiral unwinds and the potential for collapse and recession in the present situation looms so large? Especially for those who are striving with all their energies and abilities to keep that from happening and on the international scene, the political and economic scene. Those who are trying to create and sustain confidence and trust in the structures and the people running those structures when trust and confidence has clearly been misplaced and taken advantage of —as we are now learning; and so frequently —and caused the situation in the first place?
And why speak of ruins at Christmas, of all times in the year? When what is needed is a celebration of light and life and joy. When we look forward to building a future because of what happened in Bethlehem two thousand years ago and rejoicing that there is a future, which certainly does not involve ruins of any kind. Not looking back on a year where as it has gone on, ruin has stared and is continuing to stare so many people in the face people.
Christmas surely is a time of hope of looking to the future and better times to come. A time of hope that things will change because we recall the coming of the Word of God among us as the Wondrous Child in the Manger of Bethlehem. Christmas is surely the occasion when we recall and welcome the Word made flesh which shows God’s continuing and unbroken concern for his creation and his people. The Incarnation reveals God’s continuing his yearning that that creation might be reconciled to him through his son. The birth of Emmanuel tells us that God has not given up, on us —on his world —on his people and that he is constantly concerned that his rule his reign his kingdom should once more prevail over creation as was his intention at creation.
So why speak of ruins at this time? Why seek to spread even more dejection, alarm and despondency than is normal at this end of the year? Why deepen the gloom, why darken lightness rather than lightening darkness? And in any case what Christmas message of good will or great joy can be contained within these words of Isaiah, especially when we remember that they were spoken to a people who were in one sense in a far worse case than our world might be in at present.
For their world had crashed completely, those who heard Isaiah. They had fallen over the precipice. They had lost their homes. They had lost their place in society; indeed their whole society had disintegrated. They had no country. They had been conquered and deported into a far away land. They had lost what we so much prize: freedom over their lives and choice over how they lived their lives. They had lost any control over their lives at all. No wonder they sat around in despair contemplating the ruin of their lives. No wonder they hung up their harps and could not sing the songs of Zion. Whatever their lives in Babylon, and clearly they were coping and surviving in Babylon after the ruin of their hopes and the loss of their country, it was not enough.
For it was not just the ruin of the city of Jerusalem that weighed on them It was the loss and ruin, the deliberate slighting of the temple. No wonder they could not sing the songs of Zion. For the temple had been the sign that God was with them. And the subjugation of the nation; the destruction of the city was as nothing to the ruin of the temple. That destruction had made them feel that God had abandoned them.
They felt that the confidence, the trust, the faith they had had in him from the very beginning had been misplaced. They felt that the God who had promised them the land of Promise had gone back on his promise. They had felt that he had abandoned them and left them to the ruin of their hopes and the loss of their country. No wonder they were in despair and in darkness, just lying around moping at the waters of Babylon. They needed new motivation. They needed light; they needed new life. They needed to feel that they could have trust and confidence and hope in God again. They needed to feel that things were right between God and them once again so that they could rebuild their lives and look forward to the future, to have a future once again.
And it is at this point that Isaiah intervened. Prophecy is to do with the future and with hope and not with the past and with doom and gloom. For the prophets had a vision of God and his people and the relationship between the two which did not depend on buildings and temples, ruined or otherwise. It was a much more direct relationship between God and his people. It was not to do with permanent places and with the buildings on those places. Buildings which all too often expressed the hopes and the dreams and the fantasies and the aspirations of the good life on the part of the builders. Buildings in which were invested the trust and confidence of the builders. Buildings which really stood for the economic and political and financial and religious systems and structures which the builders had constructed, their bulwarks and defences, something permanent, and put their trust in. Rather than the God for whom and in whose name they were built.
Hence when the buildings were destroyed and ruined so were the lives of the builders. Despair and darkness. No future. And they could not access the ruined past. Nor would they want to ruined as it was. Just the bleak reality of the ruined present. And it is in that present that Isaiah speaks his word of hope to them. He sets before them the city of Jerusalem. In ruins. But as a symbol of hope. As a symbol of the future. As a sign that their exile was over. For it is the ruined city that is to break forth into singing; it is the ruined city, her buildings flat, her walls down, defenceless and broken that will be singing. Singing for the future and awaiting the return of exiles exultant that God had remembered them and had not abandoned them and had not broken his promises to them. And tied in with the exultation was that sense of being chastened and repentant. Out of the ruins of the relationship, the relationship which they themselves had broken and ruined, indeed through the ruins and the realisation of what they had done and repentance for it, a future was restored to them They recovered their world, painful though the process was. The land of promise was restored.
Jerusalem, the ruined city is, then, a reminder, a stark reminder to them as it is to us. It is a reminder that it was their lack of trust in God and their confidence instead in themselves as the builders and controllers of their future that had brought disaster. That and their consequent exclusion of God from their world. That and their focus in the material things of life, power and possessions and glory. That and their focus on themselves and what they thought best for them rather than what God had in mind for them and for all his people, especially those who had been elbowed aside, dispossessed, pushed to the edges by their more rapacious neighbours. The orphan and the fatherless. The widow and the stranger within the gate. Those who had no defences, those who had been left defenceless.
And it is in the person of a defenceless child that God comes to us at Christmas. Not in the person of the successful, the economically successful, the financially successful, the politically successful, the rich the powerful, the movers and shakers, the drivers, those who have fantasies and dreams of success and who bend the world to their desires. Not in any of those, those who want to control the world and shape it in their own image, for their own comfort and security and success. Not in any of those.
But in the person of a baby. Defenceless. Completely dependent on others. Not powerful in any way. Nor were Mary and Joseph. They could not command a hassle- free journey, get to the head of the queue, or indeed not have to queue at all, stay at the best hotel, secure the most luxurious accommodation, and have the baby born at a private nursing home. They had to make do with being pushed around an overcrowded city and edged into a stable, not even ruins, for the baby to be born. Dependent on others, the rich and the powerful.
But it was with them, those who had lost out. Those whose world had crashed. Those who had run out of road in their lives and lost their way and everything else. Those who had found that they had lost sight of the landmarks of their lives. And those who had never been allowed to enter the world of power and privilege in the first place; had been very firmly kept out and stigmatised. It was with those whose lives were ruined or who lived among the ruins that God in Jesus of Nazareth identified. From the very beginning.
And as the Risen Christ he continues to do so, to be with those whose lives are ruined and to give them hope, the hope springing from the truth that God loves them and continues to do so and thereby offers them new life. Jesus identified with them, by setting before them, and living a life, a world, alternative to the world of power and wealth and control and success, whether that success be financial, economic, political or religious.
And we have to also. For the test of the good news of Christmas is that it can heal ruined lives; that it can set before those whose hopes are ruined and whose dreams are dashed. And that happens through us. The joy of Christmas and the hope of life, of rebuilding and recovering ruined lives cannot be kept to ourselves but has to be proclaimed and lived. We bear, we carry out into the world the light that shines out of the stable, the light of life, the new life of the kingdom which came to us and abides with us this Christmastide and always.