Collect
Almighty God, who wonderfully created us in your own image and yet more wonderfully restored us through your Son Jesus Christ: grant that, as he came to share in our humanity, so we may share the life of his divinity; who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
or
God in Trinity, eternal unity of perfect love: gather the nations to be one family, and draw us into your holy life through the birth of Emmanuel, our Lord Jesus Christ.
Readings
Epistle – Colossians 3:12–17
As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
Gospel – Luke 2:41–52
Now every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival. When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. Assuming that he was in the group of travellers, they went a day’s journey. Then they started to look for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him. After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, ‘Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.’ He said to them, ‘Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?’ But they did not understand what he said to them. Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart.
And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favour.
Sermon on First Sunday of Christmass
I have been reading a wonderful book, The Conditions of Unconditional Love, by Alexander McCall Smith. I would recommend it – if only for the title. However I commend it to you because the content is exactly like life itself, full of minor incident and major headaches, but nothing which is “nightmare-ish” in the sense that everyone uses that term.
It helps us put into context our fugue moments, when we look into the middle distance and think of things only tangentially related to the moment. I suppose life is like that Salvador Dalí painting, “The famous ‘melting watches’ that appear in his ‘The Persistence of Memory’ suggest Einstein’s theory that time is relative and not fixed. Dalí later claimed that the idea for clocks functioning symbolically in this way came to him when he was contemplating Camembert cheese.” [reference Wikipedia] Life does shift from one image or thought to another in our everyday lives, just like in Dalí’s paintings and in this book of Alexander McCall Smith.
The Conditions of Unconditional Love were brought to mind by the words in the Epistle this morning.
As God’s chosen ones, [my] holy and beloved [friends], clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.
I reckon this passage tells me about those “conditions” from which Unconditional Love reveals itself – at some times as an eruptive and disruptive epiphany, at other times as a final, gentle realisation. We are holy and beloved when we clothe ourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness and patience – a far remove from our ordinary behaviour, don’t you think? These qualities in our lives may exhibit themselves rarely and singly, because we are not the saints whom we usually describe in these terms, like Wenceslaus of the Christmass hymn, or the Saint Nicolas whom the Dutch venerate, and we all know as Santa Claus. After all, we don’t ordinarily act like St Nicolas, distributing gold coins anonymously, hiding them in the shoes of the poor, do we?
But to get back to those conditions – compassion, kindness, humility, meekness and patience – when we full-fill those conditions we can surely show unconditional love. When we perfect one or another of those conditions, I think we can understand all the steps in the progression to unconditional love. Just practising one of those conditions readies us for the very real struggle to be loving, for they are at the heart of love. I think we do understand this in spite of our everyday uncaring.
Let’s just imagine ourselves to be kind to everyone we meet. – I suppose we must ask, whether it is even possible Kindness is no easy task, is it? Especially if you have been offended in some way by the person whom you meet in your act of kindness. I know I have a great difficulty when such a circumstance arises for me. – We can go quiet, we can walk away, we can bluster, we can do just about anything but be kind to that person wholeheartedly. – But that is what we are expected to do, and who expects that? Who demands that we be kind, that we begin to love unconditionally?
Yes, you are all right! Jesus Christ has given us that one command that we love one another just as we love ourselves. That love is not a mere affectation. some sort of superficial affection – it is the open heart and hands of perfect friendship which love exhibits. Compassion, kindness, humility, meekness and patience – all of these humane qualities are part of that Unconditional Love which we expect of others just as they expect it of me. This is a very personal thing. We each full-fill those conditions in a unique way. I might be kind but not patient. You might be compassionate. Someone else develops love from their humility. And those who are meek – well, they are the salt of the earth, aren’t they?
Every person can show love on the basis of fulfilling one of those conditions. The love they reveal to the world will be unconditional because each of these qualities (compassion, kindness, humility, meekness and patience) corrects any distortion our limited selves might generate. They change our perspective on the people we meet and on ourselves. They make us realise that the individual is not the centre of everything. – – Who has heard of “the Copernican Revolution”? When the Sun became the centre of the universe and simplified the mathematics of planetary motion? This is what compassion, kindness, humility, meekness and patience do for us. They displace the inflated self from the central role in life and put the other into focus.
For the religious person, that other may be seen as the object of compassion or kindness. That other may make us realise that we should be humble and meek. That other may draw forth our patience so that we may act in every instance with that Unconditional Love of the gospel. The religious person places God in the heart of the universe and so all becomes constellated around the divine. All people become loved and loving when that is the case. So I beg you to practice the conditions of love so Unconditional Love may be set free.