Earlier in the year we had a parish fire drill. It was quite a jolly affair, with a nice little briefing beforehand, lots of laughter, and when it was over we were all allowed to have morning tea.
Yesterday, at the Park Hotel in Melbourne, there was an actual fire. The people in the hotel didn’t make their way calmly to the muster point and await further instructions. Instead, they were contained on the ground floor while smoke from the fire above billowed around them. The doors weren’t broken. The people in the Park hotel are people seeking asylum, and have been imprisoned one way or another for eight long years. Covid has ravaged their hotel prison, with shared rooms, shared facilities, and nowhere to hide. Clearly, even an actual fire isn’t serious enough to merit the most basic safety measures. It’s inhumane.
This pandemic has been terrible, mostly for others if we’re honest. Here in the People’s Republic of Western Australia, the ravages of the virus have been minimised, and the hardships we have experienced have been mitigated by mining revenues. But for those with eyes to see, the pandemic has exposed the massive inequities, the crass individualism and the sickening corruption that characterises most of the world.
When little Lord Jesus laid down his sweet head, and the stars in the bright sky shone down where he lay, it was on a world just a messed up as ours. God didn’t intrude on humanity at that first Christmas because it seemed like a nice holiday destination – but because humanity was so clearly in need of liberation.
As we sing the praises of that precious baby tonight, let us not forget that his coming to earth was not merely to give us an opportunity to eat pudding – as important as that is – but to completely invert the ways of the world, and inaugurate a new Way.
‘The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light’ we heard from Isaiah tonight. Christians have appropriated the text to talk about Jesus, but the darkness Isaiah was talking about was clearly the reign of Ahaz. Under Ahaz, the people walked in darkness, because Ahaz was a complete pillock. But now under Hezekiah, they are seeing a great light. They are rejoicing like they do when they get a big harvest or after winning a mighty battle. They were under a yoke, like field animals, but that has now been broken, just like it did when Gideon beat the Midianites. Sennacherib’s army will soon come and besiege Jerusalem, but Hezekiah will beat them off because he has a spring and a tunnel and just enough madness to succeed.
The titles that Isaiah bestows on Hezekiah may seem a bit over the top - Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace’ - until we appreciate that kingly titles for the Judeans were not meant to describe the king himself, but the God the king served. The name Hezekiah itself means ‘God strengthens’. This ‘Enthronement Anthem’ is partly to praise Hezekiah, but primarily to praise God.
The darkness in which the people walked was not a philosophical darkness or a conceptual darkness, it was not the epistemological darkness of ignorance nor the soteriological darkness of sin. It was a political darkness. They had a dodgy king. He made stupid alliances and worshipped idols. The orphans and widows were neglected. Everyone suffered because the king was a moron.
So when we seize hold of this stunning Hebrew text and apply it to Jesus – as Christians have done almost from the beginning – we must remember that wee little baby Jesus was born during the time of a moronic king, a despotic emperor, and when his own people were enslaved and oppressed. The light that came into the world at Bethlehem was not a symbolic light, it was not merely decorative, its purpose was not to warm the cockles of our hearts like a well-decorated suburban project home – it was a political light. It shone on the kings and emperors, the governors and generals, the landowners and mighty merchants – and it exposed the misuse of power and exploitation of people that enabled the few to prosper while the many suffer.
So this Christmas, please, invite in the light. Let the light shine in the darkness. Let truth be revealed and injustice be exposed. Because all is not calm. All is not bright. But this is the most wonderful time of the year, because we have once again gathered, here in our masks under cover of darkness, to rekindle the secret flame. The Christ Child is with us and he is unstoppable. The sweet baby Jesus is let loose in the world, and we are part of his kingdom. And he will establish and uphold the kingdom with justice and with righteousness from this time onwards and for evermore.
The Lord Be With You