The Birth of the Lord: Christmas Eve, 2021
Isaiah 9:2-7; Psalm 96; Luke 2:1-14
there shall be endless peace
Succession might be the best programme on television. But to enjoy it, you really have to have a high tolerance for people behaving badly.
If you’re not familiar with it, it’s about a fictional family, the Roys; the father is the head of a multi-billion dollar corporation, and the drama centres around three siblings vying to take their father’s place as the new head of his empire. Think of the Murdoch family, think of the Trump family.
Succession is often called “Shakespearean” because it’s a darkly comic tragedy that borrows from MacBeth, King Lear, and Hamlet; and like Shakespeare, even when the characters are scoundrels, and charlatans, and unprincipled in their search for power, even though they are selfish and seemingly irredeemable, you grow in affection for them.
There’s one scene in the most recent season finale where the three siblings—usually positioning themselves for power over and against one another—there’s a moment when the three siblings find peace. Now the peace among them comes because they think they can finally topple their father together. But it’s still peace.
But as they make their plan they take a moment to talk about what happens after they’ve gained power and need to carve up this newly shared empire; and instead of imagining that this peace amongst them might last, they can only hope for a future of conflict. “We can fight it out, it will be fun,” says Shiv Roy. “That will be fun.” Says Kendall Roy.
Renewed conflict will be a joy for them despite all the evidence that their infighting is so destructive to themselves and the people around them. For them, peace is transitory, temporary, brief. And for them, it’s strife, conflict, and discord that follow the true grain of their warped universe.
Luke, in his gospel, wants to make sure that we know that the people that Jesus is born among are as far away as possible from the Roys of the time. “In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria,” writes Luke. It’s Emperor Augustus who has the power that can pull the strings that make you walk to Bethlehem; and it’s both Emperor Augustus and Quirinius who stand to gain the most tax revenue from the pulling of these particular strings.
But Mary and Joesph’s Bethlehem is peopled neither with Emperors nor with governors—but with the most ordinary of people. Shepherds, the hard-working people well outside the social circles of kings, of queens, of emperors, of governors, of the tycoons and the moguls, or even high-ranking bureaucrats.
But in what the angels say to the shepherds we get a glimpse of what they can do: they can hope. Because when the angels say to those shepherds, that “to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” And that “This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” The angels can say this knowing that these most ordinary of people would know what it meant. The angels could be confident that the shepherds would know that this is a signal that in the ordinariness of their Bethlehem something extraordinary was happening. The angels could be sure that the shepherds would understand that by announcing this, in this way, that those shepherds would know that this was no ordinary child, but the one spoken of by the prophets. The shepherds would hear in the words of the angels the promise already given in Isaiah, where Isaiah too writes of hope: “For a child has been born for us, a son given to us,” says Isaiah, authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”
Peace is the natural state of the universe. The world is made peacefully by a Triune God, three persons alive in difference yet without enmity; a Triune God making a world in which difference need not lead to conflict, but a world that can rest in the peace of the Triune God that made it. And our destination is peace, that peaceable Kingdom where lion lies down with lamb, and a time when all tears will be wiped away.
The Roy children of Succession may experience peace as transitory; and there are certainly powers in our world who benefit from social discord, strife, and war; and whose desire is for peace to be transitory, that peace would be overtaken again by discord and suffering and struggle, for the sake of profit.
But for a people who hope in the “child born to us … who is the Prince of Peace,” it is the discord and the suffering and the struggle that is transitory, always giving way to concord and comfort and blessing. Because peace is what follows the true grain of the universe; peace is the natural state of this created world.
The joy of this peaceable creation is on the tip of the tongue of the Psalmist. For the Psalmist, it isn’t just the ordinary people of the world who know how to hope for what the Lord brings when he comes; the heavens would rejoice, and the earth, and the sea, and the fields and the trees will be joyful when the Lord comes. The whole created world knows how to hope in the Lord.
So it seems quite right that when Mary gives birth to Jesus, that she lays him in a food trough for household animals; we can rightly imagine those household animals peering into the place where their food usually is, only to find their own hope there. And it seems quite right for it to be the shepherds, and not the shepherds alone, but shepherds and their flock scattered on the field together that are present to the angels who say “to you [shepherds, and to you sheep too, and to you, the field too, come to think of it] … [to all of you] is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord.”
For the ordinary people of the world, for the animals too, and the heavens and the earth and sea and the fields and the trees: the days of discord and suffering and struggle are nearing their end, your hope of concord and comfort and blessing and joy have come very near in “a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.”
And we can hope too for even those who know not how to hope, for the Roys, for the emperors and governors, yes even for those who know and love only struggle and enmity; for all those who know not yet that there is more to life than struggles over wealth and power, and that peace and concord and blessing are simply the natural state of the world. Because the Lord comes to save the unrepentant, too. So me. And you.
And so: there is hope. And there is joy in that hope. Hope enough for you, hope enough for us, hope enough for the natural world. Enmity and struggle and suffering are all passing away, because peace and joy are the true grain of the universe, and this is confirmed: for “This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” “[A]uthority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”
Angus Sinclair was appointed Director of Music of St. John the Evangelist on February 1, 2023. Having graduated in 1981 (Honours B.Mus.) in organ performance from Wilfrid Laurier University, he went on to distinguish himself as a church musician, recitalist and accompanist touring in both Canada and the UK. For over 40 years Angus has served parishes and congregations throughout Southwestern Ontario as director of music. He experiences his present appointment to St. John’s as a welcome homecoming, both spiritually and musically.
As our parish musician, he provides both support and leadership so that a variety of parish programs can find musical expression and attract participation. When our handbell choir is in season, he is one of our ringers. At parish dinners, he provides popular piano music for the guests to dine by. For both worship services and concerts, he will rehearse and accompany vocal and instrumental soloists from our congregation on piano, organ, or even accordion.
Angus Sinclair was appointed Director of Music of St. John the Evangelist on February 1, 2023. Having graduated in 1981 (Honours B.Mus.) in organ performance from Wilfrid Laurier University, he went on to distinguish himself as a church musician, recitalist and accompanist touring in both Canada and the UK. For over 40 years Angus has served parishes and congregations throughout Southwestern Ontario as director of music. He experiences his present appointment to St. John’s as a welcome homecoming, both spiritually and musically.